"Brown knapsacks for British line infantry?" Topic

Googling around there seems to be some evidence that British knapsacks were either brown canvas or even brown hide. To wit, here is a Denis Dighton painting of the RA in the Peninsula:
link

Now it could be that he observed RA troops in barracks and then placed them, in that appearance, in a battle scene; hence perhaps the white trousers. However, here is another scene this time depicting the Guards:
link

Those guys on the left appear to be wearing hide knapsacks.

I'm aware the Trotter backpack is a bit of a myth, and that there was a Board of Ordnance pattern units were supposed to conform to, but does anyone know what the official pattern was supposed to be? Was there even an official colour?

The following is from C E Franklin's British Napoleonic Uniforms, The History Press, 2008 staring at page 130:
"The ubiquitous and unpopular British infantry pack had been in service for many years. the early issue was made of canvas or coarse linen with the outside usually painted to make it weatherproof and the rear embellished with a regimental badge or identity …." [the plate on page 131 shows "envelope" packs in off white and light brown] "… The trotter knapsack began to replace the envelope pack in 1805, but is was some years before all units were equipped with it and many variations in pattern are known…." "… In 1808 packs were directed to be painted black with the regimental number in white, but it is clear that many regiment failed to comply with this order and in 1812 the order was reiterated that they should be marked with the number an no other ornament." [the plate on page 131 shows Trotter packs in tan/light brown and black].

Of course they could also have been replaced by the more comfortable French version. At least that's what all though the Sharpe books.

The Trotter framed knapsack isn't a bit of a myth , it's a complete myth.
It has unfortunately been repeated by almost every Napoleonic uniform book for many decades, including Franklin. This whole topic was seriously investigated by Frank Packer in the late '90s,by reading original documents and making 1:1 reconstructions, and is now accepted by the re-enacting world, who have to make and wear the things.
Research is ongoing, and the final word is not yet written….
Quite how the " Trotter Knapsack " myth arose is now hard to reconstruct, but rest assured that it's now exploded.The Trotter company went out of business in 1806, so had nothing to do with it.The rigid wooden frame was not used in knapsacks until the later 1820s.

I recommend Pierre Turner's wonderful book, " Soldier's Accoutrements of the British Army 1750-1900 ", Crowood Press 2006 , where this topic is beautifully illustrated, though research has now moved on since it was published.
There is also a very long thread on the topic on the 2nd 95th's excellent Forum:~

link

Therein are assembled a tremendous collection of contemporary illustrations, for the enthusiast to compare .

But roughly and briefly , there were open-sided canvas "envelope" knapsacks from the 1790s and earlier , often oil-painted with red ochre (which can look brown) ,yellow ochre, or buff , or black paint,according to the Colonel's preference, sometimes with Regimental devices painted on. These had open sides which closed with ties.
Several of these survive, mostly from Militia units, and may indeed have been supplied by Trotters,among others.
From 1811 a new pattern with folding sides was approved by a Board of General Officers, of black painted canvas, which when assembled became a slightly rounded black box, because it had NO INTERNAL FRAME, and could often sag or bulge into various shapes, depending on the contents.It could also be carefully packed to look rectangular,perhaps even with wooden boards, which was presumably done for parades.
This pack is quite well shown in several contemporary paintings, such as the Dighton one of the Guards at Hougoumont, and an example has now turned up in Sweden.

As I say , this is area of active research, but perhaps one to which modelmakers( including myself) and wargamers had not paid enough attention.

There is no definitive answer to your question as yet, but after about 1810 you will be safe with black, with the number on the back in white. Some Regiments may have continued to have their painted in other colours, but we don't really have enough detailed information to be exact about it.

a very good thread – showing how bulky the back pack was, and very interesting quotes about the "frame" form Clinton, Gareth Glover published two volumes of his correspondence which is full of detail, here from the thread

Inspection of 33rd Foot 14/9/1814
"…the packs are ill packed & contain too many articles of necessaries & both blankets and greatcoats are awkwardly strapped on the outside " Further note: "…the knapsacks ill packed and many apparently containing more than authorised by regulations of the army, whilst the blankets were carried on the outside…"

Inspection of 69th Foot 15/9/1814
"…the Packs are too deep & the idle practice of filling them out with frames is allowed, I desired General Gibbs to have this got rid of, the blankets even taken from the soldiers & given into store. None of these regimnets have the light camp kettle to be carried by soldiers & to serve five or six of them…"

