The British are coming! The British are coming!

The British are... here...  at Fort Matanzas.  Ok, not really Brits - locals dressed as British soldiers re-enacting garrison life at the fort during the "British Period" when Great Britain had control of Florida after the first Spanish period.

ABC Wednesday: "R" is for Redcoat

In honor of all our British blogging friends across the pond, my ABC Wednesday for the letter R is Redcoat!

Redcoat is a nickname given to British soldiers of the 17th to 19th centuries due to the fact that the uniform of the army included a red coat.

The first use of the red coat as part of the regular army uniform of England came in 1645 as part of the New Model Army ordinance. One reason for the use of red was the relative cheapness of red dye at the time. There is no truth to the old wive's tale that red was chosen because it would not show blood (blood shows as a black stain on red cloth).

From an early stage the facings (lapels, cuffs and collars) of the red coat were varied, depending upon which regiment the uniform belonged to. Examples were scarlet for the 33rd Regiment of Foot, yellow for the 44th Regiment of Foot and buff for the 3rd Regiment of Foot. An attempt at standardisation was made following the Cardwell Reforms of 1881, with English and Welsh regiments having white, Scottish yellow, Irish green and Royal regiments dark blue.

Scarlet tunics ceased to be general issue upon British mobilisation in August 1914. The Brigade of Guards resumed wearing their scarlet full dress in 1920 but for the remainder of the Army red coats were only authorised for wear by regimental bands and officers in mess dress or on certain limited social or ceremonial occasions (notably attendance at Court functions or weddings). The reason for not generally reintroducing the distinctive full dress was primarily financial, as the scarlet cloth requires expensive cochineal dye.

As late as 1980, consideration was given to the reintroduction of scarlet as a replacement for the dark blue "No. 1 dress" and khaki "No. 2 dress" of the modern British Army, using cheaper and fadeless chemical dyes instead of cochineal. Surveys of serving soldiers' opinion showed little support for the idea and it was shelved.

Information mostly taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(British_army)

All photos taken in St. Augustine, FL during December 2007 at a living history event depicting the "British period" of the city from 1763-1784.

Visit Mrs. Nesbitt's Place for all the ABC Wednesday fun.

Wrong side of The Pond

I post this for all of my British blogging friends.

This little British pub resides just north of St. Augustine, FL along the side of the major north-south road in the area - complete with double-decker bus, red phone booth, and Ye Olde English architechture. I love it. :)

40 miles = 500 years

A fun day in St. Augustine today, with enough pictures taken to last almost an entire year if we post one per day. They aren't all blog worthy, but enough are that we have blog fodder for some time to come.

It was especially exciting because today was one of those fun days when they had "living historians" walking around - but not just a handful... no, today was a special day and there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-200 people dressed in period costume from the British period in the 18th Century. Men, women, children. Soldiers, sailors, politicians. Rich, middle-class, poor. Everyone and everything was represented.

At one point they held a private, period-only reception of some sort in a garden area:




The climax of the evening was a nightwatch parade / grand illumination where all of the soldiers lined up on St. George street and lead a parade of all of the period persons to the governors house behind the town square, complet with the Brits playing their fifes and drums and the Scottsmen playing their pipes. Civilians carried lanters or candles. There was to be a ceremony of sorts at the Governor's house but the crowd was heavy and we were at the other end of the street and quite tired after trapsing around uneven roads for 7 hours already...

And just for fun, a compliment to Sharon's seagull from yesterday, here is a gull coasting on the ocean breeze just north of the Castillo over the Mantanzas river inlet: