In 1807 all serving black soldiers recruited as slaves in the West India Regiments of the British Army were freed under the Mutiny Act passed by the British parliament that same year. In 1808 the Abolition Act caused all trading in slaves to be "utterly abolished, prohibited and declared to be unlawful". In 1812 a West African recruiting depot was established on Bance Island in Sierre Leone to train West African volunteers for the West India Regiments. By 1816 the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the reduction of the West India regiments to six led to the closure of this depot. Thereafter all recruitment for the various West Indian regiments that fought in World War I and World War II were West Indian volunteers, with officers and some senior NCOs coming from Britain.