During the year 1802, the regiment continued to be stationed at Curaçoa. [Sidenote: 1803.] After a few months, during which further provocations took place between the two countries, war was declared against France on the 18th of May 1803. The preparations which had been making in the French ports, the assembling of large bodies of troops on the coast, and the forming of numerous flotillas of gun-boats, justified the British government in adopting the strongest measures of defence, and in calling upon the people for their aid and services. Numerous volunteer associations were formed in all parts of the kingdom in defence of the Sovereign, the laws, and the institutions of the country. The militia was re-embodied, and the regular army was considerably augmented, under the “_Army of Reserve Act_,” as shown in the Appendix, page 97. The EIGHTY-SEVENTH regiment embarked from the island of Curaçoa for England on the 12th of January 1803, on board of the ship “De Ruyter,” which, meeting with tempestuous weather, was obliged to put into Jamaica, from whence it proceeded to Antigua, where it arrived in April 1803. The regiment proceeded to St. Kitt’s in June following. [Sidenote: 1804.] On the 28th of July 1804 the regiment embarked from St. Kitt’s, and on the 28th of September following it landed at Plymouth, after a service of eight years in the West Indies, having lost during that period, by the diseases incident to the climate, many officers, and between seven and eight hundred men. On the 31st of October the regiment embarked, under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Sir Edward Butler, from Plymouth, for Guernsey, of which island Major-General Doyle had been appointed to the command and to the Lieutenant-Governorship. The British Government, having ascertained that the King of Spain had engaged to furnish powerful aid to France, felt itself compelled to consider Spain as an enemy, and accordingly issued orders for intercepting some frigates off Cadiz, which were on their way to France with cargoes of treasure: a declaration of war was consequently issued by the Court of Madrid against Great Britain on the 12th of December 1804. The establishment of the EIGHTY-SEVENTH regiment, which had been authorised to receive men raised in certain counties of Ireland, under the Act of Parliament, dated 14th July 1804, termed the “_Additional Force Act_,” was augmented by a second battalion, of which a distinct account is commenced at page 41.[6] [Sidenote: 1805.] On the 10th of March 1805, a detachment, consisting of twenty-eight serjeants, fifteen drummers, and five hundred and twenty-eight rank and file, being drafts from the levy then raising in the county of Mayo by the Honorable H. E. Browne, embarked from Ireland for Guernsey, and joined the first battalion on the 15th of April following, thus considerably augmenting the effective strength of the EIGHTY-SEVENTH regiment. [Sidenote: 1806.]