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connection at all beyond neighbour. Note that the previous two sentences contain only speculation,
not facts.
Where John and Isabella lived in Woolwich is a question of interest. The army discouraged marriage
as it wanted complete commitment. At that time 6% of soldiers could be given official sanction to
marry and then live in the barracks. Whether or not John had that permission is not known. If he did,
then the couple may have lived in a curtained-off corner of a barracks room, and Isabella would have
been provided with rations in return for help with washing, mending, and cooking, and would have
been allowed to accompany John on overseas actions. If not, then he would have had to maintain
outside accommodation for her, which he may not have been able to easily afford, and she would
have had to stay in England without financial support when he was overseas. (See letter from Paul
Evans, librarian at Royal Artillery Museum). There was no comment on how children fitted into life
in the barracks, but one can imagine that even if one was tolerated there would be strong pressure
to not have any more.
By the time John enlisted in the Royal Artillery, a minimum height of 5’ 9” was a requirement. In
1799 the regimental dress for gunners was white breeches, long black leather boots fastened to the
back part of the knee of the breeches by a strap and buckle, blue single-breasted coats laced with
yellow worsted lace in front and on the cuffs and flaps and with two worsted straps on the right
shoulder (Duncan vol I, p.412).
John remained a private, which means a gunner, for five years and seven months, and then in mid-
1814 was promoted to bombardier. It appears that he served in the West Indies (PRO ref:
WO69/655, 10347, folio 44). The Royal Artillery participated in most of the Peninsular Wars and the
Battle of Waterloo in the period that John was in the RA, but of the 100 RA companies and 12 RHA
troops, only 13 were deployed by Wellington at Waterloo (Duncan vol II, p.185). At present I have
not been able to determine in which actions or expeditions John was involved, as explained in the
next two paragraphs.
At the time he left the army in 1819 John was in the Sinclair Company (or 4 Coy) of the 6
th
Battalion
of the Royal Artillery. Capt JS Sinclair was the commanding officer of that company in 1819. Tracing
the placement of that company from the formation of the 6
th
Bn in 1799, we find that it was
stationed on Guernsey from April 1808 until October 1814. In November 1814 the company
embarked for Jamaica and did not return until September 1817, and from then on was at Woolwich
for the remainder of John’s time in the army. John enlisted in Nov 1808, at which time the Bn was on
Guernsey (keeping an eye on Napoleon?). Presumably as a raw recruit he did some training at
Woolwich, or was sent straight to Guernsey and trained there. But if he was on Guernsey all that
time, how did he meet Isabella Noble? Their marriage was in Nov 1812 in Greenwich, and their child
conceived about February 1813 and born Nov 1813 and christened at 7 days old in Woolwich.
So how does all that work out? Did he know Isabella before he was stationed on Guernsey? Did he
get leave for the marriage in Greenwich? Did she live with him on Guernsey and return to
Woolwich for the birth? OR, was he assigned to a different Company and had a different set of
circumstances, and get transferred to the Sinclair Coy later on? The only way to check if he was in
a different Coy and/or Bn would be to work backwards through the monthly muster rolls which
are held at the PRO in England. It was quite common for men to be transferred from one company
8
to another, and even from one battalion to another, according to need (Duncan vol II, p. 107). If
John was in different companies from the one he was in in 1819, then his involvement in actions
and expeditions would be different from that listed in the preceding paragraph.
Until 1825, each company was known by the name of its commanding officer rather than by a
number. The commanding officers for the company that came to be known as the Sinclairs were,
from the time the 6
th
Battalion was formed in 1799, Capt David Meredith, Capt H. Hickman from
1806, Capt C. Baynes from 1807, Capt W.D. Nicholls from 1817, and Capt J.S. Sinclair from 1819. It is
easier if I refer to this company as 4 Company.
The Royal Artillery was formed in 1716 and by the time John enlisted it was composed of ten
marching battalions (plus horse troops in the RHA). There were 100 companies in the RA and they
were dispersed in places over much of the globe. Later, the regimental motto became “Ubique” for
very good reason! Because of Napoleon Bonaparte’s activities, regiments of the English army were
built up to strengths as never before.
In 1810, the RA had 16 companies in the Peninsula, 5 in Italy and Sicily, 56 on home stations, 8 in
Canada, 3 at the Cape of Good Hope, 3 in Ceylon, 6 in Gibraltar, 11 in the West Indies, 4 in Malta.
Each battalion had 1490 men, which is an average of 149 for each company, and a total of 14 900 for
the whole Royal Artillery Regiment (Duncan vol II, p. 262). At that time 4 Coy of 6
th
Bn was stationed
on Guernsey, one of the home stations. No doubt the whole regiment could not be accommodated
at the Woolwich barracks; but also, stationing troops at strategic places made them easier to
mobilize as needed. While Guernsey was still a long way from Spain and Portugal, it was a few days
sailing closer than coming from the mainland. 4 Coy had been stationed at Portsmouth in early 1808,
and it took five days to get across to Guernsey (Laws p. 135).
The weapons used in the Peninsula and other wars at that period included 24-pounder brass guns
and iron guns, and 18-, 16-, 9-, and 6-pounder guns, some made of brass and some of iron, 10 inch,
8”, and 5 ½” brass howitzers, 10 inch mortars, and even 68-pounder carronades. Grape shot was
eight or ten 3-pounder shots tied together in a bag and shot from a larger gun. Some shot was round
and some was in spherical casing. Rockets were also used. A great many horses were needed to pull
the guns and ammunition wagons from place to place, for example, it took eight horses for each gun
and six for each wagon (Duncan vol II pp. 289, 290, 303, 419).
The Peninsular Wars ended in April 1814, and in November that year 4 Coy embarked from
Guernsey for the West Indies. The United States had declared war on Britain in 1812 as it wanted to
annex Canada, so perhaps that is the reason that coy was sent to be close if needed – after all, the
voyage took three months. The company disembarked in Jamaica 12 February 1815, but the Second
American War had finished a month before, while they were at sea. Nevertheless, the company
remained at Port Royal, Jamaica, for two and a half years, perhaps in case hostilities broke out again.
The logistics involved and the ponderous nature of moving men, horses, and heavy artillery in the
days of sailing ships and slow communication would surely have meant that a company was not
moved around any more often than necessary.
While stationed somewhere out of the action, training would have continued so that the men were
ready for action as soon as the word came. Duncan’s chapter (vol II) on Waterloo more than once