Mary Lacy was an extraordinary servant woman who age 19 disguised herself as a man in order to run away from home undetected. She then assumed the name William Chandler and joined the Royal Navy in 1759 as a carpenter's servant on the Sandwich. In 1763 she started an apprenticeship in Portsmouth dockyard and received her shipwright's certificate in 1770. Incredibly few people knew her true sex and she had several amorous adventures with both sexes. In 1771 she resigned from the Navy through rheumatism, receiving an Admiralty pension of £20 a year in her real name of Mary Lacy. In 1773 she set about writing her autobiography, after which nothing more is known of her.