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William Yabsley

mixed farmer, shipbuilder and shipowner

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ8020645 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Yabsley (2 February 1812 – 21 January 1880) was an Australian mixed farmer, shipbuilder and shipowner. Yabsley was born in Plympton, now a suburb of Plymouth, Devon, England, on 2 February 1812 to John Yabsley and his wife Agnes née Elliot.

In 1833, he became an apprentice shipwright in Devonport at the Royal Dockyard. In February 1837, he entered the navy as a carpenters mate and was assigned to HMS Beagle on its voyage to Australia, starting on 4 July 1837, under the command of Captain John Wickham. The vessel arrived Sydney in August 1838 where Yabsley deserted the ship.

His wife joined him in 1840. About that year, he began to build his first ship, the Providence.

He died by drowning falling overboard into the Richmond River between Lismore and Coraki helping to drive a boat during a flood at sea.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Yabsley” is mixed farmer, shipbuilder and shipowner. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Yabsley and mixed, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1812, 1880, 1833, 1837—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1812-02-02. For this dossier, William, Yabsley and mixed is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “mixed farmer, shipbuilder and shipowner” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8020645. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1812, 1880, 1833 and 1837.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “William Yabsley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow William Yabsley primary sources, William Yabsley archive and William research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “William Yabsley”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Yabsley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.