In commemoration of this battle, and of the conduct of the battalion during the expedition, the Thirty-sixth, in common with the army employed under Lieut.-General Sir John Moore, received the Royal authority to bear the word “Corunna” on the regimental colour and appointments.[18]
The army also received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament “for its distinguished discipline, firmness, and valour in the battle of Corunna.”
On the 17th of January the battalion embarked at Corunna for England; portions landed at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Deal, but the several divisions were assembled at Battle, in Sussex, during the month of February.
Immense preparations had been made by the British Government to fit out the most formidable armament that had for a long time proceeded from England. The troops amounted to forty thousand men, commanded by Lieut.-General the Earl of Chatham; the naval portion consisted of thirty-nine ships of the line, thirty-six frigates, and numerous gun-boats and bomb-vessels, and other small craft, under Admiral Sir Richard Strachan. The object of the expedition was to obtain possession of the islands at the mouth of the Scheldt, and to destroy the French ships in that river, with the docks and arsenals at Antwerp. The first battalion of the Thirty-sixth regiment received orders to prepare itself for this service, and on the 16th of July embarked at Portsmouth for Walcheren, under the command of Colonel Burne. The expedition sailed from the Downs on the 28th of July, and on the morning of the 1st of August the Thirty-sixth and other corps were landed, and on the same day the troops advanced to the investment of Flushing, which operation was warmly contested by the enemy.
By the 13th of August, the preparations for the attack on the town were completed, and on the night of the 14th one of the enemy’s batteries, advanced upon the sea dyke in front of Lieut.-General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser’s position, was most gallantly carried at the point of the bayonet by detachments from the Thirty-sixth, Seventy-first, and the light battalions of the King’s German legion, under Lieut.-Colonel Denis Pack, of the Seventy-first, although opposed to great superiority of numbers; the troops took forty prisoners, and killed and wounded a great many of the enemy. Flushing capitulated on the 15th of August; the garrison becoming prisoners of war.
From the 8th to the 15th of August the Thirty-sixth had three rank and file killed; Major Alexander Mackenzie was dangerously wounded; two serjeants and seven rank and file were wounded.
An epidemic disease of a fatal character broke out among the troops, and the following officers and men of the Thirty-sixth regiment died of fever:—Captains Waddle, C. Douglas, and Alexander Barbor, Lieutenant McDermott, Assistant-Surgeon James McFarlane, fourteen serjeants, two drummers, and two hundred rank and file.
On the 10th of December 1809 the first battalion embarked for England, and arrived at Woolwich on the 22d of that month; it subsequently returned to Battle in Sussex.
1810.