Edward Nicholas Kendall was the son of the naval captain, Edward Kendall, and was educated at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. He joined the Royal Navy in Oct. 1814 and spent several years surveying the North Sea during the early 1820s. As a result of this experience, he was appointed assistant surveyor on George Francis Lyon’s Arctic expedition of 1824. Kendall’s excellent work led to his joining John Franklin’s second Arctic expedition of 1825, which departed overland from the Mackenzie River to explore the north coast westwards and eastwards from the Mackenzie delta. Kendall served under Dr John Richardson as assistant surveyor on the eastern branch of the expedition in 1826, which charted the coast from the delta to the Coppermine River. The party returned to Britain in 1827, when Kendall was commissioned lieutenant.

Between 1828 and 1832 Kendall served on a scientific voyage to the South Atlantic, surveying the South Shetland Islands region of the Antarctic, then surveyed the west coast of Africa, and helped to delineate the boundary between New Brunswick and Maine. During 1833-38, he was employed as commissioner of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company. In 1838 Kendall became superintendent of the West India Mail Steam Navigation Company. About 1843 he joined the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Packet Company and was its superintendent when he died in 1845.