Senior Service is a new venture within Lace Wars, portraying officers and ‘the people’ (seamen) of the Royal Navy during the mid-eighteenth century. Our clothing and equipment allow us to represent members the Royal Navy over the period between 1748 (when the first regulation uniforms were introduced for officers, which in turn heralded the gradual change of coat colour from grey to blue for other ranks) and the 1770’s.

Senior Service is not a separate regiment within Lace Wars, but is instead run through Fraser’s Highlanders, having originally been formed to allow Jacobite re-enactors within Lace Wars to be able to participate in events outside the 1745-46 period of the Jacobite Rising. We act as a focus for members of all regiments within Lace Wars who have an interest in re-enacting the Royal Navy of the eighteenth century.

Events

We participate in both living history events and battle re-enactments, and can portray a variety of land-based roles, including press gangs, anti-smuggling operations and manning coastal defences. In addition to these ‘home’ based roles, we also turn out as an armed landing party to support the red-coated regiments of Lace Wars at French and Indian Wars battle re-enactments in conjunction with New France and Old England.

For the year 2000 Senior Service will be participating at several events, ranging from an ‘excise men and smugglers’ event (complete with a tall ship) to several outings as a naval landing party for the French and Indian Wars. See our Events page for further details.

We intend to carry on in this vein for future events, especially targeting those events of a maritime nature. Further afield, we are also looking at the possibility of forming a naval gun crew.

Clothing

As with the other units within Lace Wars, we aim for the highest standards of dress, with our seamens’ clothing all being based on evidence from contemporary pictures and documents.

Although uniforms were introduced for commissioned officers and midshipmen in 1748, no such regulations applied to the common seaman. A degree of uniformity was, however, achieved by seamen due to the use of issued workwear (slops) and their adherence to traditional maritime clothing styles, the overall effect being for seamen to be clothed in variations on a common theme.

Seamen were typically attired in short coats, worn with either wide-legged canvas trousers or a canvas skirt over knee breeches. Coats were traditionally grey at the start of our period, with dark blue becoming more common as time progressed (aping the colour of officers’ uniforms). Shirts could be plain or of a check pattern. Waistcoats, if worn, were typically red or striped. A wide range of hats was worn, although small tricorns or felt round hats were preferred, at least while ashore. Although seamen were usually barefoot while on ship, once ashore they usually wore laced or buckled shoes.

For more details on Senior Service contact frasers@lacewars.co.uk.