Paul Harris Nicolas

Paul Harris Nicolas (1 March 1790 – 1 May 1860) was a nineteenth-century British historian, an accomplished, if little known, water colourist, a Royal Marines officer, and a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar.

He was thus not quite sixteen when, aboard the 80-gun Belleisle under the command of Captain William Hargood, he joined Lord Nelson's fleet off Cadiz in the early part of October 1805.

[citation needed] 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.

[citation needed] 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).

[citation needed] In 1848 or 1849, Nicolas was awarded the Naval General Service Medal with two clasps (representing Trafalgar and Basque Roads).