Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby assembled a small force, in the beginning of April, for the attack of the Spanish island of _Porto Rico_, and the FOURTEENTH were withdrawn from Martinique to take part in the enterprise. The fleet entered a narrow channel three leagues eastward of the town, and the troops landed on the 18th of April; but met with great opposition by a heavy fire of musketry from the Spaniards, who were lodged behind a breastwork on the beach. The FOURTEENTH were in flat-bottomed boats, pulled by the Lascars of the Indiamen in which they had been conveyed. The impetuosity of the men could not bear delay; but, leaping out of the boats, and wading ashore, they soon drove the enemy from their position, at the point of the bayonet. Lieutenant-Colonel Burnett was ordered to pursue, with all possible speed, to endeavour to get possession of the bridge which led over the river between the town and the beach. So closely were the enemy pursued by the FOURTEENTH, and particularly by the _Light Company_, that many threw away their arms and accoutrements, and fairly ran for it: they succeeded in gaining the bridge; and, as soon as the men of the FOURTEENTH approached the tête-de-pont, the Spaniards blew up the bridge at the moment when many of their own people were crossing it. The destruction of the bridge obliged the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby, to change his plan, which had, originally, been to take the town by a coup-de-main. The next day, therefore, the army began to erect batteries. The second day after their completion, the enemy kept up such an incessant fire, that they succeeded in dismounting two of the guns of one of the batteries, and otherwise seriously injuring the works. A strong party was, therefore, ordered out at night to repair the damage: this party consisted of three hundred and fifty men, under the command of Captain Powell, afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel and Major of the regiment, of which number one hundred and fifty were to be employed in the trenches, and two hundred were placed at some distance from the battery to act as a covering party. The same night Major Ronald Hamilton, of the FOURTEENTH, made an attempt to ford the river, with a view of ascertaining if it were fordable for infantry; but, being discovered, he was fired upon by an advanced sentry. This creating some alarm, caused an irregular fire of musketry to be carried on all night. Under cover of this, and of the darkness, a party of five hundred Spaniards contrived to cross the river higher up, and then descending along its edge, secreted themselves among the brushwood between the river and the battery. At dawn of day a serjeant and twelve men of the FOURTEENTH, who had been on piquet in the bushes, were called in, and, at the very same moment, as if by magic, the whole party of Spaniards rushed, in one dense mass, into the battery.