Napoleon Bonaparte on 'Bellerophon' in Plymouth Sound, 1815 and 1816

Between July 15 and August 4, 1815, HMS Bellerophon was home to the defeated Napoleon Bonapart in the immediate aftermath of his surrender, as Britain decided what to do with him. The occasion was the cause of numerous works of art, including an oil painting by Charles Lock Eastlake that shows Napoleon in a full-length portrait, and another painting of the crowds who swarmed Plymouth Sound in late July and early August for a glimpse of the defeated emperor.

Napoleon Bonaparte on Board the 'Bellerophon' in Plymouth Sound

Oil on canvas. Charles Lock Eastlake, 1815. Royal Museums Greenwich.

After Bellerophon arrived in Plymouth Sound, Napoleon usually appeared in the afternoon around 6 pm so that the numerous boats filled with sightseers could catch a glimpse of him. It was on one of these occasions that Eastlake was able to make a few rapid sketches from life to create the portrait.

Scene in Plymouth Sound in August 1815

Oil on canvas. John James Chalon, 1816. Royal Museums Greenwich.

The painting includes several other figures: behind Napoleon to the right is Général Comte Bertrand, and to the left is Captain Piontowski. The group is completed by a British marine in profile to the right of Napoleon, and a sailor below looking up at him.

As Royal Museums Greenwich notes,

The painting was enormously popular when it was exhibited at No.236 Piccadilly in 1815, and although based on the eyewitness account of Eastlake when a young man, the end result is heavily contrived. Several certificates were issued to testify to the true resemblance of the painting to Napoleon from which Charles Turner created a well-known mezzotint from another version of the painting. The exhibition and the print both made Eastlake's name and earned him a considerable sum.

Charles Turner's 1816 mezzotint omits the other men in Eastlake's painting in favor of focusing on Napoleon, but Eastlake's detailed reproduction of a sailor in the lower left corner is particularly interesting to this blog.

The sailor wears a thin striped blue and white guernsey frock over a white shirt, the cuffs and collar of which are visible at his neck and wrists. Around his neck he also wears a black handkerchief. He wears white trousers or breeches, which lace up in the back and have a pocket that closes with a wooden button.

Another interesting detail in this painting is the hammock stowed in the upper right corner, which shows some details of construction and tricing, and a sailor's watch number stenciled on it in brown.

Chalon's 1816 painting also includes a few interesting sailors, though the details are hard to see in the reproduction quality I was able to find online.

One sailor in a striped blue and white guernsey frock stands on the bow of a ship, a red handkerchief loosely tied around his neck at the sternum and the ends hanging out. He also wears blue trousers. I couldn't quite make it out, but it looked to me like he is wearing some kind of cap.

Note: This detail is taken from Wikimedia commons, not RMG.

Two men rowing a boat wear striped shirts and white-backed vests. One wears a striped red and white cap, and the other wears a black round hat.

An Irish Pilot or Steering by Chance (1812)

"An Irish Pilot, or Steering by Chance". London, 1812. Royal Museums Greenwich.

The British Navy was made up of a number of nationalities, including Welsh, Irish, and Scottish, as well as seamen from Scandinavia and America. The diversity of the lower deck provided ample fodder for caricaturists, as in my previous post about Welshmen, and this engraving entitled "Makeing a Compass at Sea or the Use of a Scotch Louse".

This English engraving from 1812 features a captain with a spyglass says, "Now en't you a pretty fellow for a Pilot? to see Land and not know where we are!", to which the pilot replies, "Och my dear Jewel! only shew me the Old head of Kinsale, and I'll tell you where to an Inch!"

The sailor on the left wears black tie shoes and white stockings, with blue striped trousers, the lacing of which can be seen at his back. He wears a short-cut blue jacket on his torso, and the sleeves of his blue and white checked shirt bell out beyond the ends of his cuffs. His brown hair is short and curly.

The Irish pilot is not a member of the ship's crew, but dresses similarly. He wears black tie shoes and white stockings, and his blue trousers are long and wide. His white waistcoat is worn unbuttoned at the top and bottom and his black handkerchief is tied tightly around his neck, the ends streaming out in the breeze. His brown jacket is worn open. On his head he wears an orange tube cap with a white brim, and from under it peeps a mass of curly brown hair.

