POST-CAPTAINS.
AISKEW PAFFARD HOLLIS, Esq
A Colonel of the Royal Marines[1].
[Post-Captain of 1798.]
This officer entered the naval service at an early age under the protection of Captain (afterward Vice-Admiral}
- ↑ At a period when the commerce of this country bore no proportion to its present extent, the supplies of seamen, under a system of impress, were extremely precarious, and often inadequate to the public emergencies. Experience had also shewn, that raw landsmen were most improper substitutes, as the sudden change of life rendered them subject to immediate disease and sea-sickness, at a time when their active serrices were required.
These united causes originally suggested the expediency of forming an establishment of marines, who were raised and embodied with the sole view of being a nursery to man our fleets. They were always quartered in the vicinity of our principal sea-ports, where they were regularly trained to the different methods of ship-fighting, and to those various manoeuvres of a vessel, in which numbers were necessary. Being thus locally placed, their value was early felt by their exertions in equipping the squadrons fitted out, when but little confidence could be placed in the sailor, recently impressed into the service.
The first authentic instance of any regiment of this description appears in the Army List of 1684, and from the return of the general review on Putney Heath, upon the 1st October in that yean It was then styled, “The Lord High Admiral of England, H.R.H. the Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot,” commanded by the Hon. Sir Charles Littleton, and called also the Admiral Regiment. It consisted of twelve companies, without any grenadiers, had yellow coats lined with red, and their colours were a red cross, with rays of the sun issuing from each of its angles.
Many revolving years had witnessed the distinguished gallantry, and unimpaired loyalty of the corps of marines; the records of a British legislature had long teemed with grateful memorials of their merits upon the shores, and the ocean of every clime, but with scarcely one solid mark of recompense for all their brilliant services. It was reserved for the year 1802, and the ministerial auspices of Earl St. Vincent, to draw this body of faithful soldiers into a close alliance with a family and a throne, for whom they had so often bled, and round which they wilt no doubt rally to the latest period of their existence. The title of Royal was not the re-
