1825.
On the 14th of January 1825, the regiment proceeded towards Calcutta to replace the second battalion of the Royals on its departure for Ava; the left wing moved by land, the right by water, and were reunited on the 29th in Fort William, of which garrison Lieut.-Colonel Shawe became commandant.
On the 6th of June, the regiment performed the melancholy duty of attending to the grave the remains of its beloved and lamented commanding officer, Lieut.-Colonel Henry Browne. He had entered the regiment in 1800 as an ensign, when sixteen years of age, and had never belonged to any other: his qualities as a man and a soldier endeared him to all. In the meantime hostilities had commenced between the British and the Burmese, and on the 5th of October the regiment embarked for Ava, to reinforce the army in that country, in four divisions, which landed at Rangoon between the 3rd and 10th of November, and immediately proceeded in boats towards Prome, the head-quarters of the army. During the passage, Major William Slade Gully’s division was attacked from the bank of the river, on the 25th of November, by a strong party of Burmese, which was immediately repulsed on the troops being landed. Lieutenant and Adjutant James Bowes, in command of the advanced guard, was wounded, and two privates killed.
Six companies of the regiment, with Major Gully, Captains Charles Lucas and George Rodney Bell, and John Day; Lieutenants John Baylee, William Bateman, Robert Joseph Kerr, William Lenox Stafford, with Assistant Surgeons William Brown, M.D., and William Peter Birmingham, reached Prome in time to share in the operations of the 1st and 2nd of December, which terminated in the entire discomfiture of the enemy. On this occasion the regiment maintained its unvarying reputation for cool and distinguished gallantry: Lieutenant Baylee and two men were killed; Major Gully and twenty-one men were wounded.
1826.
On the 8th of January 1826, Lieut.-Colonel Hunter Blair joined the regiment, and was appointed a Brigadier, the Eighty-seventh being in his brigade.
On the 19th of January Brigadier Thomas Hunter Blair, Lieut.-Colonel of the regiment, commanded the right column of attack at the capture of Melloone, consisting of the Eighty-ninth regiment and the flank companies of the Forty-seventh and Eighty-seventh with Captain James Moore (major of brigade), Brevet Captain James Kennelly, Lieutenants Henry Gough Baylee, Edmund Cox, George Mainwaring, William Lenox Stafford, and Joseph Thomas, and Assistant Surgeon Birmingham. No loss was sustained.
The day after the fall of Melloone, the Bengal division, under Brigadier Shawe, made a flank movement from the river Irrawaddy, and entered a well-cultivated country abounding in cattle, eight hundred head of which were secured, and they proved a most seasonable supply to the army.