"British uniform series of Hamilton Smith 1812-1815 online" Topic

Today I published the complete series of 60 plates in the uniform portal – you find them at link

As Hamilton Smith had been an experienced officer he had an expert view upon the appearance of the British army and so the plates are very valuable for the uniform research particularly for the later campaigns of 1813-1815.

Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein

As working on my British army will help

It would be interesting to know the history of Hamilton Smith's original paintings in relation to the publication dates between 1812-1815.

It is interesting to see here the Grenadier of the 42nd with a plain red hackle as opposed to the white hackle tipped red that can be seen in modern depictions.

What about the sporrans, I thought they weren't worn during the Napoleonic wars?

Not in the field. But perhaps his models were in 'home service dress.'

In the detailed description of the Hamilton Smith plates Haythornthwaite wrote about the 42nd plume:

"Traditionally, the 42nd wore red plumes from at least the 1790s (the circumstances of its origin are stated variously), which are shown on the figures in the background. Although the corporal shown has a white plume, some sources suggest that the grenadiers' plume was white with a red tip, and the light company plume green with a red tip."

He also stated that the sporran was not worn on campaign … and if you look at the publication date of the plate in September 1812 it seems probable hat Smith saw this uniform on home ground.

Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein

Markus,

Many thanks for another excellent contribution.

Cecil C. P. Lawson 's "History of the Uniforms of the British Army" Volume 5, page 36 says the 42nd in the Napoleonic Wars wore red hackles and a red overstripe on their kilts until 1816.

All the best

Ian

Thank you for your nice comments … and as the Black Watch are a further topic here I uploaded the excerpts of Rev. Sumners notes and sketches about this regiment, which I photographed some years ago in ASKB.

The file may be loaded at PDF link

Greetings
Markus Stein

Sporrans were worn by officers. The hackle colour for the companies of the 42nd are open to conjecture. Almost all contemporary paintings I have show a red hackle. The other, (and very few) all white.

I have no pictures depicting a light company hackle being worn. It is depicted as red over green in modern renditions.

Many of Hamilton-Smith's uniform schematic cartouches are inaccurate.

"Traditionally, the 42nd wore red plumes from at least the 1790s (the circumstances of its origin are stated variously), which are shown on the figures in the background. Although the corporal shown has a white plume, some sources suggest that the grenadiers' plume was white with a red tip, and the light company plume green with a red tip."

Presumably Haythornthwaite based his observation on a print in which the Grenadier of the 42nd's hackle had been been coloured according to 1802 regulations, unlike the image in Markus online collection.

However, the written and visual references relating to the period 1795-1815 almost exclusively depict the 42nd wearing the red hackle, notably the Loutherbourg paintings of the Egypt campaign.

Before 1795 the situation is ambiguous. Prints of c.1791 show an soldier and officer of the 42nd depicted by Dayes with no hackle in their bonnets while a Kay caricature shows the Marquis of Huntly as Captain of the 42nd grenadier company with one red ostrich feather and one white (i.e not a hackle)

The later depiction of 42nd grenadier and light coys with white and green feathers tipped red seems to be based on a memoir written in the 1870s by Col John Wheatley, who joined the regiment in 1817 and reported this arrangement being adopted briefly in the post-war period (for reasons unknown) until the Colonel, George Murray, ordered the 'red feather' to be resumed by all ranks.
This reference seems to have influenced Wollen's 1889 canvas 'The Black Watch at bay' which shows grenadiers of the 42nd beset by French cuirassiers at Quatre Bras and their hackles are red tipped feathers with the bottom third white. This image appears on occasion, in the years since, to have influenced depictions of flank coy feathers for this period.

Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 4, No. 16 (APRIL–JUNE, 1925)

"THE BLACK WATCH HECKLE. On this subject J. M. Bulloch writes in The Graphic of 25 April, 1925: –

To-day marks the two hundredth anniversary of the creation of the first battalion of the Black Watch, although my old friend, the late Mr. Andrew Ross, took back its historical succession to 1667. The "story" of the regiment, in the newspaper sense, is the way in which it got its famous red heckle by recapturing two guns which the 11th Light Dragoons had lost at Gildermalsen, in Flanders, on January 4, 1794. For that act they were awarded that regiment's "red vulture feather."

