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Important British Revolutionary War Document Redeploying Defeated Troops Around the Globe....the Sun Never Sets on the British Empire
Important British Revolutionary War Document Redeploying Defeated Troops Around the Globe....the Sun Never Sets on the British Empire
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Description:

Revolutionary War

Important British Revolutionary War Document redeploying defeated troops around the Globe....the Sun Never Sets on the British Empire

 

As the American Revolutionary War drew to a long close after General Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, British Army officials turned their attention to challenges elsewhere in the British empire and began distributing troops to those areas. Richard Baily, who had been responsible for sending supplies of all types to the British armies in North America, arranged for troops and supplies to be sent to India, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Canada, the Leeward Islands and the cities like Charleston and New York that the British still held in the rebellious colonies that soon became the United States.

 

[BRITISH ARMY. Manuscript Document, ca. March 1782, [Portsmouth?, United Kingdom. 1 p., 8" x 12.675"  Expected folds and some browning; very good.

 

Complete Transcript

Embarkations made in the present Year; or preparing for on the 29th March 1782

Troops L.

Destination

Embarked

Sailed

Light Drags—23d

Foot   ——  101st

                   102d

Recruits for the 73

                        78th

India

Embarkation at Portsmouth completed 4th January 1782

With Sd Rd Bickerton

6th February 1782

Officers, with Clothing and Stores for the Troops in —

Gibraltar

In the Vernon Transpy

Under Convoy of the Success 6th February

14th Foot

Jamaica

at Portsmouth

4th February

Under Convoy of the Princess Caroline 12th February

17th ——

 

At Plymouth

From Falmouth under Convoy of the Cerberus 18th Feby

Preparing for

2,000 Recruits from Germany for Foreign Troops serving in America

Transports collected for them at Blackstakes in the Medway; to proceed from thence to Bremerlehe in the Weser

800 Men for Jamaica; being Recruits for the 1st Battn Com 79th with part of the 99th Regt; and Dalrymples Corps

Owners of West India Traders engaged to carry those out, and the Ships on their way for Portsmouth to receive them

2,700 British Recruits for Regiments in North America

Transports preparing for them and expected to be ready by the 10th April.

 

Camp Equipage for 52 Battalions (upon the Establishment of 570 Rank and File each) on Foreign Stations Viz:

Battalions

            30 on the Coast of the Atlantic; Part of this Shipped.

            8 in Canada, with Nothing of 1781       Do

            8 in the Leeward Islands         } Shipping ordered to be in

            6 at Jamaica                            } readiness by the 1st April.

N.B. The Success, and Vernon, reached Cape Spartel on the African Coast 17th February and were remaining there three weeks after, waiting a favourable wind for getting into Gibraltar.

                                                                        Richd Baily Capt 62d Foot

                                                                        Superintending Embarkations

 

Historical Background

The recruits for the 73rd Regiment of Foot sent to India likely arrived to participate in the Second and Third Anglo-Mysore Wars, fought in southern India from 1780 to 1784 and from 1790 to 1792, respectively. The 78th Regiment of Foot had departed Portsmouth in June 1781 with a strength of 973 solders. However, 274 died on the voyage, and by the time they reached Madras in April 1782, only 369 were fit to carry arms. Many of them were recruited into the 73rd Regiment, but the 78th returned to strength by October 1782, likely reinforced by these troops and participated in the Second and Third Anglo-Mysore Wars.

 

From June 1779 to February 1783, the British garrison at Gibraltar was under siege by Spanish and French forces. The “Great Siege of Gibraltar,” as it came to be called, lasted for more than three and a half years. Relief convoys in 1780 and 1781 successfully brought supplies to the British, but it appears that the small fleet mentioned at the end of this document did not reach Gibraltar after reaching Cape Spartel on the Moroccan coast. After the Spanish failed to make progress in the siege, French forces under the Duc de Crillon took charge in early 1782. In September 1782, 60,000 Spanish and French soldiers, sailors, and marines; 49 ships of the line; and ten newly invented floating batteries attacked the Gibraltar garrison of 5,000 men. The British inflicted damage on the floating batteries from shore guns, and by nightfall, the French and Spanish realized their assault had failed. British gunboats reached the batteries and destroyed each, but explosions of several of the floating batteries killed hundreds. A third relief convoy reached Gibraltar in October 1782, providing enough supplies to last until the siege ended in February 1783. In 1782, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who favored the British, composed a piece of music commemorating the Great Siege.

 

The 14th Regiment of Foot (Bedfordshire Regiment) served in Jamaica from 1782 to 1791. There they received William Henry, Prince of Wales (later King William IV), who was a midshipman in the Royal Navy.

 

Richard Baily (b. ca. 1733) joined the Second Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, as a private soldier for service in the Seven Years War. His administrative abilities won him promotion to sergeant, then second lieutenant by 1758. Later that year, he became regimental quartermaster. In 1762, he received a promotion to first lieutenant, and remained in the army after the war as quartermaster. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in Boston during the beginning of the American Revolutionary War but returned to England in December 1775 as assistant quartermaster general at the explicit request of the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington. On March 1, 1776, he was promoted to captain in the 62nd Regiment of Foot, but remained in England, supplying the troops in North America for the rest of the war. He received a promotion to major on June 12, 1782, and resigned his commission in April 1783.

 

 

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