What did the Revolutionary War do to form the marines?

Answer 1

Marines are "sea soldiers", part of the Navy. A nation does not have Marines without first having a navy. In the days of sailing ships the Marines would climb into the rigging and try to pick off enemy sailors with their weapons during sea battles, form landing parties when action ashore was required (usually supplemented by sailors armed with cutlasses and pistols), be part of boarding parties when an enemy vessel could be laid alongside for boarding. The Marines, as part of the ships complement, were not seamen, able to perform the complicated tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Landsmen could be employed as Marines, so long as they could be made proficient with small arms. So when the infant US nation went to create a Navy for itself, in the usual practice at the time Marines seemed to be called for. November 10, 1775 is celebrated as the birthday of the US Marine Corps. The first Marines were enlisted at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. (A tun is a big barrel of potable liquid, usually beer). Philadelphia, though many miles up the Delaware River, was a seafaring town and one of the principal bases of the US Navy for a couple of centuries, until the Philadelphia Navy Yard was closed a few years back. This same establishment, the Tun Tavern, had been the birthplace of the Pennsylvania version of colonial militia a generation before, with Ben Franklin as one of the leaders of that organizational effort. Pennsylvania, with its strong Quaker influence, alone among the thirteen colonies refused to have a militia. Meanwhile the Penns continued to sell land on the frontier to settlers, many of whom were soon slaughtered by Indians outraged over the sharp land dealings of the Penns during the French and Indian War. Without a militia the colony had been unable to do much to halt this, and seemed, to frontier dwellers, unconcerned. Eventually some hard-eyed frontiersmen had loaded the mutilated, dismembered corpses of some family members into a wagon and came to Philadelphia with it, hunting for members of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Soon thereafter a militia was formed, though in deference to Quaker sensibilities, it was not called a "militia", rather, they went by the name of "Pennsylvania Associators", as in a voluntary association. The Tun Tavern was also the birthplace of the Masonic movement in America. The Tun Tavern, at the corner of King (later Water) Street and Tun Alley, was founded in 1686, and burned down in 1781. Its location is under I-95 today, where it passes Penn's Landing.