Further note:

"The men's pack are kept in shape by means of a wooden frame which serves no other purpose than that of deception, many of the men appear to me to have a small portion of the necessaries, whilst the depth of the pack covers the whole of the back and rests upon the paunch…"

Inspection of 78th Foot 19/9/1814
"…the blanket is rolled upon the top of the pack, the greatcoat upon the outside, the pack itself is fitted out with frames so that we cannot discover whether it be completely or part filled…" Further note: "The blanket and the greatcoat are both strapped on the outside of the pack, while this is filled out with a wooden frame, make a very bulky and inconvenient load…"

Inspection of 44th Foot 20/9/1814
"…The packs are filled out with boards & both great coats and blankets are strapped on the outside forming a very bulky load. These men have retained their blankets & Colonel Gregory represents that the soldiers are in want of them…" Further note: "The greatcoats and blankets are strapped upon the outside of the pack which after the manner of the 78th Regiment are kept in shape by boards, by which a very unnecessary weight is added to the soldiers burthen."

Inspection 2nd Batt KGL Light Infantry 21/9/1814
"…these man carry both greatcoats and blankets in their packs & and in this hape they make a much less awkward load, their packs are more loose than those of the 1st Battalion…"

Inspection of 54th Foot 22/9/1814
"… a few men who had their packs, had both greatcoat and blanket strapped without it…"

Inspection of Verden Landwehr 23/9/1814
"…the knapsacks are not well packed & the greatcoat settled upon the top of them makes a very awkward load…" Further note : " The careless manner in which the necessaries are put into the packs ; one unified mode must be adopted and the great coat, provided the soldiers are not required to carry their blankets, is always carried in the fold of the pack."

Inspection of Benthiem Landwehr 26/9/1814
"…the great coat is carried rolled upon the pack which I desired must be altered."

Inspection of 25th Regiment 29/9 1814
"… the wooden frames are not yet taken out of the packs."

Inspection of 37th Foot 29/9/1814
"… the packs like many others filled out with frames…" Further note : "…and the knapsacks do not seem to contain what ought to be within, the uniformity of their present appearance is to be ascribed to the use of the frame which must be got rid of."

Letter to Major General Kielmansegge 30/9/1814
" Packs and Necessaries.
The packs ought not be larger than necessary to carry those articles which the soldier is required to have in his possession by regulation of the Army, the soldiers must be taught to pack then in the most convenient manner & and it must be insisted on that he has these in his pack whenever ordered to parade in marching order. In order to reduce what he has to carry to the most compact shape, the greatcoat is to be carried in the fold of the pack, unless the place is occupied by a blanket in which case only, the greatcoat is to be rolled & strapped upon the pack. No frames in order to keep the pack in shape are allowed, those battalions which may have them must get rid of them."

Inspection 3rd Guards 14/12/1814
"… the packs are supplied with the useless frame."

Letter to General Cooke Brigade of Guards 14/12/1814
"The frames of wood with which many soldiers continue to keep their packs in shape, are of no use, and should therefore be got rid of by a Brigade Order, and care should be taken that when the troops are ordered to parade in marching order, the whole of the necessaries are stowed in the packs. It is very difficult with men of low stature to have the pack carried clear of the pouch, particularly when from the blanket being folded in the pack, it is necessary the great coat should be strapped upon it ; but it is of so much importance that the pouch be disencumbered ; that very attention should be paid to this object, with the lowest men the slings must be lengthened…"

Letter to General Calvert 18th December 1814
"Knapsacks
The Knapsacks are generally too large, very few of the regiments have conformed to the pattern recommended by the board which formed to regulate the equipment of the Infantry of the British Army in the year 1810, the pouch in general use is much too deep, with the blanket folded and strapped upon the pack the depth as such, that although the pack rests upon the pouch so as to render it very difficult for the soldier to get at his ammunition, and the blanket is raised so much above the shoulders that it would not be possible for a rear rank man to fire in an horizontal direction. It is very important that a pack of the dimensions approved by the board should be in general use"

Inspection of 54th Foot 2/1/1815
"The Blankets are improperly provided with cases at the expense of the soldiers & carried upon the outside of the pack.." Further note " The blankets are very improperly provided with cases at the expense of the soldier and carried upon the outside of the pack while the great coat is folded upon the top of it, the issue of blanket cases at the expense of the soldier cannot be sanctioned…"

Inspection of 78th Foot (2nd batt) 2/1/15
"… When I inspected this battalion in the autumn I had occasion to remark the awkward method of carrying the blankets and the greatcoats, when both are carried by the soldiers, one or the other should be carried in the fold of the pack"

Inspection of 69th Foot (2nd batt) 8/1/15
"…but due attention has not been paid to getting rid of those frames to fill out the pack, which serve no other purpose than deception, they are sometimes preserved under the name of a button stick."

