NASH BIOGRAPHY
Expository writing style
In 2004, before Carol Baxter because a professional writer, she self-published a history of her First Fleet Nash family. Here is the start of the biography of First Fleet Marine, William Nash.
This biography is written in the expository style. It contains information about the historical context but no descriptive or narrative prose. While it's dry piece of prose, it's the type of prose that most family historians will include in the body of their biographies.
For further information about these styles of writing, click on the buttons below.
Chapter 1
William Nash and Maria Haynes
First Fleeters and Settlers
[When] the whole fleet were under sail … the propriety [was soon evident] of employing the marines on a service which requires activity and exertion at sea, in preference to other troops. Had a regiment recruited since the war been sent out, seasickness would have incapacitated half the men from performing the duties immediately and indispensably necessary; whereas the marines, from being accustomed to serving on board ship, accommodated themselves with ease to every exigency, and surmounted every difficulty.
Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, 1789
Part 1: William Nash
The decision to employ the Marines rather than the Army to serve with the First Fleet expedition effectively laid the foundation for the Nash family in Australia. In fact, the significance of this decision only becomes apparent when it is noted that no other company of marines was ever sent out to Australia for a tour of duty. From the Second Fleet onwards, the regular Army took over this role, for better or for worse, as the following pages reveal.
The opportunity to participate in the First Fleet expedition was immediately grasped by members of the Marine Corps, including William Nash. He must have had a sense of adventure along with a desire for either promotion or early discharge. Perhaps he welcomed the chance of a new beginning. Although William’s reasons for joining the First Fleet will never be known with certainty, it is possible to trace the paths he followed through the information contained in surviving records.
Early years
No information is known about William Nash’s family background or place of origin as surviving records provide only a 20-year window through which events in his life can be glimpsed, one that opens in 1784 and closes again in 1804. For earlier and later years, no information has yet been located and William’s year of birth cannot even be ascertained as no reference to his age has been found. One can speculate that he was probably born in the 1750s or early 1760s, but even this conclusion cannot be considered a certainty.
The earliest known reference to William Nash is found in 1784 when he was serving in the British Marine Corps. Marine regiments within the British Army were first raised in the mid-1600s to provide soldiers capable of performing active duty after long and arduous sea voyages. A separate Marine Corps was formed in 1755 although it continued to use army ranks and uniforms. The appellation "Royal" was not added until 1802.
William presumably enlisted in the Marines sometime in the 1770s or early 1780s perhaps after being approached by a recruiting squad. These squads consisted of an officer, a sergeant, a corporal and a drummer and travelled the countryside gathering recruits, as described below:
Marines were primarily ship-based infantry, and seafaring skills were therefore not of prime importance. Recruiting sergeants roamed Britain, displaying posters in towns and villages throughout England. Tales were told of adventure and excitement in far-off lands, and that, together with the promise of free accommodation and food whilst on board, and a regular wage, persuaded many young men to join. Others, mindful of the fact that the Marines, like soldiers, were recruited for life, were persuaded perhaps by the bounty.
The recruits were paid two guineas each in bounty money as an inducement to join. In addition, a private's pay in the 1780s was 8 pence per day with a food and clothing allowance of 6 pence per day totalling some £21 per year. The Marine Corps dress was colourful, consisting of a red long-tailed doublet, white trousers, a black headdress, black shoes and gaiters.
By the mid-late 1700s, three divisions of Marines had been formed and were based at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham. The recruits mustered at one of these divisions for training and to receive their uniforms and stayed in the barracks near the dockyards of each division. The training was mostly land-based, using similar weapons and tactics to those used in the infantry regiments.
William first appears in known records as a private - the lowest rank - in the 58th Company based at Plymouth. Unlike the army, both "divisions" and "companies" were purely administrative entities, not fighting formations, so the company to which a marine was attached was of little importance. Officers and other ranks were drafted for service without regard to these distinctions, with each ship’s party of marines commonly including men from several companies.
Although the records of William's enlistment have not been located, the contemporary political situation raises the possibility that he had been recruited as part of an increase in military strength necessitated by the American War of Independence. Curiously, this colonial uprising appears to have taken Parliament by surprise as the vote in December 1774 was to maintain the peacetime strength of the Army at 33,000 while reducing that of the Navy from 20,000 to 16,000, of which some 4500 were marines. Nevertheless, early British concerns about the rebel colonists are reflected in their decision to send a battalion of some 500 marines to the colonies as early as October 1774.
The war itself was primarily fought between the years 1775 and 1781, although the official conclusion was not reached until 1783. Marines were involved in the initial skirmish with rebel militia in April 1775 at Lexington, Massachusetts, when "the shot heard round the world" was fired, while a contingent fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill shortly afterwards. Early in 1776, the Marines withdrew to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with the remaining British forces, where most remained on garrison duty until 1778. Some, however, were involved in the campaigns at New York and Philadelphia in 1776 and 1777.
The French entered the war in 1778 and were later joined by the Spanish and Dutch. Their combined fleets seriously outnumbered the British, threatening invasion both of the British Isles and of their colonies in the West Indies and India, and endangering sea communications with the British armies in America. By 1781 Britain urgently required more men at sea and the Navy Vote was for 90,000 men, including 20,000 marines. However, these numbers were evidently not obtained as large drafts from Army regiments were sent to man ships in 1782. During these years, the Marines fought in frigate and convoy actions, defending the poop, providing boarding parties and manning guns when required. They were involved in naval battles with the French, Spanish and Dutch, and fought ashore at Savannah and Charleston, in the West Indies and in India.
Was William Nash a member of the Marine Corps during the period of the American War of Independence? Such involvement has not been determined to date. It is interesting to speculate, however, that if he was recruited during the war years, it is possible that he could have been born as early as the mid-1740s and recruited in a distant part of Britain, as the recruiting parties travelled far and wide in their search for recruits during those years. However, if he joined the Marines in 1783 or 1784 he was perhaps born as late as the mid-1760s and possibly recruited from an area in the vicinity of one of the Marine Corps bases. The end of the war in 1783 meant that the Marines were forced to reduce their numbers to conform with peacetime regulations, so recruiting parties were less likely to have travelled to distant parts of the country.
In 1783, the Treaty of Versailles brought a conclusion to the American War of Independence and an interlude of ten years of peace for the Marines. John Moore in The First Fleet Marines writes of the Marines in the 1780s:
The Marine Corps used the period to adjust to the usual reduction after demobilisation by retaining only those marines who were the "stoutest, fittest, and healthiest men", in excess of 5 feet 6 inches tall (1.68m) and under forty years of age... The reduction in strength was a severe one: ten of the seventy companies were removed from the corps Order of Battle, whilst the remaining sixty companies were each reduced in strength to three sergeants, three corporals, two drummers and 56 privates.
William Nash and the Marine Corps
William Nash's first appears in surviving records as a marine serving on the Plymouth guardship Bombay Castle between 1784 and September 1786 ...
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