Mary Anne Talbot
Mary Anne Talbot (born February 2, 1778 in London - † February 4, 1808 ) was a British sailor and soldier who served as John Taylor in the Royal Navy and the British Army . Its history was repeatedly described in the 19th and 20th centuries; thus she is one of the most famous Amazons of the 18th century, along with Hannah Snell and Christian Davies , who pretended to be men in order to be able to serve as sailors or soldiers.
Origin and youth
Mary Anne Talbot was born the youngest of 16 children. She was believed to be the illegitimate daughter of William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot . Her mother died giving birth, her alleged father when she was four years old. She grew up with a wet nurse in Worthen in Shropshire until she was five, and then attended a private boarding school in Chester until she was fourteen . The only relative she knew was an older sister, an Hon. Miss Dyer, whom she initially took to be her mother. Miss Dyer died in childbed when Mary Anne was nine years old. She explained Mary Anne before her death over their alleged origin and left her a handsome fortune of 30,000 pounds sterling . Mary Anne could have had an annual income of £ 1,500 from her fortune, but her sister's chosen guardian, a Mr. Sucker, did not secure her further education and turned it over to Essex Bowen, a captain of the 82nd Regiment of Foot . This took her to London, where he sexually abused her.
Service as a soldier and as a sailor
When Mary Anne became pregnant, Bowen passed her off as a boy, named her John Taylor, and took her as a chamber boy to the West Indies , where the regiment was transferred. During the crossing on the Crown under Captain Bishop of Falmouth to the Spanish colony of San Domingo , the ship got into a storm. Taylor had to help operate the pumps and learned more basic seafaring skills. In June 1792 the Crown reached Port-au-Prince . There Captain Bishop received orders to bring the troops on board to France, where they were to be used under the Duke of York in the First Coalition War. Captain Bowen threatened Taylor with selling her into slavery if she did not follow him. She then joined the Duke of York regiment as a drummer and took part in several skirmishes in Flanders before she was wounded in the capture of Valenciennes in northeastern France. When Captain Bowen died, she deserted so that her real sex would not be revealed. In sailor clothing she traveled to the Rhine via Luxembourg, where she spent the night in the open air and in haystacks. On September 17, 1793, she was hired on a French ship under a captain Le Sage, not knowing that she was on a privateer . This ship was seized by a British warship four months later. As a prisoner, Taylor came aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte , where Admiral Howe assigned her to the ship of the line HMS Brunswick as a powder boy . Their captain, John Harvey , noticed Taylor's unusually good behavior, so he took her into his service as a cabin boy. For this she had to serve as a gunner. Three months later, Taylor was badly wounded in the Sea Battle of the Glorious June 1st when a grape rapier shattered her left ankle. She spent four months at the Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in Gosport . Then she became a midshipman on the Vesuvius bombing . However, this was raised off Normandy by two French privateers. As a prisoner, Taylor stayed in Dunkerque for eighteen months . After her release she was hired on the American ship Ariel under Captain John Field, with which she sailed to New York in August 1796. In November she returned to London on the Ariel. There she was picked up by a press gang in Wapping . In order not to have to re-enter the Royal Navy, she revealed her true gender, whereupon she was discharged.
Next life
Over the next few years, Talbot lived in poverty as a jeweler, theater assistant or housemaid in London. In addition to her poverty, she continued to suffer from the effects of the ankle injury. Nevertheless, she continued to go to seaman's bars in her sailor's clothes. She claimed a pension from the Admiralty , which she was eventually granted. As her story became known, she received gifts from Queen Caroline , the Duke of Norfolk, and other patrons. After all, she lived as a housemaid in the home of the author Robert S. Kirby in London. Kirby first published her biography in 1804. Three years later, because of poor health, she moved to live with a friend in Shropshire , where she died a few weeks later.
authenticity
The authenticity of Talbot's descriptions has been questioned again and again, in particular there are no documents that prove the presence of a sailor named Taylor on the ships on which she claims to have served.
literature
- Kirby's wonderful and eccentric museum or, magazine of remarkable characters , Vol. 2, London 1804, p. 160
- Robert S. Kirby: Life and surprising adventures of Mary Anne Talbot , 1809
- Julie Wheelwright: Amazons and military maids: women who dressed as men in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Pandora, London 1989, ISBN 0-04-440494-8
- Suzanne J. Stark: Female tars: women aboard ship in the age of sail . Constable, London 1996, ISBN 0-09-476220-1
Web links
- Julie Wheelwright: Talbot, Mary Anne [John Taylor] (1778-1808). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
Individual evidence
- ↑ Suzanne Stark: Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail . 1st edition. US Naval Institute Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1-55750-738-9 (English).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Talbot, Mary Anne |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Taylor, John (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British sailor and soldier |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 2, 1778 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 4, 1808 |