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Two Corps of Colonial Marines were raised from former slaves
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
 as auxiliary units of the Royal Marines
Royal Marines

The Royal Marines are the marine and amphibious warfare infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service....
  for service in the Americas
Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
:
first Corps of Colonial Marines was raised in 1808 by Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane
Alexander Cochrane

Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane Order of the Bath Royal Navy was a senior Royal Navy commander during the Napoleonic Wars....
 while commander-in-chief of British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927....
 naval forces on the Leeward Islands
Leeward Islands

The Leeward Islands are the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles chain of islands, part of the West Indies. They are situated where the Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean....
 station during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts involving Napoleon I of France First French Empire and changing sets of European allies and opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815....
. The island of Marie Galante had been captured by the British earlier that year but the French Governor of Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an island group or archipelago located in the eastern Caribbean Sea at , with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres . It is an overseas department of France....
 attacked the island on hearing that its British garrison had been depleted by illness.






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Two Corps of Colonial Marines were raised from former slaves
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
 as auxiliary units of the Royal Marines
Royal Marines

The Royal Marines are the marine and amphibious warfare infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service....
  for service in the Americas
Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
:

The First Corps

The first Corps of Colonial Marines was raised in 1808 by Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane
Alexander Cochrane

Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane Order of the Bath Royal Navy was a senior Royal Navy commander during the Napoleonic Wars....
 while commander-in-chief of British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927....
 naval forces on the Leeward Islands
Leeward Islands

The Leeward Islands are the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles chain of islands, part of the West Indies. They are situated where the Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean....
 station during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts involving Napoleon I of France First French Empire and changing sets of European allies and opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815....
. The island of Marie Galante had been captured by the British earlier that year but the French Governor of Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an island group or archipelago located in the eastern Caribbean Sea at , with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres . It is an overseas department of France....
 attacked the island on hearing that its British garrison had been depleted by illness. Marie Galante slaves assisted the British on being promised that they would not be returned to their proprietors and by this means the island was preserved until the arrival of three companies of the 1st West India Regiment
West India Regiment

The West India Regiment was an infantry unit of the British Army recruited from and normally stationed in the British colonies of the Caribbean between 1795 and 1927....
. Cochrane embodied the ex-slaves as a Corps of Colonial Marines, which was subsequently enlarged with fugitive slaves who came over from Guadeloupe. The Corps was paid from Marie Galante revenues, clothed from Royal Navy
Royal Navy

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British Armed Forces . From the mid-18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early 1940s....
 stores and commanded by Royal Marine officers. Following the re-possession of Guadeloupe, Cochrane kept up the Corps, and on 12 October 1810 redistributed the men, 70 among the ships of the squadron, 20 to 30 to the battery at the Saintes
Îles des Saintes

The ?les des Saintes , also called simply Les Saintes, are a group of islands within the French D?partement d'outre-mer of Guadeloupe. They are located about 15 km southwest of Guadeloupe at and as such belong to the Lesser Antilles....
 (a group of small islands to the south of Guadeloupe), and 50 remaining in the Marie Galante garrison. They saw no further action as a distinct body but were subsequently listed in ships’ musters among the supernumeraries for wages and victuals, continuing individually under the description of Colonial Marine at least until mid-1815. This was well into the life of Cochrane’s second Corps of Colonial Marines, but spheres of service were mutually exclusive and paths did not cross.

The Second Corps

The second Corps of Colonial Marines was recruited by the British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927....
 from among the four thousand Black refugees of the War of 1812
War of 1812

The War of 1812, between the United States of America and the British Empire , was fought from 1812 to 1815.There were several immediate stated causes for the U.S....
 to serve as part of the British forces on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States during that war. The main part of the Corps was embodied in the Chesapeake
Chesapeake

Chesapeake may refer to:*Chesapeake , a Native American tribe...
 on 18 May 1814, and on 3 September 1814 was joined with three companies of Royal Marines
Royal Marines

The Royal Marines are the marine and amphibious warfare infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service....
 to make a new 3rd Battalion Royal and Colonial Marines, with further recruitment on the coast of Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a U.S. state in the United States and was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against United Kingdom rule in the American Revolution....
 in January, February and March 1815. Recruitment of the Colonial Marines was instigated by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane
Alexander Cochrane

Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane Order of the Bath Royal Navy was a senior Royal Navy commander during the Napoleonic Wars....
, as Commander-in-Chief of British forces on the North Atlantic Station, and implemented by his second in command on the Atlantic coast, Rear Admiral George Cockburn
George Cockburn

Admiral of the Fleet Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet was a British naval commander of the late 18th through the mid-19th centuries. He held important commands during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 and eventually rose to become Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord....
. After the end of the war, the battalion was reformed as the 3rd Battalion Colonial Marines to do garrison duty in the Royal Naval Dockyard
Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda

HMD Bermuda was the principal base of the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War. Bermuda had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609....
 then under construction on Ireland Island, Bermuda
Ireland Island, Bermuda

Ireland Island is the northwesternmost island in the chain which comprises Bermuda. It forms a long finger of land pointing northeastwards from the main island, the last link in a chain which also includes Boaz Island, Bermuda and Somerset Island, Bermuda....
, and was finally disbanded in Trinidad
Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and islands of Trinidad and Tobago which make up the country of Trinidad and Tobago....
 in August 1816 to form a free Black farming community which still retains its identity, carrying the name of The Merikens. A detached company, recruited by Captain George Woodbine in the Gulf of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is the ninth largest body of water in the world. Considered a smaller part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is an oceanic basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba....
 under the direction of Colonel Edward Nicholls, remained at Apalachicola in Spanish East Florida
East Florida

East Florida was originally a part of Spanish Florida. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris , which ended the Seven Years' War, Spain ceded all of its territory east and southeast of the Mississippi River to the Kingdom of Great Britain....
 after British left at the end of the war. Those members of the detached company who survived the destruction of the Negro Fort in July 1816 joined the southward migration of Seminoles and Blacks in the face of American advance, and probably were among the group that escaped to the Bahamas in 1822 and founded, on the west coast of the island of Andros
Andros, Bahamas

Andros Island is the largest island of the Bahamas and the fifth largest island in the West Indies at roughly 2300 square miles in area and 104 miles long and 40 miles wide at its widest point....
, a community that similarly retains its identity.

See also

  • Colonial Marines
    Colonial Marines

    Colonial Marines can mean:*Two former Corps of Colonial Marines, auxiliary forces of the British Royal Marines, the first serving in the Caribbean 1808?1815, the second in North America and Bermuda 1814?1816....
  • Marines


External links