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.

Lacing in Style, 1819

"Lacing in Style". London: 1819. Royal Museums Greenwich.

Today we jump forward in  time to 1819 with this great satirical T. Teagg print from 1819: "Lacing in Style, or A Dandy Midshipman preparing for Attraction". A parody of the exaggerated genteel male fashions of the late 1810s, this print shows a midshipman getting his fashionably-waspish waist by having sailors on a capstan winching him tight. The fashion was much-mocked: as the Marine says, "Stays!!! Well, I've a good mind to get petticoats!"

While their officer follow the vagaries of civilian fashion, the Royal Navy sailors on deck reflect the slow, steady change in nautical fashion as well. Closing out the era this blog covers, these sailors are beginning to show many of the signs of the modest revolution sailor fashion undergoes after the end of the Napoleonic Wars: long queues, Guernsey frocks, long trousers that drag on the ground at the heel, and tie shoes.

The sailor sitting on the gun smoking a pipe wears little black pumps, white socks, striped red and white trousers, a blue jacket, and a shapeless black round hat. His queued hair was left uncolored by the artist, making it look blond with a white queue tie.

The four sailors at the capstan are dressed in a motley of clothes: red and white striped trousers, blue trousers, white trousers; a red and white striped Guernsey frock, blue jackets; a tightly-tied white cravat, a loosely-tied red handkerchief. Their little black pumps are tied. The sailor with his back to the viewer has a long, thick brown queue, and the other three sailors look like they have short hair. Two wear black round hats, one wears what looks like a brown "carpenter's cap", and the fourth man is bareheaded.

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.

Marine Dabblers, 1808 and 1811

Today we return to the marine art of JMW Turner in the collection of the Tate with scene from the first decade of the 19th century, done first as a watercolor in 1808 and later issued as a engraving in 1811. In the foreground young boys play in the surf next to a boat run up on the shore, contrasted to the adult fishermen in the background. To quote the Tate's catalog entry, "The anxiety of the child at the loss of a toy in the shallows foreshadows the dangers of setting out in real boats, to which the men shown in the background are accustomed".

I've avoided featuring images of watermen or coastal fishermen because there are sartorial differences between them and bluewater sailors, but the lure of Turner was once again too much for me: not only does the Tate have Turner's original watercolor, but both the preliminary outline etching and the final published version of this print survive, with the final, published print engraved by a different artist.

Together these three images show subtle differences in the interpretation of the sailor's clothing in the scene, and a useful lesson on the over-reliance on an artist's brush-strokes or etching-lines when studying clothing.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

This is Turner's original watercolor, completed in 1808. The sketch was done in Indian Red pigment as a series of washes, with some washing-out used for the figures. The four boys play in the surf at the foreground, and off to the right are the two adults that grabbed my interest.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

It's a little difficult to tell what the men are wearing because of the nature of the washes; the figure on the left standing in the surf half-turned to the viewer appears to be wearing a striped knit cap, a light-colored shirt with full sleeves, petticoat breeches, and a bulk leg covering that look like trousers. The figure on the right, with his back pushed up against the boat, wears a cap, white shirt, light-colored waistcoat, and slops over some sort of leg covering.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Next I turn to Turner's preliminary etching, which offers more clarity in the sharp lines of an etched plate but less detail in terms of shading and some of the garments, but the leg-coverings of the men now look like gaiters worn over breeches.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Finally I turn to the published engraving, which was engraved by another artist, William Say. This bears much more similarity to the original watercolor due to its shading, but even more detail in the sailor's clothes.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Both knit caps look striped, and the sailor on the left's petticoat breeches look horizontally striped. The detail of the gaiters over the breeches is largely lost.

Although this post is perhaps not extremely interesting from the perspective of the costume historian, I nonetheless enjoyed seeing Turner's artistic process, especially when the process gives me insight into studying sailor's clothing in art.

The last jig or Adieu to Old England, 1818

The Last Jig or Adieu to Old England. Rowlandson, London, 1818. British Museum.

