The Use of a Gentleman or Patronage for the Admiralty (1810)

The Use of a Gentleman or Patronage for the Admiralty. Published by Thomas Tegg, London. Undated; c. 1810. The British Museum.

The undiscerning nature of the press gang appeared frequently in 18th century caricatures like The Liberty of the Subject (1779), but in this 19th century update the artist mocks the results of the press laying their hands on members of the social elite.

 The Use of a Gentleman or Patronage for the Admiralty. Royal Museums Greenwich copy.

The scene shows two gentlemen in fashionable civilian clothes pleading their case to an officer. Their exaggerated clothes and posture are contrasted with the round and solid plainness of the sailors, and their useless refinements in contrast to the blunt, practical effectiveness of the clubs and shackles of the press gang.

One fresh recruits pleads his case, that he is indeed a gentleman who is well known in Bond Street. The officer hopes that the man will be able to teach his crew some manners: "Yes, yes! I see you are every inch a Gentleman, and just the person we want, my men have pressed a d---'d numer [sic] of Blackguards, and we want a Gentleman on board to teach them good manners!"  

This image shows a few items new to this blog, including men wearing cutlasses with balrdics! The sailor with his back to the viewer wears black pumps, blue (or white) trousers with hems that drag on the ground. Although he carries a solid stick in his right hand he also wears a cutlass on a baldric, with a black scabbard with a yellow chape and locket. His jacket is blue, with buttons painted yellow in the British Museum copy. Shoulder-length brown hair peeps out from under a black round hat.

His mate on the far right left wears white (or light blue, or white being shown in shadow) trousers, a blue jacket, and a yellow handkerchief with red spots. Brown curly hair peeping out from under a black round hat completes the look.

The central two sailors offer much to look at. The man on the left wears black buckled shoes, dark blue (or light blue, or white being shown in shadow) trousers, again with wide legs and cuffs that drag on the ground. a blue jacket (with small yellow buttons in the British Museum copy), and a black hat with a tightly-curled brim, with straight brown hair peeping out from under it. In the British Museum's copy his waistcoat is indistinguishable from his jacket and his handkerchief is black, while in the Royal Museums Greenwich print his waistcoat and handkerchief are white.

The sailor at the center of the print is colored almost the same in both versions. He stands with his legs wide, wearing small buckled shoes, white stockings, and broadfall trousers with very wide legs and cuffs that drag extremely on the ground. He wears a red waistcoat, white shirt, and black handkerchief. His blue jacket has gold buttons in the British Museum copy - the only difference. He also wears a cutlass on a baldric, though he carries a stout cudgel under one arm. Brown curly shoulder length hair peeps out from a round hat with tightly-curled sides and a piece of string tied around the hatband.

Rating's Trousers, c. 1810

Today I'm tackling my first artifact, a pair of striped linen trousers dated to c. 1810 in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. I had the pleasure of seeing this garment in person when I visited Greenwich in 2016 and oohed and ahhed over it for some time, taking many indifferent photos with my camera phone. Unfortunately, the exhibit label and "Nelson, Navy, Nation" exhibit catalog didn't offer much more information about the provenance of this garment, or what the back looks like. Perhaps an email to the curator and a follow-up post is in order!

"Rating's trousers". English, c. 1810. National Maritime Museum.

Striped red or blue trousers are closely linked with the portrayals of sailors in art, from the early 18th century to the end of the period I study and beyond. An early example of sailors with striped trousers comes in a detail the 1746 painting "The Royal Family" - screencap courtesy of British Tars: 1740-1790.

Detail from "The Royal Family", c. 1746. Richard Green Fine Art.

Artists from caricaturists to serious painters continue to depict sailors with striped trousers throughout the 18th century, and into the 19th. For more examples, I recommend looking at the "striped trousers" tags for both my blog and British Tars.

Detail from "The Embarkation", c.1760's. NMM.

 The exact nature of the stripe varies depending on the artist, from the broad stripes of a cheap colored caricature to the narrow stripes of a serious painting or more expensive mezzotint. Stripe patterns can even change from different copies of the same print, as in the 1807 caricature "Sailors in a Calm".

Detail from "A story of a little parson and the sailor, 1797"

However, this particular pair of trousers is made of linen with a blue stripe in two different, very narrow narrow widths. Like many other surviving striped linens of the 18th century the fabric is largely white instead of evenly-sized stripes.

Trouser detail. Visit the NMM page to see the high-resolution original photo.

The buttons are horn; the fall relatively shallow and narrow and bound at the edges, closed by two corner buttons and a central button, and the waistband by three buttons, including the center one that goes through the fall. These trousers also have buttons for holding up braces - an extremely useful detail, as sailors are usually depicted wearing jackets and waistcoats in artwork, and when in their shirtsleeves are inconsistently shown wearing braces. The waistband closes at the back with gusset cut on the diagonal and laced shut with small lacing-holes, a detail seen recently on this blog in  John Augustus's Atkinson's 1807 print "Sailors".

The garment looks like it's pieced at the top of the leg and fly - perhaps the fabric was not long enough, or it's a construction detail I'm unfamiliar with. The legs are cut narrow and straight. It is difficult to tell where they might have fallen on the leg without knowing the inseam of the man who wore them, though artwork of the c. 1810 time period shows trouser hems around the ankle.

As always, though it's possible to make informed generalizations about sailor clothing from how artists depicted them, their prejudices and conventions can make it difficult to determine the details what sailors were actually wearing. The rareness of extant artifacts creates its own survival bias, but having a garment like this to compare to artwork is a great treasure.