Comparative Use of Makeshift Shelters 1550 to 1755

[cannontickler]

Image 1: Makeshift huts used by European armies, circa 1550-1650. Note their similarity to shelters built by soldiers in America from the 1750's to the 1860's. Geoffrey and Angela Parker, European Soldiers 1550-1650 (Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne, Cambridge Univ. Press, N.D.), 29



Image 2: Wooden tent pictured in the German military manual, 'Was ist jedem Officier waehrend eines Feldzugs zu wissen noethig' (trans., "What it is necessary for each officer to know during a campaign") (Carlsruhe, 1788) Mit zehen Kupferplatten (trans. "with ten copper plates"), Courtesy of Charles Beale.



Figure 3: Army tents: (Left to right), Sibley tent, wedge tent, shelter tent. Hinman, Corporal Si Klegg, 577.

[Captain Reech]

Interesting, the first image shows shelters very similar to those I used to build as a Scout (Back when Scouting meant going into the woods with a sheath knife and some string and doing stuff that you probably can't get insurance for these days!) Be nice to do an event where the landowner allowed that sort of stuff (but I can't see it happening on an NT or EH site!)

[cannontickler]

Interesting, the first image shows shelters very similar to those I used to build as a Scout (Back when Scouting meant going into the woods with a sheath knife and some string and doing stuff that you probably can't get insurance for these days!) Be nice to do an event where the landowner allowed that sort of stuff (but I can't see it happening on an NT or EH site!)

hello mate, we've done it before on NT sites, all we did was show up with most of it pre made in the back of a Transit and used bits out the woods to finish it off when there, really easy things to make and look amazingly awfentical when done.

[Captain Reech]

I think it depends on the site but, now I come to think of it, most of the woods we used to use were NT property. I guess it depends on what you cut, bracken yes, saplings no! Getting really anal you can do without the string if you can be bothered to use barmbles or similar to tie the frame together.

Still not sure what the guy on the floor is doing in image 2....the more I think about it the more it worries me.....

[cannontickler]

I think it depends on the site but, now I come to think of it, most of the woods we used to use were NT property. I guess it depends on what you cut, bracken yes, saplings no! Getting really anal you can do without the string if you can be bothered to use barmbles or similar to tie the frame together.

Still not sure what the guy on the floor is doing in image 2....the more I think about it the more it worries me.....

He's trying to sneak off down the pub away from the god awfully boring grenadier that is going on about how he single handedly won the entire campaign with a lit match and a pineapple disguised as a bomb.......!!!!
notice all the rest of the regiment have already legged it.

[Captain Reech]

'Was ist jedem Officier waehrend eines Feldzugs zu wissen noethig' (trans., "What it is necessary for each officer to know during a campaign")

I believe the British Army still has something similar, they call it a Sergeant......

[Mark Griffin]

Still not sure what the guy on the floor is doing in image 2

proof of the existence of contact lenses in the last 1/4 of the 18th cent