Jacob Nagle

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Jacob Nagle (1761 – 1841) was an American and British soldier, sailor, and, above all, diarist who provides an exceptional first hand account of many of the dramatic events of his life time. Nagle was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and fought in the American Revolutionary War along with his father. He was in the Battle of Brandywine and in George Washington's artillery at Valley Forge. He resigned from the Continental Army in 1778 and enlisted in the tiny Continental Navy. When construction on the USS Saratoga was delayed, Nagle took to sea as a privateer in 1780 on Fair American, then on Rising Sun in 1781. He was captured by the British and taken to St. Kitts in chains. He was freed when the French Navy captured the island in 1782 but was almost immediately arrested again for aiding British sailors. He was then taken to Martinique. From that point on, he was in the Royal Navy.

He sailed to New South Wales and Botany Bay in 1787 as an able seaman on the flagship Sirius. After the ship was wrecked on Norfolk Island in 1790, he spent a year on the island. He went to England in 1792 and lived the high life until press ganged aboard the Hector the same year, and he served on that ship when the Bounty Mutineers were taken. In 1794, he jumped to a new ship to go to Madras and Calcutta, where he joined with two women convicts who had escaped Sydney, Australia to set up a brothel on the subcontinent.

In 1795, he returned to England and married. He and his wife had seven children over the coming years. In 1796, he served with Lord Nelson aboard the Blanche, and in 1798 he served on the Netley as "prize-master," which resulted in his making considerable sums. In 1802, there was peace, and so he left the Navy and went to America to visit his family. He then entered the merchant marine, sometimes in American service and sometimes British. He sailed to Brazil, where he lived from 1811–1821, and he finally retired in 1824.

His journal provides a vivid record of the major events and new territories of these decades, and he wrote his Memoirs late in his life.

[edit] References

• Frost, Alan. "Jacob Nagle" in Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. vol. 45, 108-109. London: OUP, 2004.
• Shy, John. "Benjamin Gilbert and Jacob Nagle: Soldiers of the American Revolution" in Nancy L. Rhoden and Ian I. Steele, eds. The Human Tradition in the American Revolution, 329–50. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 2000. ISBN 0-8420-2748-3.

[edit] Further reading

• Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989. (ISBN 0908120699)
• Dann, J. C. ed. The Journal of Jacob Nagle. 1988.