Brook Watson
Lord Mayor of London
Sir Brook Watson, 1st Baronet (7 February 1735 – 2 October 1807), was a British merchant and politician who served as the Lord Mayor of London from 1796 to 1797. He 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.
Early life
Watson was the only son of John Watson and Sarah Watson (née Schoefield). Born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1735, he was orphaned in 1741 and sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Boston, Massachusetts, in colonial America. His uncle was a merchant who traded in the West Indies. Before the age of 14, Watson had expressed his interest in the sea, so his uncle signed him up as a crew member on one of his merchant ships.
While swimming alone in Havana harbour, Cuba, in 1749, the 14-year-old Watson was attacked by a shark. The shark attacked twice before Watson was rescued. The first time, the shark removed flesh from below the calf of Watson's right leg; the second time, it bit off his right foot at the ankle. Watson was rescued by his shipmates, but his leg had to be amputated below the knee.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Brook Watson” is lord Mayor of London. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Brook, Watson and Lord, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4974369. VIAF identifies the subject as 19512596. The Library of Congress control number is no2009002135. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1735, 1807, 1796 and 1797.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brook Watson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.