 Today's print is a Rowlandson caricature with plenty of great details! It shows one of the popular tropes for sailors in artwork: sailors kicking up bob's-a-dying one last time before their ship departs England. These sailors are on the berthdeck of their ship, with one sailor sitting on the breech of a gun and leaning on a barrel. One sailor plays a fiddle while a couple dances, and in the background more women, a punch bowl, and large jug all add to the merriment.

There are no fewer than seven sailors in this print. They all wear blue jackets with buttons colored the same blue as the coat, and white shirts. Most of them are wearing round hats, with the dancing sailor in the center showing a good example of the straight-sided flat-topped narrow-brimmed style, while the other sailors' hats lean more towards the caricaturist's stereotype of being drawn as misshapen and "squashy".

The fiddler wears blue and white striped trousers, shoes that might be tie shoes, a small black round hat perched at an angle on his head, and a single-breasted blue jacket worn open to show his white shirt with his mariner's cuffs worn closed. To the right of the fiddler in the back of the image on a barrel sits a sailor with a small round hat, a blue jacket with mariner's cuffs worn closed, and white or light blue trousers. The man on the floor to the right of the fiddler is mostly obscured, but we can see his blue jacket. He's also wearing a curious cap that looks decidedly like a thrum cap due to its shape and texture.

The dancing sailor in the center is curiously dressed for the date of this image: he's been drawn in breeches and slops, colored yellow and pink respectively. I had initially wondered if this image was a simple reprint of an earlier print, but the women's clothing and the shape of certainly fits for the 1810s. 1818 was a bit late for sailors to be wearing breeches, so there may be some degree of Rowlandson relying on a visual trope here: breeches and slops read "SAILOR" in 1818 in the same way that a dixie cup and crackerjack uniform reads sailor for us today. The sailor also wears buckled shoes, white stockings, a blue jacket with his cuffs worn open to show a white shirt underneath, and a red handkerchief tied around his neck with the knot at the collarbone. His hair is short and curly, and his round hat is straight-sided and flat-topped with a narrow brim.

A sailor in the background to the right of the dancer is obscured except for his blue jacket. Sitting on a barrel to the right of him is a sailor with a large punch bowl, wearing black shoes, white trousers, a blue jacket worn closed, a white handkerchief around his neck, and a round hat worn canted on his head. The last tar on the right is dressed exactly the same, though he's smoking a pipe and might be wearing a wig.

Other copies of this print offer different colorists' visions of the scene - or perhaps merely what was available in their watercolor boxes. This print from the Royal Collection Trust shows some differences: three of the sailors have brown coats, the neck-cloths are two black and one yellow, the dancing sailor's breeches and slops are brown, the fiddler's trousers are blue instead of white and blue striped, and the man seated on the gun carriage has brown pants instead of white. Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's copy shows the same coloring scheme. There is a copy of this print in the collection of The Walpole Library, but the plug-in to view it is currently not working for me.

The Last Jig or Adieu to Old England, Royal Museums Greenwich copy.

This carefully-painted copy in the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich is remarkably different in its coloration - click on it to see it at the original size and enjoy the colorist's details. The dancing sailor wears horizontally-striped blue stockings, vertically striped blue slops, brown breeches, and a mottled red and orange handkerchief around his neck. What looked like a pocket flap in other versions of the print has been painted yellow, which makes its actual appearance as a tobacco case obvious. One sailor has a red and white striped handkerchief done in delicate brush-strokes, and another in mottled red and pink. All the sailors with shoes have their buckles painted gold, which makes it seem more like the fiddler has tie-shoes - the fiddler also has dark blue socks. Notably, all the sailors' small blue buttons are painted gold. Three of the sailors wear brown trousers and a fourth blue.

This print is an interesting case in how a caricaturist's literal broad brush can paint sailor's clothing in a different light than what might have been the reality: It's easy to leave white trousers the same white as the paper, which might make colored trousers underrepresented, and solid-colored handkerchiefs are easier to paint so they could be over-represented. Similarly, buttons are easy to paint over so they appear cloth covered, which means that one must be careful about making inferences about whether or not sailors wore brass buttons on their coats.

Sailors on horseback, 1811

Continuing our trend of caricatures of sailors having misadventures on horses, today's image from 1811 (one an undated reissue) shows three sailors mounted on horseback racing along. A fourth sailor on the ground has lost his mount - clearly an end the sailor who has been lashed to his mount with "stout cables" is trying to prevent. The whole scene suggests that no possible good can come of this.


