Two more years at the Kaira cantonments brought the regiment to the end of its first term of Indian service. It marched to Cambay in November, reached Bombay by water in December, and finally sailed for England on the 9th January 1823. It had landed at Calcutta, in 1808, 790 men strong; it had lost in fourteen years, from disease and climatic causes alone, exclusive of men invalided and killed in action, 26 officers and 796 men; it had received in India 929 men and officers. It went home, after leaving behind it volunteers for different regiments, under 200 strong of all ranks. Such were the effects of cholera,--for 1818 was a bad cholera year,--general ignorance of sanitary matters, and of English clothing in the Indian climate. [Illustration: GEORGE, LORD BINGHAM (EARL OF LUCAN) LIEUTENANT-COLONEL 17TH LIGHT DRAGOONS (LANCERS) 1826–1837] CHAPTER XI HOME SERVICE, 1823–1854 [Sidenote: 1823.] On their way home the Seventeenth touched at St. Helena, where they found an Army List, and therein learned for the first time that they had become a regiment of Lancers. Such were the fruits of the inspection held at the Queen’s Riding-house in Pimlico six years before. There also they heard of the death of their Colonel, Oliver Delancey, who had held that rank since 1795. He had entered the army as a Cornet in the 14th Dragoons in 1766, and joined the Seventeenth as a Captain in 1773. He had therefore held a commission in the regiment for close on fifty years when he died in September 1822. He had gained some slight reputation as a pamphleteer, and he was for many years a Member of Parliament, but it was as a soldier and an officer in the Seventeenth that he had made his mark, in the New England provinces and Carolina. He was succeeded by Lord R. Somerset, a distinguished Peninsula officer.