Hi There
About 7 years ago I wrote a book called The Brighton Garrison, 1793-1900, parts of which deal with The Volunteer Coastal Artillery. If you can get a copy of it you will find a lot of background info in it.
To summerise here, early documents are a little confusing for there were a number of local variations of volunteer artilleryman. The earliest were organised by a Colonel Harrington, and these were followed by men under the command of a Colonel Hannington. These largely similar names which appeared in early handwritten records have caused obvious confusion. Furthermore, many of the local fishermen were also organised into another group of water and land based artillery volunteers known as Sea Fencibles.
I do have a few details of the Volunteer Artilleryman's uniform from Colonel Hanningtons time (as worn by gunner W R Wood c1850) but this may be rather late for your period of research. The book has a copy of a photo showing Wood as a young recruit wearing the uniform which consisted of a basic tunic & trousers with a peaked cap (rather like the pill box cap worn later by the boys brigade) Their cap badge was a grenade.
Round the waist they had a wide brown belt with a pouch for a side arm and a frog for a 24 inch sword. Gunner Wood, rose through the ranks to become the Volunteers' Colonel, retiring in 1889. A further photo dated circa 1865, shows the full uniform as worn by the gunnery team after they won an artillery competion at Shoeburyness.
My research showed that both the Volunteer Artillery and volunteer riflemen originally wore a colourful scarlet uniform, but they were eventually told to change it into a dull green and grey. This created tremendous revolt in the ranks and it was reported in the local press that they would loose recruits if their volunteers had to adopt the uniform of the workhouse. The scarlet jacket was therefore kept for much longer than other coastal volunteer artillery regiments.
Roy G
