Coffee House Warriors or The First Uniforms of the Royal Navy

Researched and written by M. Dennis. Copyright © 2004.

The Royal Navy first introduced uniform for officers in 1748. This was at the request of the officers themselves; a group of them from Wills Coffee House in London petitioned King George II and a parade of samples prepared by the officers was held for the King to choose. Up till then a grey coat and small clothes or combinations of red and blue had been popular, but the King chose one version with white and blue colours. Legend has it that the King saw the Duchess of Richmond riding in a habit of these colours and decided on them rather than any of the proposed the samples. Unlike most legends this may be true; the Duchess did own such a riding habit and the source of the story is her husband the Duke, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Whatever the origin, blue and white it has been ever since (1) in the Royal Navy's uniforms - and just as well too, for the French and Spanish both chose red and blue for their navies and there would have been awful confusion.

Each commissioned officer had a full dress and a frock (undress) uniform; midshipmen had just a frock. The ordinary sailors had no uniform, and it would be more than a hundred years before they got one. (The only uniformity was created by their making clothes together on board from bulk bought cloth.) The officers' uniforms lasted from 1748 (with a few changes to distinguish ranks) until 1767, when the frocks were modified to become the full and undress uniform, starting a long, long, series of alterations that made tailors very happy (when they got paid of course….) and officers pointlessly poor. There were four more major changes in the next 50 years.

Taking the ranks in order, the uniforms fall into four groups:

British Navy Admirals

Amiral - Full Dress Admiral Byng	Admiral - Undress Admiral Sir Charles Saunders

The full dress was embroidered richly and was effectively a court dress. The undress was laced rather than embroidered and had lapels. All the existing portraits that I have access to show a rather strange loop running around the back of the cuff between the laced loops under the top one that goes all round. I am unclear if this is just part of the uniform or if it is a rank distinction. The cuff was a large bucket cuff, as in full dress. The pattern of lace is not what would later be generally known as 'naval' lace; it has a pattern of spots woven into it. The breeches are blue at this period; stockings and shoes complete the outfit for all officers.

Pirates of the Caribbean - Admiral Uniforms

As can be seen, Norrington is in the frock uniform of an Admiral. There is a reference in 1787 which says that Commodores were allowed the frock of a Rear Admiral but not the full dress, so this is a plausible costume for him. The feathers around the hat are a fantasy and he should have blue breeches at this date, otherwise a very good effort! The neck decoration is the military division of the Order of the Bath, correct for an officer after 1815 (at which date the Order was separated into civil and military divisions) but not in the 1700s!! The half ring from the back of the cuffs just goes all the way round. No one knows what the back of the uniform looked like, so anything goes, but I would expect it to be similar to the 1767 uniform - and it is here.

British Navy Captains

Captain - Full Dress 1748 - 1767	Captain - Frock 1749 - 1767

The captains wore a laced coat, single breasted in dress and double breasted in frock dress. In full dress the senior captains wore three rows of lace, two broad and one narrower at the top. Junior captains had just the two broad bands and Commanders one. I am not aware of a portrait of a Commander in full dress so cannot say if the lacing varied over the rest of the coat, but probably not.

In the frock dress from 1749 distinctions of rank were shown by lapel and cuff colours. Captains over three years' seniority had white, under three years had white on the cuff only, and Commanders blue cuffs and lapels. The cuffs had a large slash on the cuff rather than the bucket cuff of the full dress. (Known as a 'mariner cuff', this was originally so that the sleeve could be opened and rolled back for working on board ship.) This uniform lasted with slight changes until 1827 as a full dress. A portrait of Captain Alexander Hood (Viscount Bridport) shows three buttons on the skirt front below the lapel and matching false thread buttonholes on the other side. Hood wears his coat buttoned over at the waist - this affectation persisted; a portrait of Captain Broke of HMS Shannon in 1812 also shows his coat partly buttoned across.

Captain Alexander Hood Captain over three years, frock	Unknown Captain Captain under three years, frock

Pirates of the Caribbean - Captain Uniforms

Norrington is wearing the regulation frock uniform but there are errors. He has the same bucket cuffs as in full dress instead of the mariner cuff slash, his waistcoat has three lines of lace instead of one around it and his cuffs are blue not white.

British Navy Lieutenants

The lieutenants wore a plain coat in full and frock dress, the full dress having white cuffs. Waistcoats were laced around the edge and pockets with a broad gold lace. The lieutenants complained about the plainness of their blue frock and in 1759 the lapels and cuffs were changed to white. They retained their white 'washboards', as these were known , until the turned back lapels on their coats were abolished in 1828.

Unknown Lieutenant c. 1748 in Frock

Pirates of the Caribbean - Lieutenant Uniforms

All the Lieutenants, including Norrington at the start, wear the full dress (but with blue cuffs not white) and with lots of extra gold lace on the coat. I'm sure the originals would have done if they could….

British Navy Midshipmen

Midshipman 1748-1758	Midshipman 1758-1787

The charming portrait to the left shows the first midshipman uniform on the boy; this was single-breasted and had a mariner cuff. Originally the collar was in white velvet and could be turned up and buttoned, but from 1758 white collar patches with false buttonholes and buttons were introduced and this remains the rank badge of a midshipman to this day. Waistcoats were plain.

Pirates of the Caribbean - Midshipman Uniforms

I assume that the men wearing entirely plain uniforms are midshipmen - in which case promotion must be very slow under Commodore Norrington…..

Sources for this Article

There is not much in print about this period; I had to draw together several books and picture sources to complete it. The books were:

British Naval Dress - Dudley Jarrett 1961
The Dress of Naval Officers - HMSO 1966
The Duchess wore Blue - Major R M Hicks for Moss Bros Ltd n.d. but ?1953ish

Most of the pictures are copyright the National Maritime Museum and are from their website; the cartoon is from Hicks. I cannot find a portrait of a Commander in this uniform period. The National Maritime Museum oil painting database is on line and is also very good at showing the range of costume worn by sea officers before the uniform was created. A search of paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds will probably bring up one or two as he seems to have painted a lot of sea officers (2).

One day someone will write the complete history of RN Uniform but until then, worryingly, this short article is the best that's been done so far on this bit of it.

What happened next in the British Navy?

In 1767 the full dress uniforms were abolished, leaving the frock as a universal uniform. The full dress was old-fashioned so this was not really a surprise. The frocks were made more modern and extra lace added to the cuffs and pockets of the captains and commanders. Admirals had, if anything, rather less lace but the loops were made more ornate.

This meant that officers had to wear a gold laced coat at all times, expensive…. A new undress uniform in plain blue was introduced in 1787 and the laced coats became full dress. This uniform regulation was worn at the start of the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France and so has been covered by several books; the Osprey Elite Nelson's Navy is probably still available.

Final Note: having left everyone full of certainty about naval uniform, always remember that when away from home officers could and did wear out-of-date uniforms, improvised uniforms and just plain unauthorised uniforms. Even as late as the end of the first world war Admiral Beatty was wearing a jacket with the wrong number of buttons. Which is my way of saying that, in pirate films at least, you can't really be criticised as long as the Brits are well dressed, as befits everyone's favourite villains.

Note 1: King William IV inflicted red collar and cuffs instead of white but almost the first act of Queen Victoria was to get things back to normal.

Note 2: Sea Officer = does the job fighting the French/pirates/anyone else odd or foreign; Naval Officer = has a soft job running a dockyard or in the Admiralty nearer to court than combat.