Saucer Sailor Cap: Country Trends

Figure 1.--This boy wears a saucer-style cap with his sailor suit. The tally on his cap reads "Olympia". The "U.S.S." is shadowed. The portrait mount is stamped G.V. Buck Washington D.C. It is undated, but was probanly taken about the turn of the 20th century. Both the mount style and the tally suggest this. "Olympia" was Admiral Dewey's flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay (1898). Note the inverted stripes beneath the eagle. They are almost certainly red, a good indication of the difficulties in assessing color in these old black and white portraits.

British and American boys wore a kind of flat-topped sailor hat. Most of our images are American, but that probably reflects our greater access to American images than any relative popularity. They may have been worn in other countries as well. British naval uniforms influenced uniforms in many other countries. This includes both countries with substantial as well as small navies. And this in turn influenced boys' sailor suit styles in those countries. But America and Britain are the only countries for which we have found images at this time. . They were of course based on the official navy caps worn by British and American sailors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Created: 1:46 AM 4/27/2007
Last updated: 8:02 PM 5/15/2016