round hats etc
Hello, Three Loyalist Unit questions: Would the pre-1780 (pre cap) Queens Rangers have round-hats? Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth - if the Regulars were it seems likely...? If their B+W cap feathers were ordered by Simcoe after the execution of Major Andre (as indicated in MAA450) this infers that their hats were featherless before that; were they - or was it a colour change? No bear-skins for Loyalist musicians and obviously you can't reverse green-faced-green, but: Non-reversed colours for British Legion musicians uniforms? :? GJ

1) According to Simcoe himself, the Queen's Rangers had "miserable contract hats" prior to the arrival of the leather caps; I have always taken this to mean standard cocked hats (aka tricornes). 2) There's no record of a feather prior to this; if there was, I would suggest it was black, as for most of the Crown light troops. 3) Again, no record of what the QR and BL musicians wore, but I would suggest that the most obvious method of distinction would be white lace, as with Royal corps; another option in hot climates might be white waistcoats/stable jackets. The cavalry trumpeters would also be riding white horses (when available).

RtL Thank you :D Plenty of licence there! 1 'Miseable contract hats' does suggest standard headgear, which infers a fully-cocked tricorne, and it probably would have been in Aug'76. But ... if there was a later issue after formation this would have been of whatever stocks were held at that time... If the QR existing hats were four years old when the leather caps were issued they would undoubtably be in a most misearable state, but that does seem a long time... None of my Crown Forces have round-hats yet; so just checking the feasibility: Excellent! 2 I shall defer the Yes/No-Feather decision. 3 Yes, white lace seems the simplest approach. (BL are further away in the Future-Painting-Pile than QR and I will probably do their cavalry first whereas I'm starting with QR foot.) Thanks again! GJ

Do bear in mind that hats were issued every year, so they wouldn't have been four years old. I suspect Simcoe's comment was on their quality. It's quite possible they would have adopted a similar hat style to the other light infantry units, so you could use the Perry codes in slouch hat and either roundabout (waistcoat) or cut-down coat (as worn by the grenadier in the Murray watercolours of the QRs), for summer and spring/autumn respectively.