Turning tragedy into timeless romance.
Born in 1788 in Chatham, Kent, William Cuffay was the son of an English woman, Juliana Fox, and a formerly enslaved father of African descent, Chatham Cuffay. William was a traveling tailor of a short height. He stood at 4 feet 11 inches. However, in that small body was a powerful activist.
While women weren't officially allowed to fully serve in England’s Royal Navy until 1993, there are reports of women dressing as men long before. These women worked alongside male sailors for months, years, and sometimes lifetimes without revealing their gender to their shipmates. Some recognizable women who worked as sailors under these conditions were Anne Jane Thornton (1817-1877) and Mary Lacy (1740-1795). While it’s unclear exactly how many women dressed as men to go venturing on the high seas, some sources say that the first woman of African descent to serve for the Royal Navy was Miss William Brown, birth name unknown.
Mary Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda. After passing through several slaveowners in the Caribbean, she was taken to England, where she shortly after left her master. She became an abolitionist and autobiographer, her written account being one of the few from women of African descent in the British colonies when slavery was legal.
Ignatius Sancho was an abolitionist, author, composer, and the first Black Breton to cast his vote. Read on for more of his interesting history.