As may be supposed, the order occasioned no little surprise and regret, as at this period, the military artificers were living under circumstances of the most favourable character—treated indeed more like citizens than soldiers. Many were married and had families; some few had property in land and houses; and all, or nearly all, had profitable engagements in civil life, which they were permitted by their officers to follow, after the demands of the service had been attended to. To avoid therefore the chance of being separated from such advantages, several obtained their discharges by providing substitutes at considerable cost, whilst a far greater number took the very dishonourable alternative of deserting. During the year 1793, the desertions were, perhaps, more in number than in any other year since the formation of the corps. The Plymouth company was called upon to furnish one corporal and seventeen private miners for the service of the Engineer department in the West Indies, who, embarking in February, in due time, arrived at Grenada. Divided between that island and Antigua, they had scarcely commenced their duties before the unhealthiness of the climate began to be felt among them. Fever, the prevailing scourge of the islands, seized them, and ere the close of the year, all, except private William Trevethick, had died! He survived his comrades about two and a half years; and with his decease was completed the extermination, by fever, of the first foreign detachment of the corps. At Antigua, it should be mentioned, that the malady was conveyed on shore through the unconscious imprudence of one of the party. He had gone on board a vessel called the ‘Experiment,’ which had just arrived in English Harbour in great distress, having lost nearly all her hands by fever. Of the existence of the disease in the ship the artificer was not aware, and he slept in a blanket belonging to one of the dead men. Seized with the disorder, he died in a few hours, and his wearing apparel and blanket, being taken to the Ordnance quarters as his property, the infection was thus communicated to the rest of the detachment; next to the artillery, and from them it spread to the 31st regiment, committing fearful ravages in its course.[88] ----- Footnote 88: Southey’s ‘Chron., Hist. West Indies,’ iii., p. 72.