The Museum's extensive uniform collection holds over 7000 items of regulation dress, ratings’ clothing, ceremonial wear and accessories. Here is a selection of garments, from the first Royal Naval uniform pattern of 1748 through to 20th-century examples. Highlights include a captain's full dress coat of the 1774 pattern as worn by Captain James Cook (1728-79) in the famous portrait by Nathaniel Dance – although we do not know its original owner – and three of Nelson's (1758-1805) coats including the undress uniform in which he was fatally wounded at Trafalgar. Uniforms of the 1812 pattern take the story up to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Later naval uniforms include those of the reserves and attached forces, such as the Royal Marines.
