The regiment embarked for the West Indies in November 1794[17] and helped suppress an insurrection by caribs on Saint Vincent before returning home in November 1796.[18] It returned to the West Indies in April 1804 and, fighting alongside the 1st West India Regiment in February 1805, defended Dominica against a French force for over a week until the French abandoned the attack; hence the regiment's first battle honour "Dominica".[19] The regiment took part in another action when in May 1806 when 40 of its soldiers boarded the packet boatDuke of Montrose and set out in pursuit of the French privateers Napoleon and Impériale: they captured the Impériale and its crew.[20] The regiment took part in the invasion of Martinique in February 1809 and then returned to England in December 1811.[21]
Colonial Australia
The regiment embarked for New South Wales in August 1813: they were stationed at Hobart on Van Diemens Land with orders to suppress a gang of bushrangers.[22] In April 1816, Governor Lachlan Macquarie issued orders for the regiment to undertake punitive expeditions against Aboriginal groups in the Nepean, Hawkesbury and Grose River valleys in New South Wales. The regiment was to take as many prisoners as they could; if anyone refused to surrender, the soldiers were to "fire upon and compel them to surrender, breaking and destroying the spears, clubs and waddies of all those you take prisoners". Furthermore, if the soldiers did kill anyone, Macquarie ordered their bodies to be "hanged up on trees in conspicuous situations, to strike the survivors with greater terror".[23] The orders issued by Macquarie would then be replicated by other colonial officials in Australia during the Australian frontier wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries.[24] The regiment then sailed for Madras in September 1817[25] and, after a tour on the Indian subcontinent, returned to England in March 1833.[26]
As part of the Cardwell Reforms of the 1870s, where single-battalion regiments were linked together to share a single depot and recruiting district in the United Kingdom, the 46th was linked with the 32nd (Cornwall) Regiment of Foot, and assigned to district no. 35 at Victoria Barracks, Bodmin.[28] On 1 July 1881 the Childers Reforms came into effect and the regiment amalgamated with the 32nd (Cornwall) Regiment of Foot to form the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, becoming the 2nd Battalion (with the 32nd (Cornwall) Regiment of Foot becoming the 1st Battalion).[1][29]