2nd Batt.
The second battalion remained at Guernsey until the 26th of February 1806, when it proceeded to Ireland, and arrived at Cork on the 15th of March. Having been a short time stationed in the county of Cork, it proceeded to Dublin, and, after performing garrison duty for some months, received orders to transfer all its limited service men to a garrison battalion, and all its disposable men to the first battalion at Malta.
1807.
Being thus reduced to a skeleton, the officers and non-commissioned officers proceeded to England in January 1807, for the purpose of recruiting the ranks of the second battalion, and arrived at Liverpool on the 30th of that month. Having distributed recruiting parties to various stations, the head-quarters marched to Edmonton and Enfield, near London.
On the 29th of October 1807, His Majesty King George III. was pleased to direct that the county title of the Thirty-ninth regiment should be changed from East Middlesex to Dorsetshire.
1808. 1st Batt.
The flank companies of the first battalion proceeded from Malta to Sicily in May 1808.
2nd Batt.
The recruiting continued from the militia and in the ordinary mode with such success that the second battalion was soon increased to five hundred strong; and after being some time stationed at Berry-Head, embarked from thence for Guernsey, where it arrived on the 24th of May 1808. Subsequently, a general volunteering from the militia took place, when the battalion was augmented to about seven hundred rank and file, and being organised in the course of a short period, Lieut.-General Sir John Doyle, Bart., then Lieut.-Governor of Guernsey, was so pleased with the general appearance of the corps as to express his entire satisfaction with it, and to report the battalion fit for immediate foreign service.
1809. 1st Batt.