Per Mare Per Terram

After a brief exploration into haberdashery, the Royal Marines returned to the regular army headgear following the Napoleonic period. In the run up to the Crimean War the Royal Marines and Royal Marine Artillery continued to emulate their regular army compatriots with no colour changes as time went by. They also began to adopt a few more embellishments, alongside the army, to their hat such as brass plates, but in general the details on these are too small to worry about for wargaming. This real difference here is remembering that the Royal Marines have no colours (in the sense of flags) which is an easy way of battlefield identification during this time.

During the Crimean War, two things happened. One, the army realised that tight fitting waist high jackets with long tails were a bad idea for soldiers (that took them way too long…), and in 1855 the infantry component of the Royal Marines were named to, first, the Royal Marines Light Infantry and then Royal Marine Light Infantry (RMLI). The navy then began organising Naval Divisions for landings over time and used the RMLI as an initial force meant to take a beach and secure a perimeter while the Navy landed more sailors trained in infantry roles. This would continue throughout the 1800’s with the Royal Marines following the uniform patterns of their army contemporaries. As the 1800’s rolled on, the changes in army uniform were adopted by the Royal Marines as well, with some exceptions for specific campaigns as time went on. While the red and blue were maintained for ceremonial purposes, it seems silly to include those elements for wargaming…

And so, once again, for miniatures, the Marines can be very easily played using regular army miniatures from any of the ranges. Once again, though, remember that they carried no colours and operated very much as skirmishers towards the latter half of the century, but many companies have plastic kits for the Crimean War, the Zulu War, and many others of the period.