Mary Lacy: Female Shipwright

Mary Lacy was born on January 12, 1740, at Wickham in Kent, England. She was the oldest of three children and was sent to a charity school to be educated. She went into domestic service around the age of twelve and worked as such for seven years. During this time, she fell in love, which went unrequited, and she decided to leave her home and place of service. In May of 1759, at age nineteen, she traveled to the dockyards of Chatham, disguised herself as a man and using the name William Chandler, enlisted in the British Royal Navy aboard the 90-gun ship Sandwich. Mary, now known as William, became servant to the ship's carpenter, Richard Baker.

During this time England was fighting France in what is known as the Seven Years War in Europe and the French and Indian War in America. During the 1759-1760 year of the war, the HMS Sandwich helped patrol the seas off Ushant and Biscay Bay as a blockade ship against the French.

Mary Lacy rolled with the waves and adjusted to life aboard ship. She suffered a few bouts of sickness due to rheumatoid arthritis. At one time she was confined to the sick bay for several weeks and one episode was so severe that she was sent to the naval hospital in Plymouth. By the time she recovered, the Sandwich had already sailed without her. She then joined the crew of the HMS Royal Sovereign, a 100-gun ship that was permanently stationed offshore at Spithead and used to guard the port.   

Mary decided she wanted to become a shipwright's apprentice. In March 1763, she was signed on as apprentice to Alexander McLean, the acting carpenter of the Royal William, which had been decommissioned and was based at Portsmouth Dockyard. Mary completed her apprenticeship in 1770 and was certified as a shipwright.

Mary wrote an autobiography but never really talked about the difficulties in keeping up her disguise as William Chandler. Her sex was almost discovered when she tripped while working on the deck of the Royal Sovereign and fell down an open hatch. Her head was badly cut and she had to be taken to the doctor. In her autobiography she recounts her close call.

When I came to myself I was very apprehensive lest the doctor in searching for bruises about my body should have discovered I was a woman, but it fortunately happened that he being a middle-aged gentleman, he was not very inquisitive, and my messmates being advanced in years, and not so active as young people, did not tumble me about or undress me.

The ladies were very fond of William Chandler, which is lucky for Mary because it probably saved her from being found out. Lacy had written to her parents all about her adventures. A family friend (who maybe wasn't such a good friend after all), was let in on her secret and began spreading rumors around the shipyard where Lacy now worked. Two of the shipwrights that she worked for as an apprentice took her aside and demanded the truth. She broke down and admitted she was in fact a woman. Out of respect for Mary, these men swore to keep her secret and convinced everyone else in the dockyard that Mary was indeed a man, siting her interest in so many ladies as evidence.

Some time after receiving her shipwright certificate, Mary hurt herself while helping dismantle a ship. She realized that she could no longer perform her job and had no other option but to apply for a disability pension from the Admiralty. Her case was approved by the Lords of the Admiralty on January 28, 1772.  Below follows the report as it was recorded in the Admiralty minutes:

A Petition was read from Mary Lacey setting forth that in the year 1759 she disguised herself in men's clothes and enter'd on board His Majesty's Fleet, where having served until the end of the war , she bound herself  apprentice to the carpenter of the Royal William and having served seven years, then enter'd as a shipwright in Portsmouth Yard where she has continued ever since; but that finding her health and constitution impaired by so laborious an employment, she is obliged to give it up for the future, and therefore, praying some allowance for her support during the remainder of her life;

                       Resolved, in consideration of the particular circumstances attending this woman's case, the truth of which has been attested by the Commissioner of the Yard at Portsmouth, that she be allowed a pension equal to that granted to Superannuated Shipwrights.

Nothing much is known about Mary Lacy's later life. Her autobiography suggests that she married a Mr. Slade, a man that she met in Deptford. David Cordingly, author of Women Sailors and Sailor's Women, theorizes that the happily ever after future depicted at the end of Mary's story was added by her publisher so that the story would have a more traditional end to balance out all the suggestions of lesbian flirtations. 


Further readings:

Women Sailors and Sailor's Women - David Cordingly

The History of a Female Shipwright...Written by Herself - Mary Lacy