Marines spent most of their service life on board ships of His Majesty's Navy. Like other British military units in the eighteenth century, marines also passed much of their time not engaged in combat. Marines therefore needed other duties to carry out while they were not actively engaged in combat. The Wooden World, it has been argued, can be seen as a microcosm of the larger British society and, like all societies, there was a need for the state to project its power within the domestic arena. On land, the Army and Militia were the force of the state's power projection and control. At sea and in the dockyards, there needed to be a force that could protect the Navy's assets both in material and personnel. The Marine Corps would become this tool of power projection and control, a ship-protection force. Their duty from the start as guards would follow the similar pattern of their operational nature as an amphibious force. Their policing duties, while neither investigative nor disciplinary by nature, worked on the principle of projected uniformed state control.

On land the Riot Act established how magistrates, sheriffs and other public servants should handle the issue of deploying force against the populace. The effect of the Riot Act was to convert into a felon every person who chanced to be in the vicinity of its reading and after the expiry of an hour. It was not just a felony that was committed, the law in effect saw these actions as treason and ‘outside the King’s Peace’. By placing the felon in this context the state could then utilise its full instruments for implementing order, the Militia or the Army.