John Marshall (biographer)

John Marshall (c. 1784 - 1837) was an officer in the British Royal Navy and author.

Life

Marshall himself recorded that he "went to sea at nine years of age, and served during the whole of the late war in vessels of a class to which no schoolmaster is allowed",[1] that is, in sloops, cutters, or other small craft. He was therefore probably born in 1784, and first went to sea in 1793. At the conclusion of the war he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, 14 February 1815, and was shelved. It was understood that the step might be counted as a retiring pension.[2]

Marshall began in 1823 the publication of the Royal Naval Biography, or Memoirs of the Services of all the Flag-Officers ... Post Captains, and Commanders whose names appeared on the Admiralty List of Sea Officers at the commencement of the present year (1823), or who have since been promoted. The work was continued till 1835, extending to twelve octavo volumes; which he distinguished by a very puzzling notation; vol. ii., for instance, is "vol. i. part ii."; vol. v. is "Supplement, part i."; vol. viii. is "Supplement, part iv."; and vol. ix. is "vol. iii. part i". It is generally bound and lettered in twelve volumes. It has no pretensions to literary merit, and the author seldom attempts any critical judgment of the conduct he describes. On the other hand, many of the lives were evidently contributed by the officers themselves, and though events are thus sometimes described in too favourable a manner, there are commonly interspersed in them copies of official or private letters, and other documents, which give a very real value to the work. Marshall died in the beginning of 1837. [2]

References

  1. ↑ Preface to Royal Naval Biography, 1823
  2. 1 2 Laughton 1893.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Laughton, John Knox (1893). "Marshall, John (1784?-1837)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

External links

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