Corps of Colonial Marines

Corps of Colonial Marines
A British Colonial Marine in a light coloured fatigue uniform, worn for performing ordinary duties and a common sight on Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay but on the battlefield, the red coat of the service uniform would have been worn
Active	First Corps: 1808–1815 Second Corps: 18 May 1814 – 20 August 1816
Country	United Kingdom
Branch	Royal Navy Royal Marines
Type	Marine Infantry
Size	First Corps:Company Second Corps:Battalion
Garrison/HQ	First Corps: Guadeloupe Second Corps: Tangier Island/Cumberland Island Negro Fort Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda
Patron	Sir Alexander Cochrane
Engagements	First Corps: Napoleonic Wars Battle of Marie Galante (1808) Battle of Guadeloupe (1808) Second Corps: War of 1812 Battle of Bladensburg (1814) Burning of Washington (1814) Battle of North Point (1814) Battle of Fort Peter (1815) First Seminole War Battle of Negro Fort (1816)
Commanders
Notable commanders	Second Corps: Major George Lewis

The Corps of Colonial Marines were two different British Marine units raised from former black slaves for service in the Americas, at the behest of Alexander Cochrane.^[1] The units were created at two separate periods: 1808-1810 during the Napoleonic Wars; and then again during the War of 1812; both units being disbanded once the military threat had passed. Apart from being created in each case by Cochrane, they had no connection with each other.

The first Corps was a small unit that served in the Caribbean from 1808 to 12 October 1810, recruited from former slaves to address the shortage of military manpower in the Caribbean. The locally-recruited men were less susceptible to tropical illnesses than were troops sent from Britain. The Corps followed the practice of the British Army's West India Regiments in recruiting former slaves as soldiers. In the previous year, the Mutiny Act 1807 emancipated all slaves in the British Army and, as a result, subsequently enlisted slaves were considered free on enlistment.

The second, more substantial, Corps served from 18 May 1814 until 20 August 1816.^[2] The greater part of the Corps was stationed at St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast, with a smaller body occupying the future Negro Fort, on the Apalachicola River in remote northwest Florida.^[3] Recruits were accepted from among escaped slaves who had already gained their freedom on coming into British hands and who were unwilling to join West India Regiments.^[4] The establishment of the force sparked controversy at the time, as the arming of former slaves was a psychological as well as military threat to the slave-owning society of the United States.^[5] As a consequence, the two senior officers of the Corps in Florida, George Woodbine and Edward Nicolls, were demonised by Americans such as Hezekiah Niles in his Baltimore publication, the Weekly Register for their association with the Corps and inducing slave revolt.^[6][7][8][9]

At the end of the War of 1812, as the British post in Florida was evacuated, the Corps' Florida detachment was paid off and disbanded.^[10] Although several men accompanied the British to Bermuda, the majority continued to live in settlements around the fort the Corps had garrisoned.^[11] This legacy of a community of armed fugitive slaves with a substantial arsenal was unacceptable to the United States of America.^[12] After the Fort was destroyed in the Battle of Negro Fort of 1816, the former Marines joined the southward migration of Seminoles and African Americans escaping the American advance. Members of the Colonial Marine battalion who were deployed on the Atlantic coast withdrew from American territory.^[13] They continued in British service as garrison-in-residence at Bermuda until 1816, when the unit was disbanded and the ex-Marines resettled on Trinidad.^[14]