There are several versions of the episode set forth in Archibald Forbes's rather ramshackle history of the regiment. Out of curiosity I turned to two histories of the 11th Hussars – Cannon's in 1837 and Captain Godfrey Trevelyan Williams's elaborate book of 1908 – to see their version of the story, only to find it is not even mentioned, the only loss sustained by the 11th being given as one man and one horse killed and six men and one horse wounded.

On the other hand, Forbes omits to mention that the two regiments had had a curious meeting half a century before that, for on May 18, 1743, the 11th, which was raised in 1715, was ordered to round up the "considerable body of the Highland Regiment of Foot commanded by Lord Semphill," who on the previous night had assembled in a mutinous manner after the famous review on Finchley Common on May 14. As a result of the attempt to march home, three men were shot and 107 were banished – with disastrous effects on recruiting in the Highlands for many a year after."

The "Geldermalsen story" (The name of the village- pronounced Heldermolsen- has been resolutely mis-spelt down the years) is first encountered in the 1840s, with the almost simultaneous emergence in the press of accounts (somewhat contradictory) by two veterans of the 42nd, one of whom had a memoir seeking a publisher.
It seems that certain senior NCOs of the 42nd were trying to promote the story of the rescued guns and the award of the 'red feather' 50 years previously and get itrecognised in the regimental lore.
Neither the incident of the guns recovered by the 42nd or the award of a 'red feather' feature in contemporary accounts- indeed, other regiments claimed or were assigned credit at the time. The commanding general did not see fit to mention the incident in his dispatch- and it was he who was supposed to have declared the 42nd should be awarded a commemorative emblem (which was not in his gift).
While the senior rankers had presumably heard the story earlier in their career, officers at the time or later on, seemed either oblivious or dismissive of such 'idle tales.' The recently published regimental history, compiled as part of Richard Cannon's series of 'Historical Records of the British Army' in 1845 made no mention of such an episode.Indeed as early as 1822, one long serving, senior officer of the regiment had declared when asked that the 42nd had started wearing the 'red feather' during the American War of Independence, in which he served, and was adopted as part of a scheme of unit identification ordered by the C-in-C.
Competing traditions held that the red hackle had been awarded for the regiments service in Egypt in 1801 (Not true).

The matter of the 11th Light Dragoons being 'disgraced' seems to have little basis. They had served with credit during the campaign hitherto, being singled out for mention in dispatches and in fact, proportionately, they had suffered the heaviest casualties of the day during the skirmish at Geldermalsen.
The guns involved were an impractical, obsolete design of light cannon sent from England to make up losses but without trained gunners to serve them. Given their fragile construction and tendency to tip over when moving at speed, which confirmed their unsuitablilty for service with light cavalry, their temporary capture may have been a minor irritation with some cavalry officers thinking "good riddance."
The accusations of precipitate retreat and abandonment of guns circulating in 1845 was especially embarrassing as the 'unlucky' 11th had only recently been marked for honours by the new Queen and her consort, the regiment being converted into Hussars in recognition of their service at the royal wedding but their smart new crimson trousers inadvertently played into the regiment's nickname of 'Cherrypickers' recalling mishaps in the Peninsula thirty years before,and now was converted into 'Cherrybums.' Meanwhile their arrogant, combative commanding officer, Lord Cardigan, seemed to attract scandal wherever he went. They didn't need any more ammunition for public mockery.
Whether the 'history' between the 42nd and the 11th Dragoons had somehow informed an inclination to slight the record of the 11th a century later, seems unlikely but perhaps no more far fetched than the rest of this tangled tale.

Well! It wouldn't be unique for a regiment to have a single colour hackle throughout as the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers had white.

The white 'grenadier' hackle of the 23rd was made regulation for all three Fusilier regiments as from 1801-1802, having been adopted unofficially during the AWI and years following.

