Brigaded light inf and grenadiers in AWI

[pbjunky1]

Could I check a point with fellow LAF members  who have more knowledge of AWI  units  than myself?  I think the British
brigaded lights and grenadiers  from different regiments together to form elite units?
Did  the colours remain with the centre companies or did the lights/grenadiers  take any with them into their brigaded units? Similarly did musicians stay with the centre  companies or go with the  brigaded units?
Thanks for your help.

[jazbo]

Yes they became single elite units. They didn't carry colours.

[Arthur]

What Jazbo said.

The flank companies were permanently detached from their parent regiments to form elite battalions, whose number varied throughout the war. During the 1776 New York campaign, the British army fielded four grenadier and three light infantry converged battalions. The following year, two grenadier and two light infantry battalions were involved in the Philadelphia campaign while Burgoyne formed one grenadier and one light battalion for his ill-fated Saratoga expedition. In 1781, Cornwallis had no grenadiers at Yorktown (the grenadier battalions had all remained in New York) but he could rely on two very effective light infantry battalions.

Since their components were drawn from the line infantry regiments, these converged units were not issued with colours and therefore carried no flags.

I believe each company retained its drummers (the light bobs certainly kept their hornists), though they would have been grouped together at battalion level.   
 

[vtsaogames]

Officers of the center companies (or hat companies) sometimes complained that their battalions were nurseries for the light companies, since the converged elites could sometimes serve in different theaters than their original battalions.

[Baron von Wreckedoften]

All previous answers have been spot on.  One extra point about musicians is that all ten companies in a battalion had their own, one drummer each at the start of the war (plus two fifers for the grenadier company), and two per company after the augmentation of August 1775 that increased each company by one sergeant, one drummer and 18 privates (the number of fifers remained the same).  There is no clear evidence, but it seems most likely that one of the light company drummers was taught to play the hunting horn, forerunner of the bugle in Napoleonic times, but was still referred to as a "drummer" on the muster rolls (as were the grenadier fifers in most regiments).  Arthur is correct in that the grenadier musicians could be grouped together, but the light bobs tended to retain their own drummers/hornists.  Each type of battalion would appoint the senior drummer as "drum major" and that man would attend the battalion CO.

Bear in mind that, following unofficial practice in the F&I War, British troops in the AWI tended to have orders passed solely by word of mouth.  This was finally acknowledged officially in 1778, by an order from the C-in-C, Baron Amherst

[pbjunky1]

Thanks very much everyone for those very full and helpful replies.