The regiment embarked at Calcutta on 24 March 1840 with a strength of nine hundred men, bound for Singapore, where it would rendezvous with an expeditionary force being prepared for service in China. The force arrived off Chusan on 4 July, capturing it with little resistance the following day. The 26th was camped on a hill just inside the city, where heavy work, bad terrain and bad provisions soon caused illness to set in. The regiment moved into the city proper in September, by which time four hundred men were sick, and in October and November around eighty men died each month. Two hundred and sixty men were evacuated to Manila in November, and by the end of the year two hundred and forty men had died, with a hundred and sixty-three sick in Chusan and a mere hundred and ten able-bodied men.