Thirty-seven men out of 130 died in a single week, and but forty-five were left alive when the muster was taken. Captain John Black, who had done so well in Grenada, was dead by July; one of the Lieutenant-Colonels, George Hardy, had died a month before him. Such was yellow fever in the West Indies a hundred years ago.
Of the services of the regiment in St. Domingo it has been extremely difficult to gather any information, owing to the absence of all St. Domingo despatches from the Record Office. It would appear, however, that the Seventeenth was quartered at Jeremie under the orders of General Bowyer. 1796. The French, under the command of the coloured man Rigaud, were very active, in the spring of 1796, in attacking the various scattered posts occupied by the British on the south-eastern promontory of St. Domingo, round about Jeremie. 8th Aug. In August, General Bowyer being apprehensive of further attack on these posts, sent Captain Whitby with two subalterns and sixty rank and file of the Seventeenth, dismounted, eastward to Caymites, en route for the two posts named Fort Raimond and Du Centre. 10th Aug. At this latter place they arrived on the 10th. Whitby had hardly time to send a small detachment of the 13th Light Dragoons to Raimond, when that post was attacked by the French, who were repulsed with severe loss. Whitby then reinforced Raimond still further by a detachment of twenty men of the Seventeenth under Lieutenant Gilman, who took post in the block-house. On the 12th the enemy were still before the block-house, keeping up a heavy though not very effective fire, when Gilman at last grew tired of it, sallied out with his twenty men of the Seventeenth and a few Colonial irregulars, and drove them off into the jungle. The French left a small field-gun behind them, and sixty-three dead on the field, sixteen of whom were whites. Many more dead and wounded were found dead in the jungle afterwards. “I am happy to say,” wrote General Bowyer, “that in this gallant affair the Seventeenth had only two privates wounded. Lieutenant Gilman’s[9] cool conduct and intrepidity on this occasion seem to me so praiseworthy that I should not do justice to my own feelings if I did not recommend him for promotion.”
Simultaneously Bowyer was under the necessity of raising the siege of Irois, another post, which Rigaud had besieged for eighteen days with 4000 men. Then hearing that the French had taken up a strong position on a mountain called Morne Gautier, to cut off communication between Irois and Jeremie, he resolved to attack it. He therefore marched in three columns at daybreak on the 16th August, and opened fire at long range. 1796. Seeing that the men of the Seventeenth, who formed part of his force, were falling fast, he determined to carry the position by assault, and had formed the Seventeenth for the purpose, when he was disabled by a bullet which struck him in the left breast. None the less the attack was made; and though the British were driven back the French retreated in the night, and Irois was saved. In the course of these operations the Seventeenth lost about thirty men killed and wounded, seven having been killed and fifteen wounded in the attack on Morne Gautier alone. As only half the regiment was in St. Domingo, and that half terribly reduced by sickness, these losses cannot but represent at least a third, if not more, of the numbers engaged.
With this the record of the Seventeenth in St. Domingo comes to an end. What further work it may have done is buried in the lost despatches and the lost regimental papers. 1797. There is a complete muster-roll of the regiment dated Port Royal, 4th March 1797, showing that 126 men died in the course of the year 1796; but whether the regiment was moved thither from St. Domingo before its return home, or whether it sailed home direct, must remain uncertain. In any case it left the West Indies, and arrived in England in August 1797. The bad luck at sea which had marked the departure from England attended the passage home. The head-quarter ship, the Caledonia, foundered at sea, and though the men were saved the baggage and regimental books were lost. Hence the scantiness of information respecting the first forty years of the life of the regiment.
CHAPTER IX
1797–1807
OSTEND—LA PLATA
1797.
On landing in England the Seventeenth was distributed into quarters at Nottingham, Leicester, Trowbridge, Bath, and Bristol. The regiment was reduced to a mere skeleton. Four hundred recruits and a draft from the 18th Light Dragoons, however, soon filled up the gaps and restored it to its strength. All ranks had something new to learn. In 1796 a new drill-book, far more ambitious than any that had yet appeared, was provided for the cavalry; and for the first time (so far as I have been able to discover) a properly authorised system of sword exercise. The drill shows little that is new, except that the system of telling off by threes now came into general use, and with it the practice of executing all movements to the rear by means of “Threes about.” The interval of “six inches from knee to knee” in the ranks also makes its appearance as the normal formation. A further change is the reversion to the old practice of posting troop leaders on the flanks of troops, dressing with the men, and covered by a corporal in the rear rank.
As regards sword exercise we must content ourselves with observing that we encounter for the first time the once famous “six cuts.” The recruit was posted in front of a wall on which was drawn a circle; and he was then taught that each of the six cuts required of him should intersect at the centre of the circle, and divide it into six equal segments. I do not mean that the unhappy man was tortured by any such abstruse terms as these, but that this was the principle on which the six cuts were based. 1797. In addition, there was a seventh cut, directed vertically, so to speak, from heaven to earth, and called by the high-sounding name of St. George. These seven cuts are still familiar to hundreds of living men. The whole of the sword exercise was comprehended in no fewer than six divisions, each containing from seven to ten words of command, and must therefore have consumed considerable time. It may be remarked that, when cutting the sword exercise on foot, the men were not required to extend their legs as at present, though they kept the bridle hand in the bridle position. The swords themselves were perhaps the most defective part of the whole concern, and caused great complaint among the Light Dragoons in the Peninsula. The pattern was bad, and the material was bad; and common sense was so absolutely ignored in the design that the hilt was not even provided with a guard. Before quitting the question of drill, it is well to remind readers that dismounted drill still occupies a prominent place in the training of the Light Dragoons; and the words “Form battalion” and “Fix bayonets” are still in full use.
1798.
In 1798 the regiment was moved to Canterbury, where it made the acquaintance of a naval officer who was destined to exert some influence on a part of its career. This was Captain, afterwards Sir Home, Popham. Just then he was full of a scheme for blowing up the lock-gates of the Bruges Canal, which lock-gates were situated at Saas, a village just a mile from the entrance to Ostend harbour. The canal itself from Bruges to Saas was thirteen miles long, one hundred yards wide, and thirteen feet deep, and had recently been completed at a cost of five millions. For the invasion of England it was of great importance to the enemy; for any number of vessels could be fitted up therein and brought down to Ostend without risk of facing the British cruisers at sea. If an invasion were intended, Ostend was obviously the best port of embarkation for the invading army; and even if the project of a descent on England should prove to be no more than a scare, the destruction of the lock would at any rate spoil a seaport and stop all internal navigation from Holland to West Flanders.