Mary Lacy was born in Wickham, Kent, in 1740, but at the age of 19, she disguised herself as a man and ran away from home, joining HMS Sandwich at Chatham.

However, she soon began to suffer from arthritis and, when her ship was taken out of service, she made her way to Portsmouth, where she applied for and was accepted in a position as an apprentice shipwright.

At the end of this apprenticeship, Mary, using the name William Chandler, was an accredited shipwright, but her arthritis was getting worse and things came to a head in 1770, following a great fire in the dockyard.

Far worse than the fire of ten years earlier, this fire caused huge damage and the shipwrights were pressed to work for 17 hours a day, in order to make it good again.

shipwrights were pressed to work for 17 hours a day, in order to make it good again.

This was more than Mary's crippled joints could stand and, in 1771, she applied to the Admiralty for a pension, revealing her true identity at the same time.

In 1772, their lordships approved an annual pension of £22 for her, recognising her status as a Superannuated Shipwright, despite her gender and thus she became the first accredited female shipwright in British history.

There have, of course, been many stories of women disguising themselves as men and joining either the army or the navy, but Mary Lacy's story is unique and you can still buy her autobiography, The Female Shipwright: Mary Lacy, which she published soon after her retirement.