"AWI British Cut-Down Coats" Topic

I see that Perrys offers AWI British in cut-down coats. Where and what units would have worn these?

David

Pretty much any regiment from 1776 onwards is, I believe, the answer! I generally use them for the Northern theatre from 1777-78, although I'm sure they are fine for the Southern campaigns (unless you want to go with the roundabouts look). I thought that White Plains in 1776 was still dominated by troops in tricornes and full dress, but I imagine the Brits were adopting campaign dress even by then (particularly those units that had already spent considerable time in America).

Giles

What is the difference between cut down coats and 'roundabouts'?
To me they look the same but I may be wrong.

"Roundabouts" are sleeved waistcoats and as such have no lapels and facings. "Cut-down coats" are regimental coats the tails of which have been shortened, so they retain lapels and lace, cuffs, smaller turnbacks etc. "Roundabouts" were worn by light infantry and a couple of line units (such as the 40th Foot) and perhaps more common in the South.

The 23rd Foot here are in roundabouts (albeit with collars and cuffs): link

The 10th Foot here are in cut-down coats: link

Giles

A round about is a short jacket that comes down to the waist and has no tails, look to Confederates in the ACW for a example of round abouts in use in another period. Cut down coats are just the normal coat shortened, these look similar in style to coatees worn in the Napoleonic wars by many armies, basically the tails come down to the bottom or just past the bottom of the butt.

Thanks guys, I was a little confused by the terminology.

One step further in this line of questioning--British roundabouts in later eras (for instance, the Crimea) appeared to be white (black and white photos). Were the British roundabouts in the AWI red? Were they wool, cotton, or linen? Were they similar to the cavalrymen's stable jackets?
Any re-enactors out there?

They were red. For re-enactors, see:

40th Foot: link

23rd Foot (bottom photo): geocities.com/the23rdfoot

24th Foot (for a cut-down coat): link

Giles

rallynow

there is evidence that units in foreign stations had cut down coats even before the Revolution. One painting from Madeira in 1773 shows men in short tailed coats. Also I have seen a court martial account from Boston, Autumn 1775, in which the witness said he recognised somebody's regiment by the yellow facings and short coat tails. Evidently the question of whether the coats got cropped was connected with the colonel's taste and perhaps his parsimony, in that coats were often cropped in order to use the material for patching sleeves etc.

62nd Foot,and others of Burgoyne's army supposedly had cut down coats, along with the cut down hats.

Marines aboard HMS Pallas, c.1770, are also shown in short red jackets in a contemporary watercolour. It's a while since I saw it, but I think that the paintings of the 25th in Minorca c.1771 also show some men in "slop" clothing. There's a also a court-martial of a RA gunner that mentions single-breasted frock coats made from old coats.

A major reason for coats being cropped was that the current year's issue coat had not arrived and the regiment had to keep wearing last year's coat. If the unit had seen a lot of active service, then those coats might be worn and would need patching etc as EC states. In tropical garrisons, the previous year's coat might be turned into a jacket (they were referred to at the time as "postillion's coats" and the term "roundabout" only came much later).

Forrest Harris

The reason later roundabouts were white was because these were made from the normal waistcoat, which was white for the grenadier and centre companies. Only light companies had red waistcoats during the AWI period; non-light companies made theirs from old coats using the waistcoat pattern, or converted their coats into single-breasted coats, which is actually what the 40th did in 1777 (the della Gatta painting of Germantown actually shows them in single-breasted coatees with turnbacks that start from the middle of the stomach, like British Nap uniforms; in most reproductions of the painting, they look very like the sleeved waistcoats worn by the Light Battalion, but the original painting shows a distinct difference).

All,
Cut down coats and roundabouts, as noted, are two different things. Trimming the skirts of the long battalion coats was an accepted practice on campaign throughout the Eighteenth-century British Army, as the bottoms of the skirts would get extremely ragged and dirty after a while in the field. Now, as far as severe cutting down of coats, as you see with Burgoyne's army turning their coats into jackets, that is something completely different. The year 1777 was a hard one for the British Army in North America because several of their clothing supply ships were captured by the rebels, with the result that most of the garrison of Canada did not receive new clothing, and several regiments in the main army (including the 40th) did not receive new clothing. This meant that some units were using the same clothing they had received in 1775 for the 1777 campaign, since the '76 clothing issue never got to them, and they departed from their respective bases before the '77 clothing issue arrived. Eighteenth-century British army uniforms were only intended to serve for a year, so with two hard years of campaigning into these clothes already, changes had to be made to keep them going in the field. So Burgoyne ordered all the regiments in his army to convert their coats to a LI jacket, using the extra cloth from the cut-down skirts to repair damage elsewhere on the coats, and had the men change their hats into caps for the same reason. The Light Infantry in the east, because they had been run so ragged in 1776, took the sleeves off their regimentals and applied them to their red waistcoats. The question of facing-colour patches on the sleeves and the addition of a collar are still open, since the written documentation is not precise, and the images (mostly della gatta) are open to a tremendous amount of interpretation).

