of black people, she records that a companion, a West Indian with skin darker than her own "dusky" shades, was taunted by children. Seacole herself was "only a little brown"; she was nearly white according to one of her biographers, Dr. Ron Ramdin. She returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale". Her later travels would be without a chaperone or sponsor – an unusually independent practice at a time when women had limited rights. In the Caribbean, 1826–51 After returning to Jamaica, Seacole cared for her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness, finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness (a woman who gave financial support to her) a few years later. Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. She also travelled the Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in The Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, and the new Republic of Haiti. Seacole records these travels, but omits mention of significant current events, such as the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica of 1831, the abolition of slavery in 1833, and the abolition of "apprenticeship" in 1838. She married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836. Her marriage, from betrothal to widowhood, is described in just nine lines at the conclusion of the first chapter of her autobiography. Robinson reports the legend in the Seacole family that Edwin was an illegitimate son of Lord Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton, who was adopted by Thomas, a local "surgeon, apothecary and man midwife" (Seacole's will indicates that Horatio Seacole was Nelson's godson: she left a diamond ring to her friend, Lord Rokeby, "given to my late husband by his godfather Viscount Nelson", but there was no mention of this godson in Nelson's own will or its codicils.) Edwin was a merchant and seems to have had a poor constitution. The newly married couple moved to Black River and opened a provisions store which failed to prosper. They returned to Blundell Hall in the early 1840s. During 1843 and 1844, Seacole suffered a series of personal disasters. She and her family lost much of the boarding house in a fire in Kingston on 29 August 1843. Blundell Hall burned down, and was replaced by New