Mary Anne Talbot, or John Taylor, was next placed on board the Brunswick, where she witnessed Lord Howe’s great victory of the 1st June, and was actively engaged in it.  But she was seriously wounded, “her left leg being struck a little above the knee by a musket-ball, and broken, and severely smashed lower down by a grape shot.”  On reaching England she was conveyed to Haslar Hospital, where she remained four months, no suspicion having ever been entertained of her being a woman.  But she was no sooner out of the hospital than, retaining her disguise, she entered a small man-of-war—­the Vesuvius, which was captured by two French ships, when she was sent to the prisons of Dunkirk.  Here she was incarcerated for eighteen months, but, having been discovered planning an escape with a young midshipman, she was confined in a pitch-dark dungeon for eleven weeks, on a diet of bread and water.  An exchange of prisoners set her at liberty, and, hearing accidentally an American merchant captain inquiring in the streets of Dunkirk for a lad to go to New York as ship’s steward she offered her services, and was accepted.  Accordingly, in August, 1796, she sailed with Captain Field, and, on arriving at Rhode Island, she resided with the Captain’s family.

But here another kind of adventure was to befall her—­for a niece of Captain Field’s fell deeply in love with her, even going so far as to propose marriage.  On leaving Rhode Island, the young lady had such alarming fits that, after sailing two miles, Mary Anne Talbot was called back by a boat, and compelled to promise a speedy return to the enamoured young lady.  On reaching England, she was one day on shore with some of her comrades when she was seized by a press-gang, and finding there was no other way of getting off than by revealing her sex, she did so, her story creating a great sensation.  From this time she never went to sea again, and soon afterwards lived in service with a bookseller, Mr. Kirby, who wrote her memoir.[44]

And the late Colonel Fred Burnaby has recorded the history of a singular case, the facts of which came under his notice when he was with Don Carlos during the Carlist rising of the year 1874:  “A discovery was made a few days ago that a woman was serving in the Royalists’ ranks, dressed in a soldier’s uniform.  She was found out in the following manner.  The priest of the village to where she belonged happening to pass through a town where the regiment was quartered, and chancing to see her, was struck by the likeness she bore to one of his parishioners.

“You must be Andalicia Bravo,” he remarked.

“No, I am her brother,” was the reply.