Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Watson, Sir Brook 1735-

Military officer; born in Plymouth, England, Feb. 7, 1735; entered the naval service early in life, but while bathing in the sea at Havana in 1749 a shark bit off his right leg below the knee, and he abandoned the sea and [245] entered upon mercantile business. He was with Colonel Monckton in Nova Scotia in 1755, and was at the siege of Louisburg in 1758, having in charge Wolfe's division, as commissary. In 1759 he settled as a merchant in London, and afterwards in Montreal. Just before the Revolutionary War he visited several of the colonies, with false professions of political friendship for them, as a Whig. A friend of Sir Guy Carleton, he was made his commissary-general in America in 1782, and from 1784 to 1793 he was member of Parliament for London. He was sheriff of London and Middlesex, and in 1796 was lord mayor. For his services in America, Parliament voted his wife an annuity of $2,000 for life. From 1798 to 1806 he was commissary-general of England. He died Oct. 2, 1807.