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Great Coat News!

Chris Daley, Historical Clothing Supervisor of Jamestown/Yorktown, visited us last Tuesday to give his expert advice on the wool coat recovered from the turret in 2002.

Chris was amazed to see how well preserved the coat is and how much of it remains. We now know that about 80% of the garment has survived (in approximately a 100 pieces)!

Chris told us that the wool was very finely and tightly woven, indicating that this belonged to a higher class crew member such as an officer. He also suggested that it might be a civilian outfit rather than a Navy one. A closer look at the coat, when all the pieces will be clean and dry, will help verify this hypothesis.

A preliminary conclusion regarding typology is that this is a “double breasted sack coat”. As soon as we have pictures or sketch available we will share them here.

With Chris’s expert assistance and skills, we are hoping to display a replica of the coat side-by-side with the original artifact after it is fully conserved. He is already planning in coming back later in May to gather more info for the reproduction 🙂

The coat as it was in 2002:

Below, the main parts of the coat as they look today. Three pockets are noticeable, two on the left piece, one on the right one.

The treatment of the other 90 or so small parts of wool is close to completion – stay tuned!

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