1. Brook Watson is perhaps best known as the subject of John Singleton Copley's painting Watson and the Shark, which depicts a shark attack on Watson as a young man in Havana that resulted in the loss of his right leg below the knee.
23 Facts About Brook Watson
1. 2.
Brook Watson's uncle was a merchant who traded in the West Indies.
3.
Brook Watson was rescued by his shipmates, but his leg had to be amputated below the knee.
4.
Brook Watson recuperated in a Cuban hospital and recovered within three months.
5.
On his return to Boston, Brook Watson found that his uncle was bankrupt.
6.
Brook Watson took a job under Captain John Huston on a schooner that supplied provisions to the British army at Fort Lawrence, Nova Scotia.
7.
Brook Watson worked with the English trader Joseph Slayter, and in 1758 he was commissary under General James Wolfe at the Siege of Louisbourg.
8.
In 1759 Brook Watson went to London to continue his mercantile career, and for a while, he was a partner with Joshua Maugher.
9.
Brook Watson became a successful merchant, engaging in business in London, Montreal and Boston, amongst other places.
10.
Brook Watson was a member of the original committee of the Corporation of Lloyd's of London in 1772 and later served for ten years as its chairman.
11.
Brook Watson visited Massachusetts, New York and other colonies before the American Revolutionary War, during which time he intercepted letters to General Thomas Gage that were said to prove that Gage was a spy.
12.
Brook Watson was examined by the House of Commons of Great Britain in 1775, when Frederick North, Lord North's bill concerning the fisheries of the New England Colonies was before parliament.
13.
Brook Watson served as a Member of Parliament for the City of London from 1784 until 1793.
14.
Brook Watson was Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1785.
15.
Brook Watson was agent for New Brunswick in London from 1786 until 1794, and Commissary-General to the Duke of York from 1793 to 1795.
16.
From 1793 to 1796 Brook Watson served as Commissary General to the British Army in Flanders under the Duke of York, and from 1798 until 1806 served as Commissary-General of England.
17.
Brook Watson served several terms as a director of the Bank of England between 1784 and 1807.
18.
Whatever the circumstances of their meeting, Brook Watson commissioned Copley to produce the work, known as Brook Watson and the Shark which was completed in 1778.
19.
Brook Watson was of a very good family in the North of England but having lost both his parents early in life was brought up by an aunt, and before the age of fourteen years manifested a strong predilection for the sea, which led to the misfortune represented in the picture.
20.
Brook Watson served in the Commissariat Department of the Army under the immortal Wolfe at Louisberg in 1758.
21.
Brook Watson's father was Colin Campbell, a goldsmith working in Edinburgh.
22.
Underneath Neptune brandishing his trident, the shield bears Brook Watson's severed right leg, with the Latin motto Scuto Divino below.
23.
Brook Watson's baronetcy descended, by special remainder, to his grand-nephew William.