 The detachment in Florida , which had grown to about 400 men , was paid off and disbanded when the British post was evacuated at the end of the war . A small number of men went to Bermuda with the British as part of a refugee group , rejoining the main body of Colonial Marines . Others from the Florida unit remained in settlements around the wooden stockade , which had become a symbol of slave insurrection . Andrew Jackson opposed the presence of a group of armed fugitive slaves ( although they were in a sparsely @-@ populated area of Spanish Florida ) ; this led to the Battle of Negro Fort in July 1816 and the beginning of the First Seminole War . For their involvement in the conflict , two former auxiliary officers of the corps were executed in 1818 in what became known as the Arbuthnot and Ambrister incident . It is believed that former Colonial Marine refugees were among a group that escaped to the Bahamas in 1822 and founded , on the west coast of the island of Andros , a community that retains its identity to the present day . 
