Major General Sir Hugh Gough visits the 87th, Mauritius.

Detail from a portrait of Sir Hugh Gough.

Major General Sir Hugh Gough, of 87th Peninsular campaign fame, passed Mauritius in 1837 on his way to India.

A fellow passenger wrote that Gough:

'received a most wonderful ovation from his old Regiment, the fighting 87th. During the time the ship lay at Mauritius, they were in a state of wild excitement. The whole regiment followed him down to the boat and would even have followed it swimming if they had not been sternly ordered back. The headlands were lined with them, still cheering, and the last we saw of Mauritius was a bonfire with a number of their figures around it'.

The entry in the London Gazette in March 1816 had summed up his endeavours in the citation for his Knighthood:

His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, acting in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty, was pleased, on the 4th day of December last, to confer the honour of Knighthood upon Hugh Gough, Esq. Lieutenant-Colonel of His 'Majesty's 87th (or Prince of Wales's Own Irish) Regiment of Foot, Companion of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, and Knight of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Charles the Third;
And being desirous of conferring upon the said Sir Hugh Gough such a further mark of His Majesty's royal favour as may, in an especial manner, evince the sense His Royal Highness entertains of the highly distinguished services of that Officer, throughout the splendid achievements of His Majesty's arms in the Peninsula, and more particularly the great ability and signal valour displayed by him in command of His Majesty's 87th Regiment of Foot, at the memorable battle of Talavera de la Reyna ; at the siege of Cadiz ; at the brilliant action fought on the heights of Barrosa (wherein the eagle of the 8th French regiment was captured in a charge by His Majesty's said 87th regiment) ; also at the siege of Tarifa (where, having the command of the east wall of the fortress, in which the enemy had made a practicable breach, he, with eight companies of the said regiment, amounting to five hundred men, repulsed eighteen hundred picked troops, by which the breach was assaulted; and his conspicuous conduct at the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, and the Nivelle ... .