It appearing that the Highland dress was an obstacle to the recruiting of the regiments wearing that costume, orders were issued, directing the SEVENTY-THIRD, and five other regiments, to discontinue that dress, and to adopt the uniform of other English regiments.[10]
While at Colwell barracks, sixty men, who had volunteered from veteran battalions to serve at New South Wales, were transferred to the SEVENTY-THIRD regiment, and were ordered to embark with the first battalion for that colony, which, by the addition of these men, and of the volunteers from the militia, was now upwards of eight hundred strong, and its establishment was fixed at ten companies, consisting of fifty-four serjeants, twenty-two drummers, and a thousand rank and file.
The first battalion embarked on the 8th of May, 1809, at Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, on board of His Majesty’s ships “Hindoostan” and “Dromedary,” and sailed from St. Helen’s on the 25th of that month. The fleet touched at Madeira, Port Praya, Rio Janeiro, and at the Cape of Good Hope, and anchored at Port Jackson, New South Wales, on the 28th of December.
1810
The battalion landed at Sydney on the 1st of January, 1810, and detachments were sent out in the course of that, and the two following months, to the Derwent and Port Dalrymple, in Van Diemen’s Land; to Norfolk Island, and to Newcastle, whence Sydney, the capital of the colony, was supplied with coals, lime, and cedar wood, for buildings and making furniture.
1812
The first battalion of the SEVENTY-THIRD regiment having been considerably reinforced by volunteers from the hundred-and-second regiment (late New South Wales corps), which it relieved at New South Wales, and which was ordered home, its establishment was raised, in the year 1812, to twelve hundred rank and file, which included a veteran company formed from the veterans of the hundred-and-second regiment, and attached to the SEVENTY-THIRD, while the battalion continued to serve at New South Wales, and was, on its leaving that colony, transferred to the forty-sixth regiment.
1813
1814
About the end of the year 1813, an order arrived from England to embark the first battalion of the SEVENTY-THIRD regiment for the island of Ceylon, and the first division, consisting of three companies, sailed from Port Jackson on board the ship “Earl Spencer,” hired for the passage, on the 24th of January, 1814. On the 24th of March two more divisions embarked on board the “General Hewitt” and “Windham,” and sailed from Port Jackson on the 5th of April; but the “Windham” being ordered to the Derwent to take on board the two companies stationed at Van Diemen’s Land, the “General Hewitt,” having the head-quarters and flank companies on board, under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Maurice Charles O’Connell, after a very circuitous voyage round New Guinea, New Britain, and through the Molucca islands, arrived at Colombo, in Ceylon, on the 17th of August.