The loss in the West India company by fever and other diseases during the year amounted to twenty, whose vacancies were immediately filled up by transfers from the line. In May the working dress consisted of a blue cloth jacket with skirts, two serge waistcoats with sleeves, two pairs of blue serge pantaloons, a black round hat, and a pair of half black gaiters. One of the waistcoats and a pair of pantaloons formed the second working dress. The new jacket was made of stouter and better cloth than formerly; sleeves were added to the serge waistcoats, and the second pair of pantaloons were substituted for the canvas ones. These improvements were considered equivalent to a linen shirt, a pair of stockings, and a canvas jacket previously supplied with the working suit, but which, from this year, ceased to be issued to the corps. At the opening of the year the military artificers with the British mission to Turkey, reduced to fifteen men, were occupied in the erection of the new bastion at Jaffa, which was finished and the guns placed on the platforms with great pomp on the 27th January. Of the detachment with the mission, two were styled labourers, from their not having been promoted to the rank of artificers; and they, when not immediately occupied on the works, acted in the capacity of servants to Major Holloway. One of these labourers when out one afternoon some distance from Jaffa, exercising the Major’s horses, was attacked by a party of Arabs on a predatory excursion, by whose fire the Major’s horse was killed, and the bâtman wounded with balls and slugs in nine different places. The servant of Major Hope, R. A. was also in the assault; and by great exertion succeeded in bearing his comrade back to the camp. Dr. Wittman, of the mission, with celerity equal to his skill, extracted the missiles and the sufferer speedily recovered.[123] ----- Footnote 123: Either private Jonathan Lewsey or private David Waddell, both of whom acted as servants to Major Holloway, R.E. The former was a powerful man, and remarkable from the circumstance of his having _four thumbs_! two on each hand in addition to the proper complement of fingers. On the breaking up of the mission at Grand Cairo, these privates returned to England with that officer by the overland route. -----