1744
George Marsh (born 1683) aged 66/67
Elizabeth Marsh (ne Milbourne) – aged 56/57
Francis Marsh – aged 34/35 – elder brother of Milbourne, Mary and George
Milbourne Marsh – aged 34/35
Elizabeth Marsh (ne Evans)
Eliza Marsh (later Crisp) – aged 8/9
Francis Milbourne Marsh – aged 5/6
John Marsh – aged 2/3
Mary Duval (ne Marsh) – aged 31/32
John (Jean) Duval
Margaret (or Elizabeth) Duval – aged 1/2
George Marsh – aged 21/22
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22nd February 1744
On the Namur when it engaged the Real, the Spanish flagship which was part of a 27 ship Franco-Spanish fleet. He reported – “I can tell you, exactly to a minute, the time we fired the first gun, I immediately whip’d my watch out of my pocket, and it was then 10 minutes after one o’clock to a moment. The Admiral (Admiral Thomas Matthews) sent for me up and ordered me to see what was the matter with the mizzen topmast. At the time I acquainted the Admiral of the main to mast, I was told, but by whom I can’t tell, that the starboard main yard arem was short. I looked up, and saw it, from the quarter deck; I went to go up the starboard shrouds to view it; I found several of the shrouds were shot, which made me quit that side, and I went up on the larboard side, and went across the main yard in the slings, out to the yard arm, and I found just within the life block on the under side, a shot had grazed a slant.. when I went down, I did not immediately acquaint the Admiral with that, for by that time I had got upon the gangway, I was told that the bowsprit was shot, and immediately that the fore top mast was shot. At Toulon he said ‘he did not think of the danger,’ as the 114 gun Real was only a pistol shot away and firing at them.
Left the sea and spent next 10 years repairing ships at Portsmouth and Chatham dockyards
5th May 1744
George Marsh Diary
After anxiously waiting from the day of my discharge from Chatham yard, to get into some employment in the clerk line, having always detested the connections a shipwright must necessarily have; I was entered Commissioner Whorwood’s clerk at Deptford, who was appointed Commissioner of the Navy to reside and superintend the business of that yard and Woolwich, by offering myself to him by letter, representing I was brother to Mr Milbourne Marsh who had served in his under his command . . . [over written] and for whom I knew he had a great regard. This great appointment he obtained after being struck off the list of Captains for quitting the Duke when she as ordered on Service at sea, by intimating to some friend of Lord Winchelsea soon after, that he meant to appoint him his heir, he being he said, a distant relation and had a seat near his in Kent, and was at this time first Lord of the Admiralty. The bate took, his Lordship visited him, and soon after obtained the said appointment for him.
5th Feb 1745
Commissioner Whorwood was superseded, occasioned by a change in the Ministry, on a pretence too that he was so indolent that he even had a stamp made to save him the trouble of signing his name to procections only which however he used on the several Naval Bills made out in those yards, which being a fact, he was superseded from the aforementioned charge.
He died the latter end of this year at his seat near Canterbury and left about £60,000 to a college at the interest of it for her life to Miss . . . [Caroline?] Scott of Scott’s Hall in Kent, tho’ it was said he never was in the college. He had £50,000 which his wife, who was a very sensible but mean looking woman, who he left in rather distressed circumstances, signifying in his in his will that she had been a disagreeable deformed companion to him, but indeed he was a great brute void of gratitude or civilillity.
7 June 1745
Upon Mr Whorwoods being superseded my brother clerk and myself were of course discharged this day and returned to my father’s house at Chatham.