In the subsequent campaigns of the West Indies he behaved equally meritoriously; and in garrison and the workshops always conducted himself well. Besides being an excellent mason and foreman, no artificer in the service, perhaps, had a better practical idea of mining, in which he signalized himself at the destruction of Fort Desaix, Martinique. After sixteen years' arduous service in the West Indies, he was sent to Woolwich and discharged in July, 1814. ----- On the reduction of the place, the Batavian troops were released from their former allegiance, and at liberty to become either citizens in Surinam, or soldiers in his Britannic Majesty’s forces; but the barren and uninviting prospects that a captured country presented prevented many from settling, and they readily offered to enrol themselves under the British standard. Availing himself of the opportunity, Lieutenant-Colonel Shipley accepted the services of seventeen Batavian artificers and enlisted them for the company. Fourteen deaths were reported in the company during the year; and on the 31st December its strength was eighty-eight of all ranks. A fever of a very malignant character appeared at Gibraltar in August, and continued its ravages during the autumnal months. Brought in by a foreigner, who took up his abode in the vicinity of the married quarters of the royal artillery, the disorder was soon communicated to the latter; and, by the end of September, it spread with a rapidity only equalled by its virulence. Ere long the whole fortress was infested by the pestilence; and, as if to render the calamity more awful, it was preceded by an earthquake, which agitated the whole Rock. Out of a population computed at 10,000, including 4,000 troops, no less a number than 5,946 died between the 1st September and 31st December. So great a mortality in so short a period is unexampled in the history of that fortress.[133] ----- Footnote 133: Sir James Fellowes ‘On the Fever of Andalusia.’ -----