1801.
In April 1801 the regiment embarked from Dominica for Barbadoes, and in August following proceeded to Curaçoa.
1802.
The preliminaries of peace, which had been agreed upon between Great Britain and France in the previous year, were ratified on the 27th of March 1802; but the peace which had been thus concluded was but of short duration. Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been elected First Consul of the French Republic, showed, on several occasions, that he continued to entertain strong feelings of hostility against Great Britain.
During the year 1802, the regiment continued to be stationed at Curaçoa.
1803.
After a few months, during which further provocations took place between the two countries, war was declared against France on the 18th of May 1803. The preparations which had been making in the French ports, the assembling of large bodies of troops on the coast, and the forming of numerous flotillas of gun-boats, justified the British government in adopting the strongest measures of defence, and in calling upon the people for their aid and services. Numerous volunteer associations were formed in all parts of the kingdom in defence of the Sovereign, the laws, and the institutions of the country. The militia was re-embodied, and the regular army was considerably augmented, under the “Army of Reserve Act,” as shown in the Appendix, page 97.
The Eighty-seventh regiment embarked from the island of Curaçoa for England on the 12th of January 1803, on board of the ship “De Ruyter,” which, meeting with tempestuous weather, was obliged to put into Jamaica, from whence it proceeded to Antigua, where it arrived in April 1803. The regiment proceeded to St. Kitt’s in June following.
1804.
On the 28th of July 1804 the regiment embarked from St. Kitt’s, and on the 28th of September following it landed at Plymouth, after a service of eight years in the West Indies, having lost during that period, by the diseases incident to the climate, many officers, and between seven and eight hundred men.