73rd Regiment of Foot

Chronology

• 1756 2nd Battalion, 34th Regiment of Foot redesignated as 73rd Regiment of Foot
• 1763 became a Regiment of Invalids
• 1769 disbanded
• 1777 raised as the 1st Battalion 73rd (Highland) Regiment of Foot (MacLeod's Highlanders)
• 1778 2nd Battalion raised
• 1782 became the 73rd (Highland) Regiment of Foot
• 1809 became the 73rd Regiment of Foot
• 1862 became the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot
• 1881 amalgamated with the 42nd Regiment of Foot to become the the 2nd Battalion, Royal Highland Regiment (The Black Watch)
• 2006 merged with five other Scottish regiments - the Royal Scots, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, The Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders - to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland

Service in British India

• 1781 Madras
• 1782 2nd Mysore War
• 1790 3rd Mysore War
• 1793 Pondicherry
• 1795 Ceylon
• 1799 4th Mysore War
• 1801 2nd Polygar War
• 1803 2nd Maratha War
• 1815 2nd Kandyan War
• 1858 Indian Mutiny
• 1874 India
• 1902 Umballa
• 1905 Solon
• 1906 Dalhousie
• 1908 Barian
• 1911 Calcutta
• 1914 Bareilly
• 1905 Sitapur

Transfer between regiments

In 1819, while still in Ceylon, one hundred and seventy-two men volunteered to the 73rd regiment from the 19th regiment, when that regiment went back to England

When the 73rd regiment went back to England in 1821, all the men fit for service in a tropical climate were permitted to volunteer, in the first instance, to regiments in Ceylon, and ultimately to His Majesty's regiments stationed in the territories of the East India Company. Refer Historical books online, below.

FIBIS resources

• "The Melvill Family – Three Generations of Commitment to India (Part 1)" by David Williams – pages 3-17 FIBIS Journal Number 32 (Autumn 2014) contains a section on Philip Melville, an officer in the 73rd Regiment of Foot, who was captured following the battle near Pollilur in 1780, with quotes from his papers. See FIBIS Journals for information about accessing this article.

External Links

Historical Books Online

• Historical Record of the Seventy-Third Regiment from the period of its being raised as the Second Battalion of the Forty-Second Royal Highlanders in 1780, and of its subsequent services to 1851 by Richard Cannon 1851. Google Books. Indian Service commences page 6 in 1781 in Madras
• History of the Scottish Highlands : Highland clans and Highland regiments Volume 2 "Forty-Second or Royal Highland Regiment Second Battalion. Long the Seventy-Third Regiment" by John S Keltie (c.1886) Archive.org. The Regiment reached India in 1782, page 597
• "Forty-Second, or Royal Highland Regiment, Second Battalion, now the Seventy-Third Regiment", page 40 The History of Scotland, its Highlands, Regiments and Clans, Volume VIII by James Browne 1909 Archive.org

Other

• 73rd Regiment of Foot - Wikipedia
• Black Watch - Wikipedia
• 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot including deployments Regiments.org, an archived website
• The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) including deployments: 1st Battalion, 2nd Battalion Regiments.org, an archived website
• Macquarie University's webpage on the 73rd Foot (includes links to information on Seringapatam [1799] and Mangalore [1783])
• Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) Castle & Museum
• Victorian Wars Forum post with photographs of the uniforms of the 2nd Battalion at Peshawar in 1907
• Percy Sylvester George O'Donnell (scroll down) joined the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in India on 9th October 1905 as their Bandmaster with the rank of Sgt. In 1911 the Band of the Black Watch was one of the participating bands at the Delhi Durbar commemoration of the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary. He left India in August 1914. George Pollen’s website.
• Stewart Cochrane’s Black Watch RHR Chindit , dedicated to Pte.William "Cocky" Cochrane 
 
2nd Battalion, The Black Watch , in Burma during the Second World War