What happened
In the autumn of 1776 the Marines in Philadelphia were a garrison, not a landing force. Four companies had been raised over the summer, and their work was guard duty: a daily guard on each of four frigates, on the state prison, and on the Continent's powder stores.
That is the duty this entry turns on. A guard post left unrelieved in a city that expected to be invaded was not a paperwork offense, and every man in those barracks knew it.
Recruiting had run through the city's public houses. Captain Robert Mullan kept an inn, Tun Tavern, on the east side of South Water Street between Chestnut and Walnut, and he set his company's rendezvous there while his lieutenants ranged as far as Lancaster and into Maryland. Among the men he enlisted were two Black Marines, Isaac Walker and a man the roll records as "Orange Negro," who "received the same pay and allowances as the white enlisted man."
Men joined and then thought better of it. On 14 August a lieutenant in another company advertised the battalion's first deserter, describing him down to the hair: "born in Ireland, about 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, dark complexion, with short black hair, curled behind, a little pock marked, about 30 years of age."
The advertisement offered thirty shillings and all reasonable charges, and it did not work. It ran again the following month, "again without success."
That failure is worth holding onto. The Corps had two tools for getting a deserter back, money and a description, and the record shows both of them failing in the same year Hassan returned.
By early November the unit looked good on paper. Major Nicholas "had a well-organized and well-disciplined battalion of Marines housed in comfortable barracks on Second Street in the Northern Liberties," and on 4 November Congress directed Doctor Benjamin Rush to take the Marines under his care and see them properly provided for.
The next sentence in the history is the one that matters. "Nevertheless, the desertion rate was high, and few deserters ever returned to duty."
Hassan is introduced as the exception. "One who did was Henry Hassan, a private in Robert Mullan's company."
His court-martial was held on 24 November. He faced a board of five officers headed by Mullan, the captain who had recruited out of his own tavern, and he "pleaded guilty to the charges of desertion and quitting his guard post without being properly relieved."
The sentence is quoted in the history exactly as it was written. "Fifty lashes for Desertion & Twenty one Lashes for Quiting his guard," to be laid "on his bare Back well laid on at the head of his Company."
Then the history closes the file in one sentence. "Private Hassan was returned to duty, but a little over a month later he deserted a second time."
The second desertion falls in late December by the history's own reckoning. Days later, on 2 January, the battalion marched with Cadwalader's division toward Trenton. Whatever the flogging was meant to secure, the men who marched had been standing there watching when it was ordered.
The names
The record names two men in this event and no others. Private Henry Hassan, of Captain Robert Mullan's company, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced. Captain Robert Mullan, who presided over the board.
The four other officers on that board are not named in the retrieved record. Neither is the officer who carried out the sentence, nor any Marine who watched it.
What became of Hassan after his second desertion is not established by the sources used here. The history does not record whether he was caught, whether he served elsewhere, or whether the full seventy-one lashes were laid on. This entry does not fill those gaps.