And finally !
Inspection 2nd Batt 95th Foot 5/4/1815
"…the packs were ill put together & ill put on & even at this time some of the packs are filled out with frames…"

Nothing to do with knapsacks but; the government bought Trotter up and his company became the Quartermaster's Department – there wasn't one before that- and I believe Trotter remained in charge.

My thanks to Anthony Barton and von Winterfeldt – fascinating stuff!

@ Anthony

I'm a bit puzzled by the discrepancy between Dighton's work and the rules. He was contemporary and has often been cited as the justification for Guards in white overalls, for example. Yet in my second link above he clearly shows the Foot Guards repulsing the Old Guard and the former are all wearing hide knapsacks. Could these an impression of some of the 600-odd Berkshire militiamen en masse who joined the Guards in 1815, still (perhaps) sporting non-regulation packs, but with their garter blue militia facings otherwise Guardsy enough to pass as Guards?

Here's another brown knapsack in 1815:
link
Blimey!

@ von W –

What is interesting about those quotes is that they're all in peacetime. Do you get the impression from your sources that these frames, boards etc were things units did in barracks in peacetime to look smart, with the result that the packs lacked the space to carry what they were supposed to carry?

I've seen another source that says the backpacks were 22" wide. I struggle with this, because so were the files!

An interesting read so far. Thank you.

Interesting point re the cartridge pouch:

it is very difficult with men of low stature to have the pack carried clear of the pouch…

…it is of so much importance that the pouch be disencumbered

and this:

the pack covers the whole of the back and rests upon the paunch…

Perhaps hence the frames?

I thought the pouch had an arrangement of buttons that allowed it to rotate around the waist, from the carry position, for ease of access when firing.

I can't believe that they carried 60 of those massive rounds in the pouch.

I'm sure that we only carried three spare magazines of 20x7.62 plus 50 link.

@Stoppage: picture 60 shotgun shells. That's two-and-a-half boxes, not very big at all (roughly 6"x9", and 3" deep).

from an older tmp thread

Major Snort
22 Oct 2014 10:18 a.m. PST

Apart from the combination of the 36 round cartridge box and 24 round magazine mentioned above, the British army adopted a single cartridge box that carried their entire quota of 60 rounds in 1804. Most British units were using this 60-round box by the end of the Napoleonic wars.
Regarding the firearms themselves, were they actually worn out Ordnance-issue pieces? I have seen several examples from South and Central America (including Mexico) that are commercial copies of India Pattern Muskets, Paget carbines and Baker Rifles which were certainly manufactured in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars.

enfant perdus
22 Oct 2014 12:57 p.m. PST

Patrick, I found another nugget to further muddy the waters!
I neglected the above mentioned 60 round "1804 Pattern" because I thought these had remained in service late enough (ca.1840) that they wouldn't have reached the surplus market in time to potentially equip the Mexican Army. It turns out there was a revised pattern in 1817 that kept the 60 round capacity but with a different arrangement of internal storage. As they were gradually withdrawn from British service, the 1804 Pattern were sold as surplus, notably to the Mexican Army. This occurred during the 1830s; prior to that it appears that the Mexicans did import the previous obsolete patterns.
Of course, you bring up a key point regarding the supply of Mexican units. A pouch may be designed to hold 60 rounds, but the QM may only be able to issue 24.

