The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-02-13 00:00:00

EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCE,

'A few days ago a tide-waiter who was doing duty on board a
vessel called the Belfast, from Belfast, lying at Fresh Wharf,
near Billingsgate, sew a sailor strike another of the crew, who
appeared to be a mere lad, a violent blow, without cause. The
lad, who was called James, began to cry, and the tide-waiter,
after having called the assailant a cowardly rascal for beating
the boy, turned round and said to the latter, " Don't cry—why
you are like a great " Girl !" roared out the seaman,
"you may say that; sho is a girl, the d—d bitch, and blow me,
if she makes any fuss about it, I'll let everybody know all about
it." Surprised at this information, which issued from the brute;
with a savage sincerity of.wanner, the tide-waiter did not.delay:
inquiry, and he soon learned that the charge against the poor
insulted person, of being a female, was correct. News of this
kind could not long be confined to few persons iu such a neigh-
bourhood as Billingsgate, and the captain of the vessel, finding.
that a general inteiest was excited, invited some gentlemen to
see his phenomenon fly up the shrouds. Amongst those who
went to witness the exhibition were two. gentlemen, who, per-
ceiving the reluctance with which the order of the captain was
complied with, and judging that such an unfeeling master was
not the sort of person under whose guidance a child of misfor-
tune was likely to be benefited, asked the object of their interest
to accompany them ashore, and let them know the history of so
strange a metamorphosis, and point out to them in wheernaarier
they could render service in such an exigency. The girl, who
was at this time dressed in a red worsted jacket and duck trow-
sers, consented to leave the vessel, although she appeared very
anxious to receive five months' pay, which was due to her from
her captain, at the rate of £2 lOs. a month ; but which he was-
just as anxious to retain; expecting that by holding this menace
of exposure over her she might be induced to abandoathe claim
altoeether.
The history she gave was indeed a romantic one.. Having
stated her, name, of which we are in possession, but which
from motives the reader will admit to be cogent as he peruses
the story, we conceal, she said that souse years ago her father
left Gloucestershire for Ireland, where, in a northern county,
he carried on the business of a cornfactor, and lived respectably.
Upwards of three years ago she became acquainted with and
soon afterwards attached to the captain of a vessel which traded
to the next port. The attachment was mutual. The captain
was, however, obliged to sail for America, and thither, after
having waited in vain for his'return or intelligence about him,
she determined to go. She then formed the extracrrdivary reso-
lution of laying in a stock of sailor's clothes as well as female
apparel, that she might, in the event of any eineegrney, 'adapt:
herself to it without the hazard of delay. Arrived in America,
she proceeded to the place in which she hoped to hear some
tidings of the man for whom she had made such a sacrifice; but
she had passed over the ocean only to see the turf that covered
his remains. He had expired a few days before her arrival
The event she apprehended and had prepared for had now ar-
rived. She resolved to be a sailor herself, and succeeded in
obtaining the situation of cook and steward on board a vessel
sailing for the Mediterranean. Her swarthy complexion fa-
voured the deception, and for nearly two years she has been
tossed about by sea and land, no lkiiman being ever having sus-
pected during that time that she was other than what she ap-
peared to be, with her cropped poll and-jacket and trowsers.
At length the secret was to be discovered. About six months
ago she engaged at Lisbon with the captain of the Belfast, as
cook and steward at £2 lOs. a month, and she sailed to many
ports with him. One day while she was washing in her berth
with her jacket loose in the front, one of the crew caught an
accidental glimpse of her bosom. He immediately expressed
his astonishment, and threatened to inform the captain it she
refused to consent to the only terms on which he would promise
•silence, and these terms being rejected iu such a manner as to
show the inefficiency of any future solicitation, everybody in the
vessel was speedily acquainted with the fact that there was a
"she" amongst them. The poor girl was from that moment
doomed to suffer great misery. The captain thought that as he
was the master of her fortunes for the time he ought also to be
the master of her person, and when he found that he had cal-
culated too much upon his power, turned her. out to work
amongst the men, by whom she was upon all ()melons most
grossly insulted. She declared that upon one occasion she
saved her person from violation by calling God to witness that
she would prosecute every man in the ship if they persevered
in their attempts, but the captain never even advised any abate-
ment of the persecution she daily and hourly underwent. In
the most desperate weather she had been ordered up the shrouds,
and her hands are now as hard as those of any man before the
mast, and the gibes and jeers and curses of the rascally crew
was the language to which she had been constantly obliged to
listen.

The gentlemen to whom these circumstances were recited
would not permit the poor girl to return to the vessel, which
sailed next day, and the captain succeeded, at least for a time,
in his object of pocketing her wages, having determined to re-
sist upon the ground that he had agreed to pay a man and not a
\Yuman.

The gentlemen, after having provided for this extraordinary
person for the present in s respectable family,. wrote to
.her fa-
ther an account of the whole transaction, and in the course of
next week an auswer of a very favourable description will no
doubt be received.

The Lord Mayor having seed the, above statement; di-
rected M'Leau, the inspector of the city police; to. make inquiry
into the circumstances, in order tht if the girl required as-
sistance it might be rendered to her without subjectiugher to
annoyance. 111‘Lean thought that the best thing he could do,
after having heard the story of the girl from her own lips, was
to bring her to the Mansion-house, and introduce her :to his
lordship. He accordingly appeared before the Lord. Mayor,
accompanied by the girl, the captain of the vessel in which-she
came to London, and several gentlemen who felt,an interest iu
• the remarkable details-of the case. • •
Captain M'lntire, of the Sarah, from Belfast, stated that he
met the girl, whose name is Anna Jane Thornton, at St. Au-
drcw's' in North America. She was dressed in sailor's'clothes,
and had all the appearance of having been brought up to that
employment. He engaged her at nine dollars a month to act
as cook and steward, and considered that this was what she
seemed to be until a few days before the-arrival of the vessel in
• the port of London. It appeared that some of the crew had
suspected her sex before she was seen washing in her berth,
from the circumstance of her having repeatedly refused to drink
grog.
Ihe Lord Mayor.—lt has been reported that she was ill-
treated by the captain and the crew. I wish particularly to be
informed upon that point
Captain Mg ntire said that he would call upon the girl to say
whether he hat not uniformly treated her with kindness, and
whether, when her sex was discovered, the degree of kindness
andaare was not increased? .

