royal marines 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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  • A Brief Guide to Men and Officers in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

    A Brief Guide to Men and Officers in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

    Current scholarship (thanks in part to the title of N. A. M. Rodger’s influential book) often refers to the ships of Aubrey’s Royal Navy as “the wooden world”. This is a highly accurate description of a complicated self-contained society with strict rules of conduct and hierarchy. Entire articles can be and have been written about [...]

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  • History of the <i>HMS Belleisle</i> (1795 – 1814)

    History of the HMS Belleisle (1795 – 1814)

    The Belleisle was originally the French Formidable which was captured in 1795, and renamed, since there was already a Formidable in the British Navy. In 1803 HMS Belleisle joined Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean where she served for the next two years in the blockade of Toulon, and took part in the chase of Villeneuve’s [...]

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  • Napoleonic Era Naval Tactics (5/5): Repel Boarders!

    Napoleonic Era Naval Tactics (5/5): Repel Boarders!

    Once the decks had been cleared, the ship would grapple its opponent and a boarding party of heavily armed soldiers would be sent aboard. During the fight, part of the boarding party would be assigned the task of damaging the enemy’s rigging. On deck Marines led boarding parties in close action and repelled enemy boarding [...]

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  • Napoleonic Era Naval Tactics (4/5): Marines in the Fighting Tops

    Napoleonic Era Naval Tactics (4/5): Marines in the Fighting Tops

    In the earlier form of ships the top was a species of crows nest placed at the head of the mast to hold a look-out, or in military operations to give a place of advantage to archers and slingers. They appear occasionally as mere bags attached to one side of the mast. As a general [...]

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  • Lieutenant Paul Harris Nicholas’ Account of the Battle of Trafalgar

    Lieutenant Paul Harris Nicholas’ Account of the Battle of Trafalgar

    This first-person account of the Battle of Trafalgar comes to us from Lieutenant Paul Harris Nicholas, Royal Marines, who was serving aboard the HMS Belleisle at the time. It was given aboard the HMS Bijou in 1829. I was scarcely sixteen when I embarked for the first time, in the Belleisle of eighty guns, and [...]

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  • The Royal Marines in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

    The Royal Marines in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

    One aspect of Napoleonic naval warfare that is somewhat difficult for denizens of the modern age to comprehend is the position of Royal Marines on Royal Navy ships. Throughout the Aubrey/Maturin series, we have the pleasure of meeting several very memorable Royal Marines, but their difference from the commissioned officers of the ship is never [...]

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