William Mason (c.1765-1793) was a marine in the 18th (Plymouth) Company when he arrived at Sydney aboard the Friendship in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet. He served in Captain James Meredith's Company at Port Jackson.
Mason was sent to Norfolk Island on the Supply in March 1790. He returned to England on the Atlantic in December 1792 and died at sea on 8 May 1793, two weeks before the ship landed at Portsmouth, England. John Eastey said that before leaving shore Mason had fallen from a tree 'and hurt his Lions'. He had never fully recovered.
* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 241
'Mason, William (c. 1765–1793)', People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/mason-william-31492/text38947, accessed 20 April 2024.
c.
1765
Gloucestershire,
England
8 May,
1793
(aged ~ 28)
at sea
Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.