More notable perhaps was the adoption of a white feather during that period by the Fifth Northumberland Regiment. This ostensibly commemorated the resounding defeat of a French force on St Lucia in 1778, when soldiers of the Fifth supposedly picked up the white plumes of fallen French soldiers, but it was also an element in the regiment's prolonged campaign to claim 'grenadier' (i.e.Fusilier) status following their role in the defeat of French grenadiers at Wilhelmsthal in 1762. The white hackle was rendered non-regulation in 1801-02 but they were still wearing it in their caps in 1824 when they were permmitted to retain it as "a mark of distinction." (The Fifth finally acquired the unique honorary distinction 'Wilhelmsthal' and Fusilier status ten years later in 1835-36).

In 1822, a similar persistence had resulted in the 42nd receiving official recognition of their non-regulation red hackle- although it was claimed that that the King had granted them permission to retain the ornament back in 1802 when he reviewed the regiment following their return from the victorious 1801 Egypt campaign (whence the tradition that it had been granted as an 'honour' to accompany the Sphinx badge on their colours).
When asked in 1822, it seems no one in the 42nd could entirely explain "from what date and with what authority" they wore the 'red feather' but the emblem had been worn throughout the long 'French war' and it seems the Duke of York, as with the Fifth, was minded to let them keep it as a mark of distinction.
Ditto the 'Flash' collar ornament of the 23rd, which was unquestionably unique!

Great Information … Thanks to you experts about the British troops :-)

Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein

Thanks, Markus for the Rev Sumner's Ms notes. Some nuggets there. I have to admit, I can't work out what the initials 'ASKB' stand for.

It is the Anne SK Brown Collection in Providence, cf. library.brown.edu/cds/askb

And yes, the Sumner Manuskript has some nice Details for our research

All the best
Markus Stein

Ah, alles ist klar. Vielen dank

This is what I posted on this site: 25 Feb 2015

"The 5th Northumberland Regiment of foot also had white plumes throughout the regiment (though the centre coys kept the normal shoulder strap and tuft) This was a distinction gained from an action at St. Lucia 1778, where the men took the white plumes from the defeated French troops which was enough for the whole regiment to be so equipped and they kept the distinction until they received official approval in 1826."
TMP link

And again here: 11 Nov 2014 Which includes the Fusilier battalions.

"For the 7th and 23rd

All ranks were Fusiliers, whether they were in the 'Grenadier, 'light' or Battalion company. There were no 'Privates'. The distiction was all white Plume/hackle, flanker style epaulets for all ranks and a black 5 strand ribbon sewn directly below the collar at the rear of the officers tunic for the 23rd.

In 'THAT ASTONISHING INFANTRY. Royal Welch Fusiliers 1689-2006' by Glover and Reily.

"In 1709 Officers began to adopt the wearing of feathers in their hats, and this was officially sanctioned in 1789 when the colour of the feather plume, or hackle, was laid down for grenadiers and fusiliers as white. For line battalion companies as half red, half white, and for Light companies of battalions as green."

Seeing as all ranks of all companies of a fusilier regiment are fusiliers and not privates, they all wore white hackles and other elite distinctions.

The 7th Royal Fusiliers Colonel between 1789 and 1801, was the Duke of Kent (future father of Queen Victoria). He laid down standing orders which recorded, inter alia: "All Officers are to understand that the terms "Right and Left Flank Companies" are fixed upon the application of what in other regiments are styled Grenadier and Light Infantry Companies, it being the Colonels pleasure that, in the Royal Fusiliers, the term "Grenadier" and "Light Infantry" should never be used…."

Here's another little known fact.

The 5th Northumberland Regiment of foot also had white plumes throughout the regiment (though the centre coys kept the normal shoulder strap and tuft) This was a distinction gained from an action at St. Lucia 1778, where the men took the white plumes from the defeated French troops which was enough for the whole regiment to be so equipped and they kept the distinction until they received official approval in 1826.

7th, 21st, 23rd, All ranks had white hackles/plumes and flank company style shoulder wings."

TMP link