The Short War of James Wilcox, 33rd Regiment of Foot

The British army did a lot of recruiting in 1775 and 1776. After the government committed to using force to quell the rebellion in America, the War Office increased the authorized size of each regiment deployed overseas by 50 percent—from 360 private soldiers to 540. Part of this increase was accomplished by transferring soldiers from regiments remaining in Britain into regiments already overseas or scheduled for deployment. The balance was attained by vigorous recruiting efforts.

During the 1770s and 1780s, each British regiment did its own recruiting. Each regiment sent officers to wherever recruits might be gotten, leading some officers to favor their home towns or counties where they knew families and circumstances. Captain William Dansey of the 33rd Regiment of Foot chose the area of his newly-adopted home town of Hereford near the Welsh border.

One of Dansey’s recruits was a nineteen-year-old butcher named James Wilcox, who enlisted in February 1775. The 33rd was posted in Ireland at the time and had yet to receive orders to sail for America; Wilcox remained with a recruiting party until shortly before the regiment’s embarkation in February 1776. By this time Captain Dansey was in command of the regiment’s light infantry company, and Wilcox, although still an inexperienced soldier, joined him in it. Dansey described him as “a fine spirited lad.”

Dansey’s and one other company—out of then altogether in the regiment—boarded a transport named the Golden Rule in Cork Harbor. They sailed in convoy with transports carrying nine regiments February 12, 1776, bound for the southern colonies of America where they were to open a new front in the war. By April they were off the American coast; there, still at sea, the two companies on the Golden Rule had their first engagement of the war. The transport came upon an American merchant ship and, after firing a few shots and a half-hour chase, captured the vessel. This was a trivial contribution to the war but raised the spirits of the British troops.

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In early May the British troops landed and encamped at Cape Fear, North Carolina. It was here that young James Wilcox had the dubious distinction of being the 33rd Regiment’s first battle casualty. Around the 24th he was posted as an advanced sentry one night when a violent thunderstorm came on, the worst the British soldiers had ever seen. Lightning illuminated the camp, strong winds knocked down some tents and carried others away, and intense rain began to fall. In the midst of this, three American soldiers crawled towards Wilcox on their hands and knees, stalking him as they would a hunted animal. Wilcox, alert at his sentry post in spite of the terrible weather and darkness, discerned them when they were only ten yards away. He fired once and began to reload, but the assailants fired back and then fled. Wilcox was hit in the left wrist. One of his attackers lay dead.

Taken back into camp and then to a hospital ship, it was feared that Wilcox would lose his hand. Dansey “went on board the Hospital Ship several times to see him ‘till he was out of Danger.” But British military personnel were good at their jobs; it wasn’t long before Wilcox’s spirits had improved and he hoped to recover sufficiently “to do his Duty again and have his Revenge.”

It was not to be so. Although Wilcox kept his hand, his wrist did not recover sufficiently for him to remain an effective soldier. He was discharged as an invalid and returned to Great Britain. Captain Dansey recommended him as a fit object for consideration from the government in spite of Wilcox having served only two years and two months in the army. In April 1777 Wilcox was the first wounded man of the 33rd to appear before the pension examining board of Chelsea Hospital and received an out pension of five pence per day—five-eighths of a private soldier’s pay—due to being “disabled in the left hand.”

A subsequent comment by Captain Dansey suggest that he had recommended Wilcox to a wealthy Hereford estate owner, perhaps for employment in addition to his pension. Dansey offered sound advice for the young disabled veteran:

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I think Lord Bateman has honor’d me very much by his Attention to Wilcox, he has given him more than ever he merited or I desired . . . tell Wilcox if he does not behave exceeding well I shall use the same Interest to get it taken from him, he is in Duty bound to honor my Recommendation when he knows how many brave Fellows of my Company have suffer’d as well as him.

The information above comes from the following sources:

Muster rolls, 33rd Regiment of Foot, WO 12/4803, The National Archives, Kew, UK.

“Examinations of Invalid Soldiers,” April 18, 1777, Pension Admission Book, WO 116/7.

William Dansey, Captured Rebel Flag:The Letters of Captain William Dansey, 33rd Regiment of Foot, 1776–1777, ed. Paul Dansey (Godmanchester, Huntington, UK: Ken Trotman Press, 2010), 12, 42.

For more on British army recruiting and pensions, see Don N. Hagist, Noble Volunteers: the British Soldiers who fought the American Revolution (Westholme, 2020).