Contrary to common belief, there is relatively little evidence for roundabouts in use post-1777. What little their is seems to be limited to specialist troops such as the Queen's Rangers, and the Light Infantry battalions. There is no evidence for massive conversions of coats in the Southern campaign, but there are a few references to trimming the skirts, such as the one in the 43rd Regiment of Foot's orderly book, which can be seen under the documentary extracts on the 17th Infantry's homepage, hm17thinfantry.com.

Some clothing historians, including Jim Kochan and myself, have wondered if the roundabout jackets of the AWI led to the coatees of the Napoleonic period, but unfortunately a large amount of important documents from circa 1802 have gone missing since the 1940s, possibly destroyed by enemy action. The white sleeved waistcoat of the 1812 period does seem to be a descendant of the roundabout, but was used as a second order of dress for drill and fatigue purposes. During the AWI period, soldier used the past year's coat for that purpose, or were outfitted with cheap jackets by their colonels.

I would not put too much faith into della Gatta's depictions of battalion troops in single-breasted coats with turned-back skirts, as he was an Italian painter most familiar with Austrian troops (who wore that sort of uniform) and so, if he was told to show battalion men in shortened coats, probably just painted the ones he knew the best. There are many, many unanswered questions regarding his two paintings, and they are far from being a completely reliable source for uniform information.

If roundabouts were indeed made of cut-down coats and designed to make the wearer more comfortable in the hot season, something doesn't quite make sense to me here. Put simply, why bother converting a heavy cloth garment into something that's tightly buttoned across the chest and therefore much hotter than the original open coat ?

Roundabouts make sense in hot climates if they're made of linen or any similar fabric, yet it does not appear that the infantry received additional issues of lightweight material that could be turned into short jackets (mostly for economic reasons I would suspect, unless of course colonels issued additional "slop" clothing to their men). Converting a woollen piece of clothing designed for European climates into a possibly even more uncomfortable garment simply defeats the very purpose of the modification.

QI,

The waistcoats would not have been that heavy, or necessarily all that tight-fitting, and could be worn open. The looser weave of 18th Century garments would have allowed the wearer to "breathe" much more freely than modern items would in any case. Also bear in mind that it gets cold at night, so there would need to be some kind of trade-off to cope with that.

QI

Please bear in mind that the suspicion is that the roundabout is a modified version of the red waistcoat issued to light companies rather than the white version issued to the battalion and grenadier companies. Thus it is debatable if the roundabout was ever worn outwith the Light Infantry battalions. This seems to be partly what Will Tatum is suggesting.

As to the use of roundabouts as a warm weather clothing. Such a thing was sanctioned but in the 1790s. The first instance was for recruits for regiments in the WI arriving at the Chatham depot who were sanctioned to have gaiter trousers, roundabout jackets (to fit over a waistcoat) and a round hat. Subsequently IIRC this was approved for all rank & file serving in the WI. It seems unlikely that AWI roundabouts would have been cut any tighter than the 1790s iteration.

As to wearing 'heavy' European cloth, even in the earlier C18th concessions were made even in the 1740s when Independent compnaies serving in the West Indies (and possibly the Carolinas?) were to have a linen as opposed to woollen lining to their coats. This is show in some versions of the 1742 Clothing Book. Braddock's troops were issued with lighter linen small cloathes (I do wonder if this was their slop clothing from the voyage over) and leather bladders to line their hats.

As a follow-up to SM's remark, 18th century cloth was actually of a much tighter weave than modern cloth, because it was all hand-made. We have yet to create cloth-making machinery that has the sensitivity pressure of human hands. Original samples I've seen of military cloth from the mid-18th century in the National Archives of Scotland are both thinner than the best-available reproduction cloth (Kochan-Philips cloth) and tighter. As I pointed out in my first post, the LI troops were switching to sleeved waistcoats because their regimental coats were worn out, not to "stay cool." As Thomas noted, some British troops were allowed to make concessions to warm weather- all troops serving in the Caribbean and Africa were allowed to line their coats with linen instead of wool serge, and most wore linen smallclothes (waistcoat and breeches). Wool had to be retained as the basic cloth for coats because it could withstand the rigors of military service much better than linen, which would wear-out very quickly. Capt John Peebles of the 42nd's Grenadier company remarked in 1778-79 that his men's linen gaitered trousers were wearing out less than two months after being issued, and they were worn only on duty.

Will, I always understood – from re-enactors – that modern manufacturing methods using machines produced a "tighter" weave (which seemed logical); but you say that hand-made is more compact? I'm happy to be corrected, but is/was there a reason why hand-weaving would do this?