Island in Sierra Leone to train West African volunteers for the West India Regiments. By 1816 the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the reduction of the West India regiments to six led to the closure of this depot. Thereafter all recruitment for the various West Indian regiments that fought in World War I and World War II were West Indian volunteers, with officers and some senior NCOs coming from Britain. The WIR soldiers became a valued part of the British forces garrisoning the West Indies, where losses from disease and climate were heavy amongst white troops. The black Caribbean soldiers by contrast proved better adapted to tropical service. They served against locally recruited French units that had been formed for the same reasons. Free black Caribbean soldiers played a prominent and often distinguished role in the military history of Latin America and the Caribbean. Nineteenth century The new West India Regiments saw considerable service during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1800 there were 12 battalion-sized regiments located in the British West Indies. Three companies of the First WIR repulsed a French attempt to recapture the island of Marie-Galante in August–September 1808, together with members of the first Corps of Colonial Marines recruited from local fugitive slaves. The Regiments were later involved in the War of 1812, both on the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, taking part in the disastrous British attack on New Orleans. After the Slave Trade Act of 1807, there was a shortfall of around five thousand members at the start of the War of 1812, and the war offered hope of new recruitment from slaves fleeing the United States. However, only eight joined the regiments from the Chesapeake Bay area in 1814, and a further thirteen on the coast of Georgia early in 1815, the great majority of refugees who offered military service preferring the newly formed Corps of Colonial Marines, whose officers later rejected government orders for transfer to the Regiments. Following the end of the War of 1812, numbers were progressively reduced. Members of two of the disbanded regiments were settled in the eastern part of Trinidad, the 6th in 1817 and the 3rd in 1819, forming the main Muslim population in Trinidad before the first arrival of indentured Indian immigrants in 1845. During most of the remainder of the nineteenth century there were never less than two West