The total loss of Officers, at the close of 1741, amounted to one Commander in Chief, five Colonels, ten Lieutenant Colonels, seven Majors, fifty-five Captains, one hundred and sixteen Subalterns, and fourteen Staff Officers. The heavy casualties in the Marine Regiments may easily be known, when it is recollected, that upon their leaving Europe each consisted of more than one thousand men. The transports, under a proper escort, returned to Jamaica upon the 29th of November, while the squadron continued at sea to meet the anxiously looked-for reinforcements. CHAP. XI. It was not until the 15th of January, 1742, that nearly three thousand men, including two thousand Marines, arrived at Jamaica. Another expedition was now meditated, which put to sea early in March, but adverse winds, the separation of transports having on board the working negroes, and the expectation of the periodical rains now nearly setting in, suggested to a Council of War held at Porto Bello, at the close of that month, the immediate return of the whole armament, to the port they had left. This afforded another instance of unfortunate discord. The fleet arrived at Jamaica upon the 15th of May. In order to give a specious appearance to things, and to compensate for the national expenditures and past miscarriages, it was now judged proper to detach a force to take possession of Rattan, an island in the Bay of Honduras, and a situation highly proper for maintaining a commercial intercourse with South America, as well as the trade in logwood. An establishment there having been formed early in the year, it was determined in a Council of War to send a force of fifty Marines and two hundred Americans, under Major Caulfield, in order to place the island in a state of military defence. On the 23d of August, they reached Port Royal, on the south side of it, where they formed a camp and erected Fort George to defend the harbour, as well Fort Frederick, on the western part of it. A great proportion of the American soldiers being papists, they formed a plot to render the settlement abortive, and to rise upon the Marines and the well-affected of their countrymen. His Majesty's ship, Litchfield, then in the harbour, hearing the alarm guns, instantly landed her party of Marines, who with those on shore soon checked this daring mutiny, secured the delinquents, and preserved the settlement to his Majesty. Nothing farther was done during the inauspicious commands of Admiral Vernon or General Wentworth, who both soon afterwards returned to Great Britain, excepting the detaching five hundred men of different descriptions to the aid of General Oglethorpe, in South Carolina, and repelling the menaces of the Spaniards against the infant colony of Georgia.