Sailor Tunic, What shade of Blue?

[Tiberius Claudius Vindex]

I'm looking for materal to make my sailor's tunic out of for my alternate impression. I'm wondering what shade of blue would work best? Would it be very light, like sky blue or dark like royal or Prussian blue?

[TFLAVIUSAMBIORIX]

probably fairly light, the dye used would have been woad, and it would take alot of this to dye it prussian blue, not as light as faded bluejeans though, but any reasonable shade IMHO

[Graham Sumner]

This question often pops up, usually with regard to the passage from Vegetius that the sailors of the British fleet wore blue uniforms the same colour as the sea. (Vegetius, Epit., IV, 37)

What colour does Vegetius mean as the sea in British waters would be a very different colour from that of the Mediterranean. In fact later on in the same passage Vegetius supplies the answer, Venetian Blue i.e the same colour as the Blue circus faction. Therefore any pictures of charioteers wearing blue tunics will give you the correct shade.

Although there are a number of ancient references which connect blue colours with the navy and possibly naval uniforms just to complicate things a tombstone of a marine from Crete was found with traces of red paint on tunic and cloak! I reconstructed both this figure and a British marine in Roman Military Clothing 1 and 2 published by Osprey.

Graham.

[Lucius Aurelius Metellus]

Ave Graham,
I ordered your book "Roman Military Clothing 2" about a week ago and just received it in the mail yesterday. What a wonderful, informative book! I am definitely looking forward to your newest edition in the series (part 3). What periods will it cover?

[Flavius Promotus]

Dear Graham,

the Vegetius passage is a little more complicated. It says that larger liburnians (= warships in general) were assisted by reconnaisance crafts (scaphae exploratoriae) which had to scout in advance and make surprise attacks on enemy shipping.
These scout ships were painted in Venetian blue for camouflage (including the sails, the rigging and the tunics of the sailors). According to Vegetius, the British call these scout ships picatae (pitched ? painted ?), but Vegetius does not explicitly say that scaphae exploratoriae operated only in British waters. It therefore seems as if crew members of all scaphae exploratoriae had blue tunics, not just those in the "first British fleet". :wink:
Unfortunately, this leads to the question what kind of tunic colour was standard on other warships... Also Venetian Blue ? Or red ???

An new tunic colour war looms on the horizon (blue vs. red)!

Boris Rankov has written a quite sceptical article about the Vegetius passage :

Rankov, B., 2002, Now you see it, now you don’t. The British fleet in Vegetius IV.37, in: Freeman,P. (u.a. Hrsg.), Limes XVIII, Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies held in Amman, Jordan (September 2000), Vol. II (= BAR International Series 1084 II), 921-924.

[Graham Sumner]

Hello Florian and L.A. Metellus

I prefer ships of the desert (see.. my favourite troop type under Off Topic).

Sadly Vegetius is about the best we have for the colour of Navy uniforms but you are quite right he raises more questions than provides answers. Fuentes of course argued that the ships illustrated on the Piazza Armerina mosaic and elsewhere were crewed by figures wearing red and blue uniforms. Those in red he believed were the ships centurions.

Roman Military Clothing 3 covers the period from Honorius to Heraclius 400-600AD.

[marsvigilia]

If the centaurians on ships are wearing red, does that support the Legion Centaurians wearing red, as opposed to blue/white? Perhaps a cross service badge of rank?

(Please no wars)

[Graham Sumner]

Best not to stray off topic and go along that road Marsvigilia!

Graham.

[marsvigilia]

I bow to your greater wisdom and discretion.

[L. Aufidius Pantera]

Must remember though, that Vegetius wasn't exactly writing at a time when all this was happening - as Rankov argues, he probably just read sth somewhere himself and elaborated on the idea. After all, he writes in the late 4th century and talks about the earlier fleets - which were surely very different from what was around during his lifetime?

btw. Hallo Florian, nice to see you here!!!

Christoph

[Crispvs]

Are we paying too much / enough attention to Vegetius' mention of the British fleet's preference for blue? Two points occur to me.

1. As far as I know, Vegetius does not explicitly state whether the blue tunics, sails etc are from a particular period, or were simply some time in the past or were still the practice in his day.

2. I think it may be significant that Vegetius talks specifically of the British fleet using blue. If he was talking about sailors in general it might imply blue being a colour associated with the sea and sailors of all fleets. But as the British fleet is singled out here for special mention, should we infer that other (in some cases more important) fleets such as the Ravenna fleet either wore a different colour or simply had no colour preference?

Crispvs

[Praefectusclassis]

Actually, Vegetius is just saying that the Britons call 40-oared scout ships picati, he is NOT talking about the British fleet. He is not stating anything about the British fleet specificially. Rankov (from whom I have this info) then goes on to claim that picati can both be translated as painted or as 'covered in pitch', according to him the more likely explanation.

Rankov basically tears down all contents of this particular chapter in Vegetius. I know Flavius Promotus does not agree, but there it is.

Boris Rankov, 'Now you see it, now you don't. The British fleet in Vegetius IV.37', Roman Frontier Studies 2002