The girl-declared that Captain M'lntire had acted towards
her with humanity, and had desired her to complain to him if
any of the crew attempted to treat her harshly. She had been
in the course of the voyage struck by some of the sailors, be-
cause she did nut work as hard as they did, a thing she found it
difficult to do in a gale of wind; but.she did not tell the cap-
tain, as sho•was determitied to endure as much as possible a ith-
out grumbling.
The Lord Mayor.—ls it possible that this mere girl, for she
cannot be more than sixteen or seventeeu years of age, per-
formed the duties of a seaman?
Captain M'lntire.—lt is, my lord; she performed• them to
admiration. She Would run up to hand the topgallant-sail in
any sort of weather, and we had a severe passage. Poor girl!
she had a hard lime of it. She suffered greatly from the wet,
but she.bore it excellently, and was a capital seaman.
The Lord-Mayor.—ls the account of the romantic pursuit of
the person she was said to he attached to correct ? Is it true
that she Went to America after the captain who was said to be
her sweetheart ? •
M'Lean said that the account she had given to him corre-
sponded with that which appeared before the public, but she
ould herself mention the particulars.
Captain Wlntire stated that he had no doubt of the correct-
ness of her statement. She was not given to loquacity; on the
contrary„ she did the duty of a seaman without a murmur, and
had ipkitely a better use of her hands than of her tongue.
Tho'clescription of the female sailor seemed to -be: accurate.
pep pands appeared as if they were covered with thick brown
leSttlwr gloves, and it was by repeated questioning the Lord
thypr got from her the facts, of which the following is the
subliftsp ce :
Auto; Jane Thornton stated that she is in the seventeenth
year of her age. Her father, who is now a widower, took -her
and the rest of his family from Gloucestershire, where she was
born, to Donegal, when she was six years old : he was the owner
of stores in that taut of Ireland, and'in. good circumstances, and

was always affectionate to her. • She regretted that she had
quitted her haute, for her departure, of.which she had given no
previous notice to her father, must have caused him many a sor-
rowful hour. When she was only thirteen years old; she met
Captain Alexander Burke, whose father resided in New York,.
and was the owner of vessels there, -and before she was fifteen
they became strongly attached to each other. Soon afterwards
A leek Burke was obliged to go to New York, and she took up
the resolution to follow him. She quitted her father's house;
accompanied by a maidservant and a boy, and, having procured
a cabin-boy's dress, she exerted herself to obtain a passage to
America. She succeeded in her object. The servant-maid and
boy took leave of her. immediately upon her embarking, the
latter being charged with a message to her father infortning him
of her inteution.• --By degrees she became reconciled to the la-
bours of her. new .employment ;,. beat she beheld with joy the
shores of New York, where she thought her labours would ter-
minate. The moment She landed, she went off in her cabin-
boy's dress :to the house of Captain Buike's • father,•and said
th.it she had worked under the captain's orders, and. wished to
be engaged by him again. She there heard that Burke was
dead, and she resolved to return home. For thirty-one months
she was engaged in these remarkable adventures, and had been
sharer of the severe toilS of the crews of which she formed a
part. She underwent, she said, a vast deal. By land she tra-
velled seventy miles across the woods from East Port, in North
America, to St: Andrew's, by herself.
Captain M'lntire.—lt was but a -few days ago I learned we
had a girl on board. I was the last person in the vessel who
was informed of the fact, and I could scarcely 'credit the mate
when he told me of it. I can bear testimony to the• extraordi-
nary propriety of her conduct ; and I ask her again whether I
have not acted properly towards her, and particularly from, the
moment I became acquainted with the secret which she was so
anxious not to have disclosed ?

The giffsaid, that she was gratitude bound to acknowledge
the kindness and humanity of the captain:
The Lord Mayor.—l shall give directions that you be taken
Care of until I hear from your father, to whom I shall write to-
night. You have done him great wrong by abandoning him
under any pretence; but you have suffered bitterly for your
disobedience, and"! trust that you will, by your future attention
and care, prove to him that your filial affection is as strong as
your courage in such circumstances of danger and.toil as you
have been placed in has been so immeasurably beyond that of
the rest of your sex of modern days. Many gentlemen to whom
I have spoken on the subject looked upon the case as the coin-
age of the brain ; but the investigation has, if possible, added
to the interest of the story.
Captain M'lutire mentioned to the Lord. Mayor, that:the
proprietor of the Cooper's Arms, in Lower Thames-street,
where the young woman has lodged, was a respectable person,
in whose house she would be properly takers dare of; and the
Lord Mayor desired that she should remain in that asylum.
The girl then retired, after having gratefully, neknowledged
her thanks for the humanity and solicitude of the Lord Mayor.
She is of low stature, and her limbs are firmly knit together;
her face is comely; her eyes are dark and brilliant; and her
teeth are extreinely,,white.. The hardships td whielt, she has
been so long exposed have completely tanned her face and neck;
but the sailor who accidentally detected her secret declares that
the natural colour of her. skin is as white as snows. ,