Researching Edward Nicolls

Nicolls was born in Coleraine, Ireland, in a family with a military tradition; his father was surveyor of excise in Coleraine, and his maternal grandfather was a rector. Nicolls spent his life as an intensely devout Ulster Protestant. He had two years of school in Greenwich, but enlisted in the Royal Navy at the age of 11. In 1795, at the age of 16, he received his first commission in the Royal Marines and soon began service with shipborne detachments of marines. During the Napoleonic Wars and associated conflicts in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and North Sea, he served as a commander of ships' detachments, and gained his reputation for ferocity and courage.

Connected with his religious beliefs, Nicolls was a committed abolitionist, as well as an advocate for Native Americans and a leader of the Hibernian Temperance Society. During the War of 1812, Nicolls was posted to Spanish Florida as part of the British attempt to recruit local allies in the southern front against the United States. He set up a base at Prospect Bluff, on the Apalachicola River, and had a sturdy fort built there, where he recruited a black and Native American Corps of Colonial Marines. Nicolls' marines and their Creek and Seminole allies fought at Fort Bowyer and were present at the Battle of New Orleans, but the war ended in early 1815 without any attacks on their base. He returned to Britain with a Treaty of Nicolls' Outpost he had negotiated, but failed to receive support from his government for any further aid to his erstwhile native allies.

From 1823 to 1828, he was the Commandant of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, which was followed by a posting from 1829 to 1835, as Superintendent of Fernando Po, off the coast of Africa, an important base in the British operations against the slave trade. In 1835, Nicolls retired from the Royal Marines with the rank of a lieutenant colonel. For his service, Nicolls was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1855—among other honours—and was promoted to the rank of full general in his retirement.