"Loyalist uniforms. " Topic

Unless they have specialized uniforms, like British Legion, Queen's Rangers, or Volunteers of Ireland, how do you uniform yours?
I like to use figures sold as Continentals, mainly because they aren't as spiffy as British and show some wear.
I have painted green coat and redcoat Loyalists from Old Glory and Hinchliffe Continentals and am now doing some King's Mountain ones in red coats. Nice variety too.

I prefer to use British figs, as some of the Loyalist corps tried to out do the British in formality.

I have a general mix of green and red. I have done a few individual units.

I'm using Scruby N-gauge, so there's no British/Continental distinction. And I'm mixing green and red. for example, the 2/Kin's Royal Regiment of New York is in red, but the first battalion is in green (they ARE Johnson's Greens, after all).

I have loyalist in both "unripe" and "ripe" uniforms. Sorry bad reenactor joke from the 1970's. My British Legion (Infantry and dragons) are green while the King's American and New York Volunteers are in red. For the line regiments I use British figures. Loyalists received yearly supply of clothing and equipment from the British government so would be dressed and equipped similar to British regulars. In addition the two line units I have were on the special American establishment ( 3rd and 4th regiments) so we're able to order their uniforms and equipment through the same sources as British line regiments. Both regiments were raised and commanded by Americans rather then British officers so my guess is they worked at being more British then the British. To quote John the OFM. Although I have no documentation I have given both regiments a set of colors based on those of the Queens Rangers.

Conincidentally, I posted all my thoughts on loyalists this morning: gilesallison.blogspot.co.uk

I'm using the Perry plastic box sets to create red and green coated units with a variety of headgear (so using slouch hats from the British set on the plastic Continentals, for example). I'll use some "Saratoga" British as well for some of the loyalist light infantry-type units.

The principal official difference, once the red uniforms had been introduced, was the lack of button hole lace on the coats of the Loyalist corps. However, it seems quite a few of the larger units seem to have had this anyway – especially multi-battalion units, who used the spacing of the lace to indicate which battalion was which.

Rene Chartrand's re-write of the very old Osprey MAA book on the Provincial Corps, represents the most up-to-date knowledge on Loyalist uniforms, IMO.

If you are looking for generic units, then the most common facings with the green coats were red, white, buff and orange; with the red coats it was dark blue, olive or leaf green, and yellow.

I've stuck with green coats. Green tends to work as a good visual guide for loyalists for those that don't know much about the AWI. Like Winston, I use continentals.

I've painted a generic loyalist unit with white facings that represents whatever I need at the time. I might paint up a couple of units in red coats at some stage.

The Yorkers re-enactment unit are in the process of redoing their uniforms from green faced blue to green faced red, based on research done by Jim Kochan that showed stocks of red wool, but no blue on hand. I believe that later, the regiment switched to red faced blue.

I think they also had a brief period of wearing blue-faced-white, utilising cloth captured in a raid somewhere around Lake Champlain. Apparently, they were very unhappy with this as it made them prone to "friendly fire", and got red coats issued asap.

I bet. :-)

I use my special edition magazine which focused on the Loyalist back as the first issue of Time Portal Passages.
I was always partial to the green coat for northern operations. In the South, I preferred the uncooked wide brim hat with the feathers.

"Rene Chartrand's re-write of the very old Osprey MAA book on the Provincial Corps, represents the most up-to-date knowledge on Loyalist uniforms, IMO."

Are you referring to MAA #450?

That is the one, coopman.

Good. I just received a copy of it this week.