by Hap Rocketto
When I was a young lad working for my rich Uncle Sam on what seagoing folk called “The Gray Funnel Line”, we were never allowed out of doors with our heads uncovered. The only exception was attendance at divine services or, as in my case more often than not, Captain’s Mast where I tried to explain away my many minor military misdemeanors. Conversely, we were never allowed indoors “covered” unless we were “under arms.” At the very least that meant wearing an immaculate pistol belt with all of its brass fittings burnished to a mirror finish-symbolic of actually carrying a side arm or sword. Unless we under arms we never ever saluted indoors. Saluting uncovered and/or indoors is justly considered, by those who have worn the uniform of the sea services, an ill mannered and foppish affectation of the less refined land and air forces
Three decades later being under arms and covered is still a regular state of affairs. I always wear a hat when I shoot, be it outdoors or in the gallery. A hat is the one piece of shooting equipment that is both utilitarian as well as fun. Depending on style, color, or condition it reflects the wearer’s character and, with a tiny metal pin or two, modestly shows to the world that one is Distinguished or President’s Hundred.
As shooting gear has evolved so has the hat. Looking at contemporary woodcuts from the earliest days of the practitioners of the art of using culverin and “villainous saltpeter” one sees helmets or great floppy hats resplendent with feathers. The matchlock became the cutting edge firearm when men wore the capotain, a tall felt hat, with a medium brim and tapered crown usually black in color. When the first flintlocks came on the scene the men wore the hat associated with the Puritans, the Sugar Loaf, with its high crown and stiff brim. The flintlock outlasted the tricorn and bicorn hats while percussion arms and tall beaver stove pipe hats coexisted. Ironically the beaver pelts used in hat manufacture were gathered by men wearing low crowned broad brimmed felt hats. On occasion it might appear that a Mountain Man had a raccoon, prairie dog, or gopher curled up asleep upon his head. Those tough men also carried 50 caliber Hawken rifles and Green River knives so I am sure that few dared to mock those who donned this eccentric piece of head gear. By the time self contained cartridges became common men were wearing soft felt hats such as the Panama and the pork pie in both felt and straw.
In my collection of old Camp Perry team photos it is rare to see a man without a hat. The decades that were known as the Golden Age of Smallbore, the 20s through the 50s, seem also to be a golden age for hats. Staring back from the sepia toned panographic photo of the 1935 US Dewar Team are the 49 faces of rifleman long gone. A few of the greats stand uncovered. Looking back through steel rimmed spectacles is a young bareheaded Robert Hughes, the first person to win the Whistler Boy Trophy. Remington Arms’ Frank Kahrs, who wrote many an article for the American Rifleman under the nom d’plume of Al Blanco, is likewise hatless, as is the legendary purveyor of shooting supplies, Paddy O’Hare. A balding Bill Schweitzer bravely displays his bare pate to the Camp Perry sun.
However, most wear the ever-present snap brim fedora wear and carry the rifle of the day, the Winchester Model 52. Dave Carlson, the 1940 smallbore champion and master of the Winchester custom shop, wears a dark model with a pinched crown sitting squarely upon his head. A young mustachioed “Doc” Swanson, tie drawn snugly up, sports the same hat as Carlson but his is set at a jaunty angle with its crown sharply pinched and the brim impishly rolled up matching its wearer’s mischievous grin. With features as sharp as the cutters he used to make his famous barrels the 1929 champion, Eric Johnson, wears a pale fedora with a two inch wide dark hat band. A smiling “Turk” Samsoe, two times national champion, is crowned with a duplicate of Johnson’s hat and likewise is future NRA president and Randle Cup donor Thurman Randle. Homer Jacobs’ dark three piece suit, paisley handkerchief peeking out from the breast pocket, is elegantly set off by his white fedora, its right hand brim turned up and the rest raked down.
In total there are 23 fedoras, five 1911 campaign hats, four floppy “newsboy” caps-technically known as an eight quarter, two ‘Daisy Mae’ army fatigue caps, one cowboy hat, and one pith helmet. For what is worth 18 of these men are also wearing ties. More ties appear in this old Perry photo than were evident in the entire theater during the most recent smallbore awards ceremony.
Seventy years on, the Dewar Team of 2005 photo shows 43 individuals with 14 wearing the most universal item of United States millinery manufacture, the ubiquitous logo decorated baseball cap. The rest go bareheaded and everyone is wearing a T shirt, but for two men in collared shirts and two young ladies in tank tops. Even if the current US Dewar Team is less sartorially splendid then its predecessor they are, never the less, a match in the shooting talent department for the team counts four Olympians, a handful of national prone and position champions, as well as Pershing and Roberts Team veterans among its members.
While most of today’s shooters pose without headgear it is guaranteed that almost every one of them wears something when they shoot. It might be a ball cap, a visor, a “boonie” hat, a bonnet, a bandana tied buccaneer style, or a specially designed shooting cap with Velcro secured flaps but all, in their own way, honor the old Naval tradition of being covered when under arms.
