As I was looking into what came later, and also wondered about the tail feathers going below the perpendicular element the eagle was perched on, I discovered a couple of important things.
The official design illustrations don’t change until 1886, 34 years later!
Let’s look at 1852, 1866, and 1883 in parallel.
The only real change is the wreath design, which changes the number & size of the acorns, and the foliage somewhat. I’m confident most manufacturers would ignore the difference, if they paid attention to the official design at all. As we already saw, Schuyler and his partner were already ignoring the oak & acorns in favor of the laurel leaf & berries, nor were they the only ones.
The tail feathers always go below the shank in every single design while the eagle’s torso faces forward (officially the torso turned slight sideways starting with the 1905 design)
EXCEPT when cannon balls are included below the shank. I have checked all the examples given in Tuite, O’Donnell & Campbell, Kerksis, and even Gavin. When did cannon balls start being included by manufacturers? We have no idea! What we do know is that Horstmann started including such a design in the manufacture’s catalog of 1877:
(Both this and the 1905 above from Tuite’s book because he has a higher quality image than I possess)
That catalog has been reprinted and the reader can find it online with some searching. This was not regulation as we have already seen, yet O’Donnell & Campbell boldly assert there was a 1876 official change in design (pg 606) and even go on to give details. This is, of course, total nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence other than a manufacturer’s catalog. None. Against it we have the continuity of the official illustrations already shown. I’ve talked before about the difference in the regulatory mindset and what came before. It is quite instructive that the official pattern adopted the 6 ball element officially in 1886 (not 1883 as Tuite misstates sometimes). The Navy has never been shy about making regulation what others are already doing regardless of regulations. From at least 1886 to 1905, the 6 ball pattern was official, but as a matter of fact 3 ball elements are found during this period, and even the old pattern, tail feathers & all. Heck, Tuite even has 2 examples from this time period of the old true 2-piece buckle being produced in this period (pg 65-6. Dated due to the maker’s mark on one, with uniform details on the other) though not with the two backing pieces that were used in the original antebellum & CW era (and post).
See the tail feathers?
So where did the tail feathers below come from? It was included as far back as the 1820’s #1 button for Captains & #3 button for Surgeons & Pursers et al. (See https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/topic/394792-the-4-buttons-of-the-navy-1820-uniform-regulations/#comment-3219135) and continued in the 1830 order when the #1 button was used for everyone (see photo in original post). Those buttons in turn influenced the belt plates. In the 1841 order, that element was taken away from the buttons but continued on the epaulette.
It’s unclear whether the other belt plate manufacturers were influenced by the original Ames design or by the earlier artistic tradition, but either way everyone ignored the actual pattern to have tail feathers below until the cannon balls showed up, and didn’t completely disappear even then until 1905, in other words the 20th century. I’ll probably tackle the laurel & berries next.
By
Father V ·
