William Nugent Glascock (c. 1787 – 9 October 1847) was an Irish officer in the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

and a novelist. He saw service during the

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and

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

, and later in the years of relative peace.

Early life

Glascock was born about 1787 in

Baltinglass Baltinglass, historically known as Baltinglas (), is a town in south-west County Wicklow, Ireland. It is located on the River Slaney near the border with County Carlow and County Kildare, on the N81 road. Etymology The town's Irish name, ''Be ...

County Wicklow County Wicklow ( ; ga, Contae Chill Mhantáin ) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is bordered by t ...

, and joined the navy in January 1800, serving aboard the frigate under Captain

George Duff Captain George Duff RN (c. 1 February 1764 – 21 October 1805) was a British naval officer during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, who was killed by a cannonball at the Battle of Trafalg ...

. In January 1801 Duff transferred to the 74-gun

third rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Years of experience proved that the third r ...

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and took Glascock with him. Glascock spent the next few years with Duff seeing service in the Baltic, off the coast of Ireland and in the West Indies. In 1803 he was appointed to the newly built 74-gun and afterwards to the 90-gun , in which he took part in the Battle of Cape Finisterre on 22 July 1805, and later in the blockade of

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under Admiral William Cornwallis. In November 1808 he was promoted to lieutenant of , and served in her at the reduction of Flushing in August 1809. In 1812 he was a lieutenant of the 74-gun in the

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Post-war and first commands

Glascock afterwards served in a number of frigates on the home station, successively , , and , and in the 32-gun HMS ''Sir Francis Drake'',

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of Sir Charles Hamilton on the Newfoundland Station. He was promoted from her to the command of the

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

in November 1818. In 1819 he commanded the brig , from which he was obliged to resign as an invalid. In 1830 Glascock was appointed to the sloop , which he commanded on the home station during 1831, but in 1832 he was sent to the coast of Portugal, and during the latter months of the year was stationed in the Douro, for the protection of British interests in the disturbed state of the country during the Liberal Wars. Glascock continued in the Douro, as senior officer, for nearly a year, during which time his conduct under troublesome and often difficult circumstances won for him the approval of the

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and promotion to post-rank, on 3 June 1833, accompanied by a special and complimentary letter from Sir James Graham, the first lord. He did not, however, leave the Douro until the following September, and on 1 October he paid off the ''Orestes''. From April 1843 to January 1847 he commanded the frigate on the Mediterranean station, and during the following months was employed in Ireland as an inspector under the Poor Relief Act. He died suddenly on 8 October 1847 at

. He was married and left children.

Writing career

Glascock devoted the long intervals of

half-pay Half-pay (h.p.) was a term used in the British Army and Royal Navy of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries to refer to the pay or allowance an officer received when in retirement or not in actual service. Past usage United Kingdom In the Eng ...

, both as commander and captain, to writing, and produced several volumes of naval novels, anecdotes, reminiscences, and reflections. His biographer in the ''

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'', J. K. Laughton remarked that "as novels,

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are stupid enough, and in their historical parts have little value, but are occasionally interesting as social sketches of naval life in the early part of the century." Glascock wrote a two-volume work, ''The Naval Sketch Book, or The Service Afloat and Ashore'', published in 1826. This was followed by the three-volume ''Sailors and Saints, or Matrimonial Manœuvres'' in 1829, ''Tales of a Tar, with Characteristic Anecdotes'' in 1836, and the three-volume ''Land Sharks and Sea Gulls'' in 1838. He also wrote a two-volume work entitled ''Naval Service, or Officers' Manual'', published in 1836. This useful manual for young officers passed through four editions in England. The last, published in 1859, had a short advertisement by Glascock's daughter, stating that "the work has been translated into French, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish, and adopted by the navies of those powers, as well as by that of the United States." Laughton remarked that the work was "of course, quite obsolete, though still interesting to the student of naval history and customs."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glascock, William Nugent 1787 births 1847 deaths 19th-century British novelists Royal Navy officers Royal Navy personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars Royal Navy personnel of the Napoleonic Wars British male novelists 19th-century British male writers

Early life

Post-war and first commands

Writing career

See also

References