Four Marine officers were among the killed and 13 more were wounded. Losses in killed and wounded among the total rank and file of the Royal Marines who were present at Trafalgar were proportionately severe. Nicolas was promoted to first lieutenant in the Royal Marines on 27 July 1808. He fought in the Battle of Basque Roads in 1809. On 24 June 1813, he married Miss Ann Morcoumbe. On 1 September 1814 Nicolas went on half-pay, which with the passing of years came to amount to his effective retirement from the military. Later years, artistic and literary work Nicolas' skillful watercolour rendering of HMS Belleisle at Trafalgar became the model for the central painting in the work of marine painter William John Huggins which was commissioned to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar by William IV of the United Kingdom. His two volume Historical Record of the Royal Marine Forces is still a starting point for students of the military institution and its changing role in the course of British history. Lieutenant Nicolas also collaborated with Brevet Major Richard Johns, RM (1805–1851) in completing and publishing his co-author's work posthumously as The Naval and Military Heroes of Great Britain, or Calendar of Victory, being a record of British Valour and Conquest by sea and by land on every day in the year from the Reign of William the Conqueror to the Battle of Inkerman (London:Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855); and (London:Bohn 1860). In 1848 or 1849, Nicolas was awarded the Naval General Service Medal with two clasps (representing Trafalgar and Basque Roads). In declining health, Paul Harris Nicolas died in Notting Hill, London, on 1 May 1860. See also Royal Marines Museum History of the Royal Marines References 1790 births 1860 deaths Royal Marines officers British naval historians British military historians British watercolourists Royal Navy personnel of the Napoleonic Wars