THE
32nd REGIMENT IN THE BAHAMAS 1797-1799
by Peter
Morgan
Peter
Morgan works as a civil servant in Britain
One of his ancestors served with the 32nd Regiment in St
Domingue and the Bahamas.
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This year sees the two hundredth anniversary of the
departure of the 32nd Regiment from the Bahamas.
In 1797 they had relieved, and were later relieved by, the 47th
Regiment. Their stay in Nassau
was not particularly eventful and, in his history, Michael Craton disposes of
them in less than two sentences : "In late 1796, a disastrous hurricane
ravaged the islands and in its wake came a fearful outbreak of yellow fever
brought from Santo Domingo by a detachment of 500 troops sent by General White
to recuperate. Among the hundreds
of dead was Acting Governor Forbes."[i]
This article seeks to explain a little more fully how the 32nd came to
the Bahamas and the circumstances of their stay and departure.
For
the 32nd it began in the summer of 1795 when the British government decided to
send a military force to take the French colony of St Domingue (Haiti). The colony was probably the richest in the world, and its
trade in sugar and coffee represented the bulk of France's foreign income.
The interruption of this trade not only disrupted France's war effort
in Europe but also neutralised commercial competition for British colonies in
the Caribbean. French aristocrat planters, unhappy with the republican
government, had also invited the British to assume command of St Domingue,
hoping Britain would restore the monarchy in France and protect their
commercial interests. British
efforts to take the colony had initially been half-hearted. Anxious for a victory over the French, the government decided
in the summer of 1795 to send a large expedition to the West Indies.
Their primary intention was to recapture colonies taken by the French,
with the taking of St Domingue as a secondary objective.
In
August 1795 the 32nd regiment arrived at Cork in Ireland, having been
shipwrecked on the way, an omen of things to come.
The following month they were joined by unwilling draftees from other
regiments, such as the 113th who had mutinied on being told of their transfer.
Bad weather delayed the assembly of transport ships, and by the time
they arrived a number of soldiers were too sick to travel, either through
dysentery and typhoid fever or through self-induced injuries such as leg
ulcers. The Regiment was about
950 strong when they set sail in November, straight into a storm which
scattered the fleet and drowned nearly a third of the men.
The
regiment embarked again in December and made at least one more abortive
attempt to get out of harbour before getting away at last in late February
1796. By now the men had been
aboard ship for more than two months and still had a voyage of 6 weeks ahead
of them. When they reached
Barbados in April, more than 70 were sick or dying and had to be left there. The Commander-in-Chief took one look at the sickly, poorly
trained troops and forecast they would not last to the end of the year.
After
a voyage through the Mona Passage, about 580 officers and men of the 32nd
arrived at Mole St Nicholas in north east St Domingue in May 1796, the
beginning of the fever season. Detachments
of the 32nd and other regiments were sent almost immediately to take the
nearby fort at Bombarde (Bombardopolis).
Some soldiers died of thirst and heat-stroke along the 12 mile march.
Exhausted, they were lucky to face no opposition as the French
abandoned the fort. But with
communications overstretched, attacks by rebelling slaves forced the British
to withdraw to the Mole. There
they dug in and were left by the slaves to the ravages of yellow fever and
malaria.
In
July 1796 a field return put the strength of the regiment at just over 670
officers and men, the numbers having been increased by the arrival of
stragglers and draftees. But by
December the number was down to just under 460.
Over 200 men had died in the space of 8 months, all but a handful
succumbing to sickness rather than military action.[ii]
Towards
the end of 1796 the British government decided that St Domingue was not worth
the cost in money and lives. With
Spain declaring war in October, it was also necessary to redeploy troops to
protect British possessions in the area.
So when Acting Governor Forbes wrote from the Bahamas to the Duke of
Portland, Home Secretary, at the end of 1796 asking for reinforcements,
Portland was able to reply that the decision had already been taken to send
500 men of the 32nd to Nassau.[iii]
Arrival
in Nassau
End Notes