Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Colonial Adventures => Topic started by: Major Weenie on May 15, 2022, 08:59:40 PM
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I'm still plugging away at figures for The Mexican Revolution,
But this is a Royal Navy question, so I'm guessing that 'Colonial' is the correct place to ask?
Anyway, years ago a chum traded me 10 Royal Navy Landing Party figures. All armed with rifles. Look like late 19th early 20th century.
Finally got around to painting them. Thought it would be easy, as I expected the entire uniform to be white with dark blue trim here and there.
However, 'colorized' period photos (on line) appear to have the 'Neck Flap' in a medium blue with white trim.
I started out with those colors, but it just looks wrong.
Is this 'blue' correct? Or should I go with my gut feeling of "White with dark blue trim"
Thanks,
MW
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The collar is a lighter, medium blue, essentially the same pattern exists to this day. Google ‘Royal Navy square rig’ and you’ll get plenty of images.
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Not sure how it worked in the 20th Century, but in the 19th, how landing parties were decked out seems to have been at the whim of individual ship captains. The idea was you had Tropical whites and Temperate blues, but this seems to have been ignored much of the time. The landing parties from different ships in the Zulu War were all dressed differently to each other, some all in blue, some all in white, and some with blue tops and white trousers.
So unless you are recreating an historical engagement for which the uniform colours are known, you could get away with dark blue uniforms if that's what you feel like painting instead. If you do prefer that option, the collars would be the same colour as Carlos describes, much lighter than the very dark blue of the RN uniform.
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1.) Many thanks
2.) Did the Google Search and looked at the images.
From these it appears that the 'Dark Blue' uniform had a 'Medium' (=lighter) flap.
The 'White' uniform had a darker blue flap.
Thanks again,
MW
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I've seen a darker collar on both blues and whites. These things tend to vary.
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The collar was/is made of jean, a cotton material. It will naturally fade quicker than the woollen winter jumper, particularly as it gets laundered on a far more regular basis than the jumper. Bear on mind that the collar is accompanied by a black scarf, so if you are looking at photos from the front that part will appear very dark.