The Marine's Sea Cap
- Freddie Deane
- Jul 25
- 5 min read
Recently we were tasked with researching and creating a sea cap for a British marine from the Chatham Division of Marines in 1774. At the time the British Corps of Marines was structured in three divisions: Chatham, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. Each division served as the administrative and training hub, from which marines would then be allocated to ships to make up the required complement aboard. The uniform of the marines in this period generally followed the practices of the army with corps identity signified by the colour of the facings on the iconic red coats (white for marines), the style of lacing around the buttonholes (a thin navy blue and red stripe on a white tape for marines), and buttons (a fowled anchor motif).
The regular headdress of the marines was like that of their regular army counterparts, a black cocked hat, in this case with a white worsted lace trim, white worsted cocking and cockade loops, and it seems a small black ostrich feather worn behind the horsehair cockade. For the marines these hats were reserved for best or full-dress duties such as mounting guards and operations on shore. For most of a marine's life at sea, aboard a warship covered in tar with low decks and all manner of obstructions, keeping a uniform coat clean and wearing a broad cocked hat trimmed with white was less than practical. For this reason, marines adopted the same clothing as the sailors known as 'slops' for their day-today duties aboard ship. This extended to their choice of headwear, and hence the need for a 'sea cap'.
The challenge in this case was that whilst the uniforms of the army are well documented, there is comparatively little detail on those of the marines. Portraiture is of limited use, it mostly depicts officers who followed subtly different uniform conventions to their men. We are however fortunate to have a small selection of paintings produced by a marines Lieutenant Gabriel Bray aboard HMS Pallas in 1774. Bray's pictures are something of a gold-mine, depicting marines off-duty reposing in their sea-rig including sea caps.
Another reference from 1763 suggested that the marines would adapt their old and worn-out hats and uniforms to make sea caps and sea coats - an unsurprising detail given the relative cost of clothing. Having studied the Divisional records at the National Archives there was no mention of sea-clothing in the formal issue of equipment at divisions, confirming that sea caps were most likely made at sea using old hats and uniforms - nothing was wasted when the regular issue of clothing was one of the chief attractions for enlistment.
Bray's pictures offer a fascinating insight into life at sea in the late eighteenth century. They are also unique in their depictions of marines in sea clothing including sea caps. However, they are not entirely consistent. The proportions and apparent details of construction of the caps varies from picture to picture.
What followed was a process of experimental archaeology. Taking a marine's cocked hat of the era that we had already made, we cut the brim off the hat and removed the white lace from its edge. The crown was retained with its linen holland lining to form the basis for the cap. Using the offcut brim we cut a section from the widest part to form the basis of the upright front peak as shown in Bray's pictures. This style of cap bares a close similarity to those worn by some light infantry companies at the time. In Bray's pictures the front of the caps vary in height, whether there was actual variation, or whether Bray's proportions are not wholly accurate is difficult to tell. With this in mind, we made the peak as tall as our off cut of brim allowed on the basis that these caps were likely made entirely from old uniforms and hats. The sides were then trimmed with authentic madder red broadcloth, (off cuts from a tailor friend who was making a soldier's coat at the time). The salvaged white lace was also added to the edges as in Bray's depictions.
The next challenge concerned what to put on the front of the cap. The below image is the clearest of them all and appears to show 'Po Ms Dn' with an anchor motif, almost certainly an abbreviation of 'Portsmouth Marines Division'. This detail is confirmed by the shape of the lace loops on the marine's coats in the picture, straight loops as worn by Portsmouth division to distinguish themselves from the other two divisions. Yet we were not creating a hat for a Portsmouth marine. If we accept that sea caps were made at sea, it seems unlikely that there was any standardisation beyond the community of that ship's company, it was therefore necessary to establish whether any of Pallas's marines could possibly have come from Chatham Division.
Newly commissioned ships typically drew their marines from one division alone, but as time went by, especially during wartime, marines from any division might be drawn to replace losses. Pallas was not a new ship having been commissioned in 1757, and so it seemed likely that the marines came from more than one division. Fortunately, Bray leaves us with a helpful clue. The below depicts a marine on sentry duty, as such he is attired in full dress complete with cocked hat (incidentally the only reference for such a hat in Bray's pictures). A careful study of the uniform coat reveals lace loops in the 'bastion loop' shape, the distinguishing feature of Chatham division, thus confirming that there was at least one marine from Chatham aboard.
Given that Bray's marines do all appear in the same style of sea cap we now had enough evidence to create a well-considered representation of a sea cap for a Chatham marine. Rather than 'Po Ms Dn' we opted for 'Ch Ms Dn' an estimate given that none of Bray's other pictures are sufficiently detailed to show the lettering for a Chatham marine. The letters were cut from the same broadcloth as the facing and sides of the cap and sewn to a white broadcloth backing (the material used for the facings of a marine's uniform coat).
The cap was finished with the cocked hat's button, cockade loop, and horsehair cockade affixed to the left-hand-side as seen in Bray's depictions.
The result proved the plausibility of the theory that these caps were indeed made from old uniform hats and coats. The form seen in Bray's pictures was easily replicated by using the same materials and equipment available to the marines aboard HMS Pallas, and the proportions were dictated by those available materials. The lettering can only be an estimate for the time being, but we do know that Chatham marines were present aboard Pallas, and so it seems probable that their caps also displayed their division as with the Portsmouth marines whose caps are shown in greater detail. This combination of archival research and experimental archaeology allowed us to recreate a hat of which there are no known surviving examples. It also provided valuable insights into the widespread practice of recycling clothing in the eighteenth century, and the skills marines or seamen would have possessed either from their former civilian trades or simply developed over the course of long voyages.
Comments