Mary Lacy

Mary Lacy (c. 1740 – 1801) was a British sailor, shipwright and memoirist. She was arguably the first woman to have been given an exam and a pension from the British admiralty as a shipwright.

Lacy ran away from home dressed as a boy at the age of nineteen in 1759, and worked as a servant for a ship's carpenter of the British navy under the name William Chandler until 1763. She then studied as an apprentice to be a shipwright. In 1770, she took her exam as a shipwright, arguably the first woman to have done so. In 1771, however, she was forced to stop working because of her rheumatism, and applied for a pension from the admiralty under her legal name, Mary Lacy, which was granted.

On 25 October 1772, at St Mary Abbots, Kensington,[1] Mary Lacy married Josias Slade, a shipwright, of Deptford, Kent.[2]

She published her memoirs The Female Shipwright (1773).

That same year, Mary gave birth to her first child,[3] Margaret Lacey Slade, who was baptized at St Nicholas, Deptford, Kent, on 29 August.[4] Their other children were Josias Slade (1775–1777), Mary Slade (1777–1777), Josias Slade (1778–1781), Elizabeth Slade (1780–1780), and John Slade (born 1784).[5]

In 1775 Mary petitioned for her husband to be granted a servant because of his 16 years' service as a shipwright.[6] She had also applied unsuccessfully before Lord Sandwich for her husband to succeed Thomas Boyles, who lined the stuff for the Sawyers at the dockyard.[7]

Mary died in 1801 and was buried at St Paul, Deptford, Kent, on 3 May 1801.[8][9] Her husband, Josias Slade, died in 1814 and was also buried at St Paul, Deptford, Kent, on 13 February 1814.[10] In his will and codicil, he only mentions his son, John Slade, and daughter, Margaret, now wife of Joseph Ward[11] (Margaret Lacey Ward died the following year and was buried at St Paul, Deptford, Kent, on 23 April 1815[12]).