Marine hat
Original hat of the ‘hoedjesman’
Hat (topper) worn by a naval infantry man, a marine. Marines wore this striking piece of headgear from 1817 to 1830. This exceptional piece of marine headgear is now on display (on loan from the Rijksmuseum).
'Hoedjesman'
The collection includes an original hat from 1817 as worn by a so-called ‘hoedjesman’ (literally a ‘hat man’, i.e. a naval infantryman wearing this particular type of headgear, with the hat referred to in English as a topper) and a sabre which was used on board of the gun boat commanded by Jan Van Speijk.
Van Speijk was a commanding office serving with the Royal Netherlands Navy, who became a national hero at the time of the Belgian Revolution in 1830 when he blew up his boat, rather than having it fall into the hands of the Belgian insurgents.
