through the kindness of his captain
he picked up some education, and after serving in the Channel Islands,
at the Cape, and in India, found himself, in the year 1804, a young
sergeant in the Grenadier company, which was detached with the grand
army under Lord Lake fighting against the Mahrattas. He was one of the
stormers at the capture of Deig, on December 24, 1804, and led the
"forlorn-hope" of the storming column in _three_ out of the four
desperate, but unsuccessful, assaults on Bhurtpore in January-February,
1805, receiving severe wounds upon each occasion. Lord Lake rewarded his
daring with an ensigncy in the 65th Foot. A few weeks later he was
promoted to lieutenant in the 76th Foot, both commissions being dated
March 10, 1805. With the 76th Shipp returned home in 1807; but he
speedily found himself in pecuniary difficulties, and sold out of the
army on March 19, 1808. His commissions having been given "without
purchase," he was only entitled to L100 for each twelve months of actual
commissioned service abroad, and L50 for like periods at home, up to the
full value--L700. With the small sum so realized he paid his debts, and
soon after found himself alone in London, without a shilling in the
world.

Seeing, as he tells us, no reason why he should not rise again as he had
done before, Shipp enlisted into the 24th light Dragoons, which he had
known in Lake's army; returned to India to join that regiment; and in
the course of a few years rose to the position of regimental
sergeant-major. In 1815 he was appointed by the Marquis of Hastings
(Earl of Moira), then Governor-general and Commander-in-chief in India,
to an ensigncy in the 87th Prince's Own Irish, better known under its
later name of the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers, the first battalion of
which landed at Calcutta from Mauritius in August that year. Shipp's
commission bore the original date of the vacancy, May 4, 1815; but by an
omission, then not uncommon in the case of Indian appointments, he was
not gazetted at home until some time later, and his name never appeared
in the Army List until May, 1819. Shipp had thus twice won a commission
from the ranks by the time he was little more than thirty years old--an
achievement which may be regarded as unique in the annals of the British
army.

Shipp served with the 87th in the second campaign of the Ghoorkha War,
and distinguished himself by a single combat with one of the enemy's
sirdars in the action near Muckw