"Organization of British Army in American Revolution" Topic

Double darn bug!!!!!

While reading the linked web site from this post of Armand's TMP link , I discovered this reference link:

link

It is a 1926 publication on the topic title, including establishment strengths of all British guard, infantry, and cavalry regiments, as well as uniform details of all of the regiments.

Should be an interesting read.

Jim

Jim: great link, thanks for posting!

Joe

Curtis is an excellent source.

I have done the link to my favorites, great find.

Curtis is a worthwhile source. His information on the tables of organization for the various arms is accurate and useful. His information on the naval transports and the number of supply vehicles hired is interesting and, for the purpose of campaigns or a strategic view of the British efforts, useful.

However, be aware that the piece contains some cracking errors. In the first chapter he refers to the militia, then goes on to enumerate instead the regular army. Note that there was indeed a formal militia of fairly good numbers. He states that " … before the close of the war, every battalion in America had organized a rifle company for itself." This is inference, based upon an off-hand remark by the often unreliable Fortescue, and is patently false. A bit of simple arithmetic demonstrates that he assumes that in 1775, all British regiments were at full strength, which is also patently false. This error is the more puzzling since the actual data survives at the Public Record Office and was just as accessible in 1926 as now (to the best of my knowledge, these reports have yet to be digitized).

For me, the chapters on the administrative organization and on the transport problems were and are the most interesting.