gallery Archive

  • Royal Navy Uniforms Extant Garments Album Updates

    Royal Navy Uniforms Extant Garments Album Updates

    Many new images have been added to both the regular Extant Garments album and the Lord Nelson album. There were too many new items for individual posts, so I thought I’d highlight them here. Of particular interest are the surgeon’s uniform items near the bottom. I can just see Stephen making a horrible mess of [...]

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  • Historical Shipwrecks: <i>HMS Cerberus</i> & <i>HMS Orpheus</i> Gallery

    Historical Shipwrecks: HMS Cerberus & HMS Orpheus Gallery

    The Historical Shipwrecks album is dedicated to pictures of artifacts from shipwrecks relevant to our period. The first addition is this gallery of images relating to the HMS Cerberus and HMS Orpheus. On 29 July 1778, a French fleet under Admiral Comte d’Estaing arrived in Narragansett Bay as allies of the Americans in their war [...]

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  • Paintings, Plans, Diagrams and History of the <i>HMS Boadicea</i>

    Paintings, Plans, Diagrams and History of the HMS Boadicea

    *SPOILERS* … the Boadicea proved she was a dry, wholesome ship. – The Mauritius Campaign

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  • Royal Navy Uniforms: Sailor’s Embroidered Sea Bag

    Royal Navy Uniforms: Sailor’s Embroidered Sea Bag

    “A slow packer he was, and inefficient; if Killick had not come to him, having stowed the Captain’s sea-bag, Stephen might have gone on staring at the handkerchiefs, the neckcloths, and the warm-weather drawers until the drum called him away to dinner.” – The Fortune of War I’m cheating a little in adding this to [...]

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  • Royal Navy Uniforms: Sailor’s Shore-Going Rig

    Royal Navy Uniforms: Sailor’s Shore-Going Rig

    This seaman’s hat and waistcoat from the early 19th century is the newest addition to our Well-Dressed Men Royal Navy Uniforms Extant Garments album. It is probably an example of “shore-going rig”, as regular seamen had no set uniforms until later in the century. Captains would often provide the crew of their personal barge with [...]

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  • Paintings, Plans, Diagrams and History of the <i>HMS Surprise</i>

    Paintings, Plans, Diagrams and History of the HMS Surprise

    *SPOILERS* … He knew her through and through, as beautiful a piece of ship-building as any that had been launched from the French yards, a true thoroughbred, very fast in the right hands, weatherly, dry, a splendid sailor on a bowline, and a ship that almost steered herself once you understood her ways. - H.M.S. [...]

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  • <i>Well-Dressed Men</i> Civilian Extant Garments Album

    Well-Dressed Men Civilian Extant Garments Album

    “Dr Maturin is waiting for you, Di,” said Cecilia. “He is walking his horse up and down in a fine new bottle-green coat with a black collar. And he has a new tie-wig. I suppose that is why he went up to London.” - Cecilia Williams to Diana Villers, Post Captain All images and background [...]

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  • <i>Well-Dressed Ladies</i> Extant Garments Gallery

    Well-Dressed Ladies Extant Garments Gallery

    “It was a good dress, a light, flimsy version of the naval blue, with white about it – no black, no concessions to Mrs Williams, for it was understood that at a ball any woman was allowed to make the best of herself; but where taste, figure and carriage are equal, a woman who can [...]

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  • 06.01.1794 The Glorious First of June Gallery

    06.01.1794 The Glorious First of June Gallery

    The Glorious First of June was the first major fleet battle of the French Revolutionary War, 1793-1801. The French admiral, Rear-Admiral Louis-Thomas Villaret-Joyeuse, had sailed from Brest to intercept a valuable grain fleet from America, vitally needed in famine-stricken France. The English commander-in-chief, Lord Howe, sailed with the Channel Fleet in his flagship the HMS [...]

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  • Royal Navy Uniforms: Lord Nelson Album

    Royal Navy Uniforms: Lord Nelson Album

    Lord Nelson’s reputation as one of the greatest naval minds of the Napoleonic Era is not a modern invention. He was considered a hero during his lifetime, long before Trafalgar, to the extent that many of his personal effects “attained the status of relics” while he was alive. For this reason, many of those personal [...]

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