Birth name Unknown Role Navy man Years of service 1815 Service/branch Royal Navy | Rank Landsman Allegiance Great Britain Name William Brown Unit HMS Queen Charlotte | |
William Brown (birth name unknown) was a Black woman who joined the Royal Navy under a man's name in the early nineteenth century. It is undisputed that she was a sailor of HMS Queen Charlotte, but historians have reached varying conclusions about her service record.
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Two contradictory interpretations
Historians have offered varying reactions to the claim that a black woman from the Caribbean held this prestigious and demanding position. Suzanne J, Stark, David Cordingly and Philip Haythornthwaite have taken the report seriously, whereas Rachel Boser has dismissed it as nothing more than a legend, and her interpretation has been followed in several recent works.
These different interpretations reflect contrasting readings of disjointed evidence concerning the woman who called herself William Brown. The statement that she had been on board Queen Charlotte for "several" years implies that she had been aboard during the ship's previous period of active duty in 1813-14, and if there is any truth to her alleged appointment as captain of the fore-top, it would have taken place in these years—but none of the scholars directly discuss the crew records from this period. After the Peace of Paris in 1814, the Queen Charlotte was placed in dock for a refit and the crew was disbanded as part of a general demobilization of military personnel, but in 1815, the ship was rapidly brought back to active duty due to the start of the War of the Seventh Coalition in 1815, requiring the crew to be reassembled.
It was at this point that the black woman calling herself William Brown undisputedly joined Queen Charlotte in 1815. The rating as landsman is anomalously low for a skilled sailor (and would mean a wage cut of nearly 50% for a former top-captain), but the ranking of crew members was controlled by the first lieutenant, and a highly qualified recruit might be assigned this rank due to a clash of personalities, or simply if the officer had no personal knowledge of their true skill level.
It is true that the verified career of the black woman serving under the name of William Brown was restricted to a few weeks, but in July 1815, a few weeks after she was dismissed from the ship, a sailor named William Brown transferred into the crew from the Cumberland. This William Brown is listed as being from Edinburgh, and aged 32, rated as an able seaman, and remained with the crew until the ship was paid off again in August 1815 due to an enduring peace between Britain and France. Was this in fact the same black woman who had previously served aboard the ship?
Boser rejects the identification and regards this William Brown as simply a white Scotsman, but Stark and Cordingly implicitly accept that the black woman from Grenada had successfully re-enlisted. They further state that she rejoined Queen Charlotte once again on 31 December 1815 (when the ship was once again reactivated as Channel Fleet flagship), and was promptly appointed as "captain of the forecastle", in charge of the seamen handling the fore course, jibs and bowsprit sails (Boser accepts that this was the same sailor who had enlisted in July, still identifying as a 32-year-old native of Scotland, but states that this enlistment was actually aboard a separate ship, HMS Queen). On 29 June 1816, this sailor transferred to HMS Bombay, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Penrose, but this is as far as the trail of evidence can be followed, as subsequent records from Bombay are not available.
The first black woman in the Royal Navy
Is the contemporary report correct in claiming that a young black woman was recognized as one of the most skilled sailors aboard the British flagship during the Napoleonic Wars, leading a team of white male subordinates in storm and battle? Or was she, as Boser argues, just "an ordinary individual" who briefly enlisted in the navy for unknown reasons, and who has been confused by modern researchers with a white male sailor of the same name?
Even if Boser is correct, however, the undisputed enlistment of the woman from Grenada aboard Queen Charlotte in May and June 1815 still makes Brown the first known black, biologically female individual to serve in the Royal Navy.