Military history of the Gambia

Ensign Fearon of the Royal African Corps was instructed by Lieutenant Governor George Rendall to investigate the disturbances.

Fearon proceeded on 22 August with 30 Royal African Corps soldiers and a few pensioner to the town of Essau, the capital of Barra, to demand hostages from their king.

Following Fearon's defeat, neighbouring chiefs sent large contingents of men to reinforce the King of Barra's soldiers.

Several thousand armed natives were collected only three miles from Bathurst, and with the settlement in such imminent danger, the Lieutenant Governor sent an urgent dispatch to Sierra Leone for assistance.

The force consisted of detachments from the 1st and 2nd West India Regiments, from the Sierra Leone Militia, and from the Royal African Corps.

They were supported with heavy cover fire from the Plumper (under Lieutenant Cresey), the Parmilia, and an armed colonial schooner.

Despite this, the British pushed on, and after an hour's hard fighting, during which the Mandinkas contested every inch of ground, they succeeded in driving them from their entrenchments at bayonet point and pursued them for some distance through the bush.

At daybreak on 17 November, the British marched to attack Essau, leaving Fort Bullen in the charge of the crew of the Plumper.

[1] On 7 December, Lieutenant Colonel Hingston of the Royal African Corps arrived with reinforcements and assumed command of the British forces.

Terms being proposed which he accepted, a treaty was drawn up and signed at Fort Bullen on 4 January 1832, ending the war.

In February 1852, Major Luke Smythe O'Connor was appointed as officer commanding the British soldiers in West Africa.

Initially based in Sierra Leone, in September that year he was appointed Governor of the Gambia, and so moved the headquarters for British troops in West Africa to The Gambia.Following World War I, the armed forces of the British West African colonies were put under the control of their respective colonial governments.