Major Snort
22 Oct 2014 1:14 p.m. PST

Von W,
I do not have the dimensions of the 60-round box to hand.
There were apparently two different styles:
One had a drilled wooden block holding 36 rounds above a tin compartment containing 24 rounds stored horizontally.
The other had 40 rounds stored vertically in an upper tin tray divided into four sections, above a lower tin tray divided into two sections with 20 rounds stored horizontally.

enfant perdus
22 Oct 2014 8:04 p.m. PST

For the 1804 Pattern, the tin trays were approximately 6 ½" x 3 ⅛" with the top tray having a depth of of 2 ¾" and the bottom tray a depth of 1 ½". Allowing for the leather of the pouch proper, this is roughly the same size as previous patterns, and smaller than some. Note that these tins do not have dividers for the individual rounds as in some previous patterns, thus allowing more cartridges to be carried without increasing the size of the pouch.
When the top tray was empty, the two packs from the lower tray were moved to the top. This could be fiddly, and sometimes required a file mate to help. Hence the revised pattern of 1817 had a single tin with all 60 rounds stored vertically.

@lion & @vw

Thank you! Learned something new this evening.

Reconstruction:

link

4th Cuirassier, that Dighton paining of the Guards IS a bit of a poser : would love to see a magnified scan , if anyone has one. My guess, since the packs have painted Regimental symbols in the centre ,is that they must be painted canvas rather than hide : you can't paint on fur ! The brown colur is the iron oxide pigment.

Von W , that is a fascinating mass of information . Reports like that might , I speculate, have something to do with the origination of the
" Trotter Frame Knapsack " myth.
Ironic that earlier authors I grew up on wrote about how hated the boards inside the knapsacks were, when Clinton's reports suggest that it was the soldiers themselves that were putting in the damned things,while officialdom was trying to get rid of them !

One of the great sadnesses of uniform research is the apparently endless series of fires at the Tower that have destroyed all the "Pattern " samples of everything the soldiers were issued with , going right back to the New Model Army.

Anthony

This is the highest-res scan I can find online. If you right click on it and open it in a new tab you then get a reasonably zoomable version:

If you look immediately to the right of Wellington's horse you can see the back view of a sergeant and four private soldiers, slightly angled in some cases. It's hard to be sure but I wonder if the consistency of the colour should be taken to indicate further that it's a painted canvas knapsack, rather than a hide one that you'd expect to have natural colour variations.

In which case – why's it brown?! If they had the proper kit and they painted them, why didn't they paint them black per the regs? Or is it that their black paint actually was dark brown and faded accordingly? Someone once posted here a formula for black paint for artillery use which relied on lamp black and linseed oil, so it would have been a very dark brown rather than a true black.

Thanks for that : it's a painting I really ought to go and see sometime.
Although we know that French hide knapsacks were somewhat coveted,and sometimes used when they could be captured , British one had been of canvas since the last hairy goatskin ones went out in the 1790s, probably to save money. One author I once read suggested that since the British didn't eat veal, there was never a reliable supply of calfskin as used throughout Europe.

Brown paint ( red iron oxide) was used on some surviving envelope knapsacks ,including three which I gather are in Durham: it was dirt cheap ( literally )and really the very commonest sort of pigment.
But as you say, the regulations had called for black for some years. We shall perhaps never know why they still used the brown, but we do have actual physical evidence it was in common use earlier.I don't think it's faded black : lampblack is a very stable colour.
But thanks for drawing my attention to that detail of the painting, which I had missed before.

I've been searching for veal and ham pie (with hard-boiled egg in middle) to no avail.

Gala pie (ham with hard-boiled egg) is too heavy.

Melton Mowbray pork pies have too much pastry.

Locally, Pennine stand-pies (ham) with much jelly – pretty good.

Italian meat-balls are usually a goodly mixture of veal and pork mince; possible consumed whilst sporting elegant calfskin shoes and luggage accessories.

Veal should come back – most beeve calves are slaughtered at birth as there is no market for their flesh – very wasteful.

Here's an Inverness Militia example.

Here's another contemporary illustration from the 1803 Charles de Bosset uniform chart

I reckon that the pack on the Bugler of the 48th in 'I think' Osprey's Wellington's Infantry (1) by Bryan Fosten is a pretty good representation too.

Also, see Charles Stadden's tour de force complete illustrations of the 35th (Sussex) Regiment of Foot

Here are those Stadden illustrations along with a picture of a soldier of the 43rd (Monmouthshire) Light Infantryman c.1810 showing a Brown Backpack.

These illustrations may not be contemporary but at least Stadden had no qualms over depicting the brown pack.

brits at Walcheren 1809 – it would be nice to see the whole set of illustrations

url=https://postimg.cc/WFLNdyN4]

Blimey. It really does seem that anything goes. Or at least, that there is a defensible cite for a lot more than you'd think.