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Meaghan Walker Mobilising Clothes at Sea: Naval Dress Culture and Economy during the French Wars, 1793-1815 by Meaghan Walker A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History and Classics University of Alberta © Meaghan Walker, 2020 ii Abstract During the British involvement in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793- 1815, the Royal Navy contracted for, inspected, and distributed clothing to naval warships in British ports and abroad. This dissertation examines the Admiralty in-letters stored at the British National Archives, Kew, and the Caird Library, at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, to understand how this system worked both practically as a system of production and distribution, but also rhetorically, as an important aspect of the power between administrators, commanders and crew. The Royal Navy concurrently provided clothing on three different models. Officers wore loosely regulated uniforms that they personally paid for and sourced. Sailors wore slop clothes, mass-produced clothing purchased from private contractors in bulk. Finally, the marines were dressed in a combination of the two. They wore slops when they performed seafaring labour and during leisure time but wore more strictly regulated uniforms that were reminiscent of those from the army when policing sailors. Naval commanders both interfered with the uniforms of the marines, whose red coats visually challenged naval authority, and advocated for sailors’ slop clothing to solidify their own paternal mastery of their vessels. The navy was a large bureaucratic and technological body beyond its primary military function, and clothing reveals how much time commanders spent on tedious paperwork and supply issues between moments of heightened military action. Further, the proximity of naval ships to British ports diminished the authority of commanders, exposing confrontations between military personnel and civilians. The period of conflict between 1793 and 1815 marks the decline of early modern forms of individual commander care and clothing provision in many respects but the true break was yet to come with the adoption of steam technology. iii Preface This thesis is an original work by Meaghan Walker. No part of this thesis has been previously published. iv Acknowledgements The list of people I need to thank is long but first and foremost I must acknowledge my supervisor at the University of Alberta [UA], Beverly Lemire, along with the members of my supervisory committee members Jane Sampson, and Sharon Romeo, and my MA supervisor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Valerie Burton. I was truly fortunate to be guided in my academic career by four very insightful and remarkable women scholars, something I am grateful for. In addition, I would like to thank Ken Moure who agreed on short notice to sit on my defence committee, in addition to my external examiners Lianne McTavish and John McAleer, and the committee chair Heather Coleman. So many people help produce a thesis and I want to thank the many staff members at the various archives and museums I visited over the course of this project, namely the National Archives at Kew, the British National Maritime Museum, specifically their wonderful Caird Library, and the Maritime History Archive in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Further, I want to give a heartfelt thanks to the staff at the UA Department of History and Classics and the UA libraries, especially those working heroically in the inter-library loans department. This project would not be possible without the assistance of a generous grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 2011, as well as funding provided by the University of Alberta. Also, a special thanks to the editors of the online naval warship database threedecks.org and the developers of the primary source management program Tropy. Sections of this paper were presented at the AHRC-Research Network International Conference at Plymouth, the Economic History Society Conference at Cambridge, the Dressing Global Bodies Conference in Edmonton, the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies in Maryland, the Maritime Toxic Masculinity Digital Conference hosted by Global Maritime History, and as v part of a workshop on gender and healthcare hosted online by the journal Gender & History. I would like to thank the organisers for giving my work a platform and commenters for their helpful suggestions and advice, much of which has influenced this paper. In this vein I would also like to thank the various friends I have made and remade over the course of this work, namely Ashley Sims, Maya Wassell-Smith, Erin Spinney, Lacey Sparks, Sarah Pickman, Kelsey Powers, Samuel McLean, Julia Stryker, and especially Monica Ayhens-Madon, who introduced me to the Adm 12 digests at the National Archives. Finally, thanks to my parents Blanche and Jim Walker, and my brother’s family Joel, Leanne and James Walker, and to my childhood friends Gillian Chown and Megan McLean. vi Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ................................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ....................................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................ ix Abbreviations and Conventions .............................................................................................................. xi Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1 Women’s History, Gender, and Masculinity ......................................................................................... 5 Material Cultural Studies ................................................................................................................... 10 Sources .............................................................................................................................................. 19 Defining Paternal Care....................................................................................................................... 24 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 31 Figures 0.1 – 0.5 ................................................................................................................................ 34 Chapter One – The Slop Clothes of the Royal Navy: Problems of Supply in a Global Conflict ............... 39 The Slop Clothing Supply System as it was Intended to Work ........................................................... 42 Contracting, Supplying, and Delivering Slop Clothes ..................................................................... 43 Navy Accounting, Vouchers and Bureaucratic Lethargy ................................................................. 49 What Sailors Wore ......................................................................................................................... 53 Slop Clothes Prices between 1800 and 1815 .................................................................................. 58 The Politics of Quality Slop Clothing................................................................................................. 61 Contracts: Informal and Formal Applications to Produce Slops ..................................................... 61 Pursers, Store Surveys, and Slop Embezzlement ............................................................................. 67 Deficiencies Abroad and Other Trouble ......................................................................................... 70 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 75 Tables 1.1 – 1.5 ................................................................................................................................. 77 Figures 1.1 – 1.4 ................................................................................................................................ 79 Chapter Two – Paternal Care and Strategic Crises in Slop Supply .......................................................... 83 Negotiating with the Admiralty: Claiming Paternal Care .................................................................... 86 Confrontations of Power and Authority while Sourcing Slops Outside Britain .................................... 92 Lord Nelson and Slop Clothes in Mediterranean ............................................................................ 93 Viscount Keith and Supplying Shoes in Sicily ................................................................................. 99 West Indian Slops and the Rhetoric of Liberty .............................................................................
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