WATSON, Sir Brook, bart., English soldier, born in Plymouth, England, 7 February, 1735; died 2 October, 1807. At an early age he entered the British navy, but he was forced to abandon his profession, for, while he was bathing in the harbor of Havana, in 1749, his right leg was bitten off by a shark. He then engaged in mercantile pursuits and came to this country. In 1755 he was commissary with Colonel Robert Monckton at the siege of Beausejour, and in 1758 he served in the same capacity at Louisburg with General James Wolfe's division, and was known as the "wooden-legged commissary." In 1759 he became a merchant in London, and he subsequently engaged in business in Montreal, Canada, and afterward in Boston. In 1763, with others, he obtained a grant from the government of Nova Scotia of the township of Cumberland. Before the Revolution he visited Massachusetts, New York, and other colonies, professing to be a Whig, but intercepted letters to General Thomas Gage proved him to be a spy. In 1774 he went from Boston to England in the same ship with John Singleton Copley, who, in 1778, painted a picture of Brook Watson's rescue from the shark. When Lord North's bill to cut off the fisheries of New England was before parliament in 1775, he was examined by the house of commons. In 1782 he was made commissary-general to his friend, Sir Guy Carleton, in this country. From 1784 till 1793 "he was a member of parliament from London, and he was sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1785, and lord mayor in 1796. In reward for his services in America, parliament voted his wife an annuity of £500 for life. He was agent in London for New Brunswick from 1786 till 1794, commissary-general to the Duke of York in 1793-'5, and of England from 1798 till 1806. He was made a baronet on 5 December, 1803.