#also PLEASE double check your sources! I ran into a few instances where person A just makes stuff up about person B’s findings so. please. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mycological-mariner · 1 year

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I’m going through my copy of The Lady Tars and this was just incredible.

William Brown (birth name is unknown) may have been the first black woman to serve in the British Royal Navy. While the book here says Brown served for 11 years as captain of the maintop (others say capt. of the foretop), there’s another conflicting account that has her rated as a landsman in the ship’s muster. The Times wrote about her and this is the main source that she was a foretopman. The paper also says that Brown intended to enlist again as a volunteer and it’s completely plausible she did. However, it’s completely unknown either way. What is known indisputably is there was a young black woman from Granada going by the name of William Brown serving on the H.M.S. Queen Charlotte in 1815.

#ripping my hair out coz yes. there was a woman going by William Brown in the navy in 1815 #but that’s about all that can be verified #and the fact that there’s this conflicting account from The Times drives me up the walls #I want these people to have been better remembered and personally that’s where the genuine tragedy lies #did she re-enlist? did she have prize money? did she serve for a few weeks or over a decade??#more than likely she wasn’t a capt. of the main or foretop #especially if she really did only serve for a short period #there’s just a sadness in it that we don’t even know her story or really anything about her #that’s why I’ve been reading about all the polly olivers in the navy #but yeah. incredible that she even DID that #I hope she lived a good life #that’s all. I don’t like wild speculation when researching historical persons as tempting as it can be #so I only hope and wish the rest of her life was a good one #also it’s just so important to know these stories or what we can learn of them #a man (or woman) is only dead when their name is no longer spoken #I want to help keep these women alive for as long as I can #also PLEASE double check your sources! I ran into a few instances where person A just makes stuff up about person B’s findings so. please.#I don’t like making assumptions based on what *I* want to be true either so again. there’s very little known about her so take all this #with a few grains of salt #william brown #age of sail #history #women in the navy #(also frustrating coz William Brown was/is a pretty common name…)#I found a couple of other sources talking about her so I’m gonna see if there’s ANYTHING else I can find out #black history #I’ll come back to this and write it clearer. I’m running on fumes #also should add that The Lady Tars is a compilation of auto/biographies of 3 women and this is just from the foreword #but I need to nap rn

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