Lucy Brewer - The Legend

The Legend

According to "her" book The Female Marine (original title: (The Adventures of Lucy Brewer), Brewer supposedly grew up on a farm near Plymouth, Massachusetts and, at age 16, fell in love with a boy named Henry. When she became pregnant, Henry refused to marry her, and she set out for Boston. In Boston, Lucy was tricked into prostitution after her baby died in childbirth. This series of seduction and betrayal precisely follows the strict line of the romance genre—until, that is, motivated by a patriotic desire to fight in the War of 1812, Lucy tricked her way onto the Constitution, pretending to be a man named George Baker.

She served valiantly for three years and in many naval battles against the British before being honorably discharged, all the while keeping her true gender a secret. The book ends with Lucy returning to Plymouth as a woman and settling down into traditional married life. "She displays resourcefulness, self-reliance, and mobility—characteristics commonly deemed male that this female marine appropriates to deal with her extraordinary predicament," Elizabeth Reis notes. In the end, though, "All's well that ends well in The Female Marine, as characters revert to their true natures, aligned with prescribed categories of gender and sex. The chaotic world of gender impersonation settles into one of blissful morality, and Lucy accepts the conventions of the cult of true womanhood."

No one by the name of Lucy Brewer (or that of her other pseudonyms, or that of her husband) can be found in historical records; in addition, it is highly unlikely a woman could have disguised herself for three years on the Constitution, as the crew had little to no privacy. (For example, no toilet facilities or private quarters existed on the ship, and physical examinations were thorough in the Marines.) In addition, The Female Marine's identifying details of the Constitution's travels and battles are nearly verbatim to accounts published by the ship's commanders in contemporary newspapers.

In 1816, shortly after the publication of the first edition of The Female Marine, a woman named Rachel Sperry, claiming to have run the brothel into which Brewer was supposedly tricked, wrote "A Brief Reply" to Brewer's tale. Sperry wanted "to give her all the praise to which she is entitled, in justice to her" military exploits, but claimed that rather than being tricked into prostitution, Brewer made "rapid progress in all the deceptive arts of harlotry" – deceptive arts, she implies, that served her well in tricking her way onto the Constitution. Rachel Sperry has no more historical record than Brewer, but the publication of "her" "Brief Reply" both spurred public interest in and gave weight to the legitimacy and veracity of The Female Marine. As recently as 1963, in fact, the story was regarded as factual by some accounts.