Clothes make the man: naval uniform and masculinity in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

The first regulated uniforms for the Royal Navy, introudced in 1748, drew directly on contemporary fashions. Their associations of refinement and politness were used to professionlise a corps of officers who were viewed as guardians of the nation, while at the same time were popularly percieved to be rough and uncouth. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the links between naval uniform and fashion were used to shape the masculine identites of the officers of the Royal Navy. In the period following the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the uniform came ot represent idealised masculine virtues including duty and sacrifice. As the nineteenth century progressed, officers, particularly junior officers, incorporated elements of the flamboyant costume of the dandies, who were at the forefront of male fashion in the 1810s and 1820s. The associations of dandy fashion, effeminacy and excess, were undesirable qualities for the naval officer and impacted on the way in which the public percieved the navy. Further these fashons were adopted at a time when the navy itself was undergoing a number of transitional changes: in technology from sail to steam; downsizing as the result of a relatively prolonged period of peace and the strains on government budgets that were the financial legacy of the Napoleonic Wars. This paper explores the way that fashion shapes masculiniity even within the confines of regulated clothing. It will also look at how undesirable masculine identites, projected through fashion, can be reconciled.

Keywords:

• masculinity
• fashion
• dandyism
• uniform
• Royal Navy
• nineteenth century

Notes

1. These new uniforms were only for commissioned officers and midshipmen. Warrant officers’ uniforms were introduced in stages in the early nineteenth century and ratings did not have a regulated uniform until 1857. On the development of naval uniform, see Miller, Dressed to kill.

2. Moncrieff, Three dialogues on the navy, 14.

3. TNA, ADM 7/658, Minutes of the annual visitation to the yards, 1749.

4. Alexander Hood's (1758–98) dress coat for a Captain with over three year's seniority is held by the National Maritime Museum (NMM, UNI0043).

5. Examples of the incorporation of macaroni fashion can be seen in the 1774 regulations for a captain's dress coat and undress coat (NMM, UNI0011–12).

6. Nicolas, ed., Dispatches and letters of Lord Nelson, vol. 1, 86.

7. Dandy midshipman 1819, William Henry Smyth (NMM, PAF0613).

8. Waugh, Cut of men's clothes, 112.

9. Walker, Savile Row story, 78.

10. Vice-Admiral's undress coat, 1825–7 pattern (NMM, UNI0122).

11. Dandies dressing, 1818, British Museum, 1865, 1111.2096

12. See, for example, Royal Navy full dress surgeon's coat, 1825–32 pattern (NMM, UNI0138); East India Company commander's single-breasted jacket, 1830 pattern (UNI0165); Royal Marines double-breasted coat, 1830 pattern (UNI0167).

13. For further discussion on male body modification in pursuit of the fashionable silhouette in the nineteenth century, refer to Lamotte, ‘Corsets, stomach belts, and padded calves’.

14. Man's corset belonging to Thomas Chew, collection of the USS Constitution Museum.

15. For details of the post-war reduction of the Royal Navy, see Wilcox, ‘These peaceable times are devil’.

16. Hawker, The navy, 2.

17. Admiralty Regulations, 18 December 1827, quoted in Commander W.E. May, The uniform of naval officers, typescript, n.d., National Maritime Museum, 3 vols, vol. 1, 91. [2 vols, 1969?] This is the typescript that has been in the curatorial office, it is most definitely in three volumes.

18. Ibid., 95.

19. Hamilton, ed., Letters and papers of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Byam Martin, vol. 1, 117.

20. Ibid., vol. 1, 24.

21. Things as they were, 1757. Things as they are, 1827. HW [engraver], S.W. Fores [publisher], 1827 (NMM, PAF3724).

22. Gentleman's Magazine of Fashion (July 1828): 43.

23. Retrenchment – or whiskeranders crossing the line (a new route), Henry Heath, S.W. Fores [publisher], n.d. (NMM, PAF3785).

24. Vice-Admiral, Engelman, Graf, Coindet and Co., Feb. 1829 (NMM, PAF4208).

25. Gentleman's Magazine of Fashion (May 1828): 5.

26. TNA, ADM 1/3467, letter 124

27. Commander James Clark Ross, John R. Wildman, 1834 (NMM, BHC2981).

28. Shelley, Frankenstein, 4.