I'm showing both of the Walpole's colorations of this print, which both have striped trousers, red and blue jackets, and round hats with cockades. Some of the sailors wear clothes that look more civilian than others, though which sailors are painted as such changes between the prints, and the sailorly nature of all of them is revealed by their jargon-ridden dialogue: the man on the ground cries "Mind what you are at Messmates for I am upset. [A]nd the Frigate I came on board of has been underweigh [sic] without me this half hour". As always, click on the link to the Walpole to view the print at the Walpole, where you can zoom in on the high-resolution image.

"Sailors on Horseback".  GM Woodward, London, c. 1811.
Link to original at full size: The Lewis Walpole Library.





This first colorization shows two sailors in striped trousers (one blue, one red), with the remaining two in blue and a color that could be buff or brown. Two are wearing the usual blue jackets and two are wearing red, a less common color for colorists to use for sailor jackets, but the shapes of their jackets and the details of the cuff remain the same. All four have black round hats, and one has a rosette in his that looks more like a cockade. The sailor on the ground has a loosely-tied handkerchief around his neck colored yellow, and two of the other sailors look to have white neckwear. The two sailors with visible shoes wear white socks and round-toed buckled shoes with large buckles painted as white. All sailors have short, curly brown hair, and the ones shown in profile have distinct sideburns that reach down to their earlobes.

"Sailors on Horseback". Thomas Rowlandson, London, 1811.
Link to original at full size: The Lewis Walpole Library.

The second colorization shows some nice variation: the sailor to the far right looks nothing like a sailor in his light blue trousers, brown coat, and pinkish-red waistcoat that matches the unhorsed sailor's handkerchief. Two sailors have white trousers and blue jackets, and the remaining one has striped blue trousers and a red jacket.



Sailors at a Methodist sermon, 1819



Sailors at a Methodist sermon, 1819.
London, Woodward delt; S.W. Fores publisher.
The Lewis Walpole Library.

This caricature from 1819 is almost at the end of this blog's time period, and my first image covering the post-Treat of Paris era. In it a smug sailor gives back a snappy retort to a wild-haired Methodist preacher.

Of interest is how the sailor is shown to be a sailor when he is dressed almost identically to the man behind him, in a short, single-breasted jacket worn open, a handkerchief tied tightly around his neck, a single-breasted waistcoat worn buttoned, trousers that are a bit baggy in the rear, and a hat. It is not necessarily unique clothing that unmistakably marks him to be a sailor but the colors of his clothes: a blue jacket, red waistcoat, white trousers, and black hat. The colorist knew what people expected a stereotypical sailor to look like, and colored his clothes as such. (As a side note, the version of this print in the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich is colored the same way.)

Differentiating him from the men around him is the fact that the sailor carries a stick with a big, knobby head and that his round hat is somewhat "squashy" looking, with a hatband, turned-up brim, and a large crown. Instead of being brushed forward as was fashionable on land or worn curled his short brown hair is naturally curly and flows out from under his hat.


The man all the way to the right may also be a sailor, judging by the blue rosette in his hat, blue jacket and trousers, black handkerchief, and stick tucked under his arm.

Progress of gallantry, 1814

"Progress of gallantry, or Stolen kisses sweetest."
Thomas Rowlandson, London. [1814].
The Lewis Walpole Library.

 Today's print is our first from the 1810s, a satirical Thomas Rowlandson caricature from 1814. It features an obese, elderly sailor looking through a spyglass at the ships on the sea while the woman accompanying him kisses a handsome, young military officer. This particular print from the Walpole Library is crudely colored.

The sailor wears a black round hat with a tall crown and curled brim, out from which peeks sparse, closely-cropped white hair. His blue jacket is almost cut like a coatee, with buttons in the small of the back, short tails with slits, and a cutaway front, possibly with a buttoned-back double breasted front. His ample belly hangs low in a red waistcoat with welted pockets. His loose trousers stop above the ankle and are white with buttoned pockets, and on his feet he wears white stockings and black tie shoes.


In the background on the beach sits another figure who may be a sailor; all that is visible of his clothing is a blue jacket and a mass of brown hair.