British Occupation of Dauphin Island

British Occupation of Dauphin Island. February - April 1815. When British forces arrived at Mobile Bay to assault Fort Bowyer on Mobile Point, half of the British army under the command of Sir John Kean, who was recovering from wounds suffered during the defeat at New Orleans, was landed on Dauphin Island to act as a reserve during operations against the Americans. Two days after the surrender of Fort Bowyer, the British warship, HMS Brazen arrived at Mobile Point with word that the United States and Great Britain had agreed to peace terms at Ghent, Belgium ending the War of 18 12. British commanders withdrew their troops from Mobile Point and moved them, along with their American prisoners, to Dauphin Island to await word of the treaty's ratification by the U.S. , British soldiers found Dauphin Island "very barren...and produces nothing at all; no inhabitants remain on it, and is a very marshy nature..." The British also found that the island had an abundance of snakes, alligators, mosquitoes and biting flies. The difficulty of resupply made Dauphin Island, as one British soldier wrote," ...one of the hungriest places that ever a British soldier had his foot in." The troops supplemented their diet with fish, which were "...in plentiful supply..." and resorted to killing and eating alligators, which one British officer described, "... the meat was white, and the flavor like coarsely-fed pork..." , To ease the boredom during their stay on the island, British officers erected a theater named the "Theatre Royal" Isle Dauphine" and produced plays with titles such as "The Apprentice" a "Song by Mr. Steel, and "Prime, Bangup" by Mr. Hill” and "...the most Tragical Tragedys called Crononhotonthologus." When word arrived of the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in March, British forces began to leave Dauphin Island. On April 5, 1815, the last British troops departed the island and returned to Great Britain.