In December 1775, at the age of 21, the volunteer-soldier Banastre Tarleton sailed from Cork to North America, where the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) had broken out. Tarleton sailed with Lord Cornwallis as part of an expedition to capture the southern city of Charleston, South Carolina. After that expedition failed, at the Battle of Sullivan's Island (28 June 1776), Tarleton joined the main British Army under command of General William Howe, in New York