John Marshall (British captain)

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John Marshall
Born(1748-02-26)February 26, 1748
Ramsgate, Great Britain
Died1819 (aged 71)
AllegianceUnion flag 1606 (Kings Colors).svg  Great Britain
Service/branchBritish-Red-Ensign-1707.svg  Royal Navy
Rank Captain
Commands held Scarborough
Diana
Battles/wars American Revolutionary War
Napoleonic Wars

John Marshall (Marshallese : Jo̧o̧n M̧ajeļ) (26 February 1748 NS (15 February 1747 OS) 1819) was a British explorer of the Pacific. The Marshall Islands are named after him.

The Marshallese language, also known as Ebon, is a Micronesian language spoken in the Marshall Islands. The language is spoken by about 44,000 people in the Marshall Islands, making it the principal language of the country. There are also roughly 6,000 speakers outside of the Marshall Islands, including those in Nauru and the U.S.

Marshall Islands country in Oceania

The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country and a United States associated state near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the International Date Line. Geographically, the country is part of the larger island group of Micronesia. The country's population of 53,158 people is spread out over 29 coral atolls, comprising 1,156 individual islands and islets.

Contents

Biography

Marshall was born in Ramsgate, Kent, England. He became an apprentice sailor at age ten, and spent his life at sea. In 1788 he captained the Scarborough , a ship of the First Fleet taking convicts from England to Botany Bay. [1] He then sailed from Australia to China, charting previously unknown islands (mainly some of Gilbert Islands and Marshall Islands), as well as a new trade route to Canton (now Guangzhou). [2] The islands which he had originally called "Lord Mulgrove's range" were later named by Thomas Gilbert [3] the Marshall Islands.

Ramsgate town in Kent, England

Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. Ramsgate’s main attraction is its coastline, and its main industries are tourism and fishing. The town has one of the largest marinas on the English south coast, and the Port of Ramsgate provided cross-channel ferries for many years.

Kent County of England

Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west. The county also shares borders with Essex along the estuary of the River Thames, and with the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. The county town is Maidstone.

<i>Scarborough</i> (1782 ship) British ship

Scarborough was a double-decked, three-masted, ship-rigged, copper-sheathed, barque that participated in the First Fleet, assigned to transport convicts for the European colonisation of Australia in 1788. Also, the British East India company (EIC) chartered Scarborough to take a cargo of tea back to Britain after her two voyages transporting convicts. She spent much of her career as a West Indiaman, trading between London and the West Indies, but did perform a third voyage in 1801-02 to Bengal for the EIC. In January 1805 she repelled a French privateer of superior force in a single-ship action, before foundering in April.

John Marshall also captained the Scarborough on her second voyage transporting convicts to Australia in 1790, but the convicts coming aboard were in poor health and many did not survive the voyage; this, combined with an attempted seizure of the ship by the convicts, deterred him from any further voyages of transportation.

He saw action during the American Revolutionary War of 1778 to 1783, and also during the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1815. As captain of the ship Diana he was severely wounded[ when? ] while repulsing an attack by a French privateer. He died in 1819 at the age of 71.

American Revolutionary War War between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, which won independence as the United States of America

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence, was an 18th-century war between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies which declared independence as the United States of America.

Napoleonic Wars Series of early 19th century European wars

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions, financed and usually led by the United Kingdom. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and its resultant conflict. The wars are often categorised into five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1805), the Fourth (1806–07), the Fifth (1809), the Sixth (1813), and the Seventh (1815).

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References

  1. Samuel Eliot Morison (22 May 1944). "The Gilberts & Marshalls: A distinguished historian recalls the past of two recently captured pacific groups". Life magazine . Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  2. Barrie Macdonald (1982). Cinderellas of the Empire: towards a history of Kiribati and Tuvalu. Australian National University Press. ISBN   982-02-0335-X . Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  3. The Gilberts and Marshalls by Samuel Eliot Morison in Life 22 May 1944