Perhaps she was trying to get to Africa – it is possible she had been slaved from the Guinea coast and was trying to get home. If anybody asked her what she intended, they did not record the answer. But she succeeded in making the voyage. The captain of The Hannibal of London, Thomas Philips, explained in his ship's log in November 1693 how she was discovered:
This morning we found out that one of the Royal African Company's soldiers, for their castles in Guiney, was a woman, who had enter'd herself into their service under the name of John Brown, without the least suspicion, and had been three months on board without any mistrust, lying always among the other passengers, and being as handy and ready to go any work as any of them: and I believe she had continu'd undiscover'd till our arrival in Africa, had not she fallen very sick, which occasion'd our surgeon to visit her, and ordered her a glister: which when his mate went to administer, he was surpriz'd to find more sally-ports than he expected, which occasion'd him to make a farther inquiry, which, as well as her confession, manifesting the truth of her sex, he came to acquaint me of it, whereupon, in charity, as well as in respect to her sex, I ordered her a private lodging apart from the men, and gave the taylor some ordinary stuffs to make her woman's cloathes; in recompence for which she prov'd very useful in washing my linen, and doing what else she could, till we deliver'd her with the rest at Cape-Coast castle. She was about twenty years old, and a likely black girl.
