Clothing In Piracy! Last update 15th May 2001

Uniforms at Sea

General naval uniforms did not come into service until well past this period. The French first introduced them in 1665. To make things abit more visual, I have modified this slightly. I have modeled my figures on a variant of the regular army infantry colours of the time, which of course were also only just coming into effect. The colours also are a simple representation of the armies of the general period, and will at least make the nationality identifiable to novices.

• English - red coat & breeches
• French - White or light grey coat and white breeches with medium blue or red trim
• Dutch - bright medium/light green coat with red cuffs and white breeches
• Spanish - Brown coat with white breeches

What to make the naval officers of the time is a bit more of a quandry. There being no uniforms at the time, but to keep it visual and vaguely historical, my suggestion is to differentiate naval officers and marines. I would make the marines the above colours, and the ships officers the following:

• English - deep sea blue coat and breeches for senior officers, white breeches for junior officers
• French - medium blue jacket with white breeches
• Dutch - deep green jacket with white or red breeches
• Spanish - yellow jacket with black trim and white breeches

These are only suggestions, you may do as you wish.

General Clothing

The senior officers of ships at the time generally wore the current fashion trends of the time. (Except naval ships refer above). Pirates and merchant captains could be as gaudy and impractical as they like as they usually did not work on the ship. I have included some scans of upper class male and female clothes of England below:

• Clothing 1
• Clothing 2
• Clothing 3
• Clothing 4
• Clothing 5
• Clothing 6

The crew wore plain clothes the same as the regular populace on land. Clothes were relatively expensive at the time. Sailors might only have one set of clothes which they wore until it fell off, and hence they could have a very patched and repaired look.

They wore loose, baggy pants cut off at the knees, and only wore shoes when going ashore. They wore long shirts. The material was generally heavy wool, but was also commonly worn out sail canvas. Some covered their clothes in pitch, which was said to help deflect weapons in combat or keep dry in cold wet times.

I see no specific references to hats, but most illustrations show broad rim hats or some form of long beanie. Alot of later illustrations also show tricornes, bandanas or variants, and I am not personally sure how accurate this may be when they were at sea.

On shore, pirates were reknowned for their colourful and gaudy clothing. Whatever they may have looted that took their eye could be worn, from simple colourful clothes to rich silks, satins, velvet & lace.

Sailors also wore alot of jewelry. Rings, ear pendants (after this period), pearls, necklaces and gold chains, and elaborate religious icons looted from the Spanish.

I seem to recall that sailors of the time were not tattoed, or if they were, it was only slowly catching on after being introduced by islanders in the pacific.