{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Jane Townsend''', also known as '''Jane Townshend''', was a 19th-century British sailor. She is notable for her service on HMS ''Defiance'' during the Battle of Trafalgar.

== Biography == Townsend's origin is not known, with first accounts of her life placing her aboard HMS ''Defiance'' during the Battle of Trafalgar. Townsend's service during the battle is not specified by sources, but was remembered as notable with the captain of the ''Defiance'' (Philip Durham) later vouching for her.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Jowitt|first1=Claire|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=13jnDwAAQBAJ&q=Jane+Townshend+trafalgar&pg=PT344|title=The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds 1400-1800|last2=Lambert|first2=Craig|last3=Mentz|first3=Steve|date=2020-05-21|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-000-07576-2|language=en}}</ref> Townsend is first mentioned in the historical record when in 1847 Queen Victoria declared that the newly established Naval General Service Medal would be awarded for service regardless of sex. This caused Townsend to file a claim for the medal; her claim was originally admitted, but on reconsideration refused on the grounds that granting the award would cause complications given the number of other women who served on Royal Navy ships.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Paine|first=Lincoln P.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xh7CSxFeK-IC&q=1805+Jane+Townsend&pg=PA48|title=Warships of the World to 1900|date=2000|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-395-98414-7|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hassard|first=Kirsty|date=2017|title=Identifying Women's Political Involvement in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Political fans in British Collections|url=https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1409/88346|journal=Contemporanea|issue=4/2017|pages=665–680 |doi=10.1409/88346|issn=1127-3070}}</ref><ref>W. B. Rowbotham R.N. (1937) The NAVAL GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL, 1793–1840, The Mariner's Mirror, 23:3, 351-370, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1937.10657248</ref> According to one source, she was the first woman to be awarded the General Service Medal.<ref>{{Cite web|date=1997-09-06|title=The Origins of the General Service Medal|url=https://www.navyhistory.org.au/the-origins-of-the-general-service-medal/|access-date=2020-12-25|website=Naval Historical Society of Australia|language=en-AU}}</ref>

Suzanne J. Stark writing in ''The American Neptune'' argued that the grounds given for refusing the medal were clearly nonsense since over 20,000 were awarded to men and a more likely reason for the reversal was political pressure from Queen Victoria who felt that being involved in a naval battle went against a woman's natural position in life.{{sfnp|Stark|1997|pp=116–117}}

==Citations== {{reflist}} == References == *{{cite journal |last=Stark|first=Suzanna J.|date=Spring 1997|title=Women at Sea in the Royal Navy in the Age of Sail|journal=The American Neptune|volume=57|issue=2|pages=101–123}} == External links == * [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/trafalgarancestors/details.asp?id=18166 Jane Townshend] in the National Archives Trafalgar database.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Townsend, Jane}} Category:19th-century Royal Navy personnel Category:Female sailors Category:Year of birth missing Category:Year of death missing

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