For eight years in the 1830s the U.S. Marines wore green — a deliberate echo of the Continental Marines of the Revolution, who had been dressed in green faced with white. The 1833 regulations brought the color back: a green coat buttoned up the front, the tails cut away. It was a handsome idea undone by chemistry. Good green cloth had to be imported from England, and the two-step dyeing needed for a deep shade was far less stable than the dark blue the Corps had worn since 1798. In the field the coats faded to a patchwork of shades, leaving the men anything but uniform. In 1841 the Marines gave it up and returned to blue.

W. Britain stands the NCO at shoulder arms in the short-lived green: the green coatee buttoned up the front with brass buttons and NCO trim, grey-blue trousers, white crossbelts, and a tall black shako with a brass eagle plate and yellow plume. He sits at the center of the Corps' antebellum uniform story — after the Marine officer of 1806-18 in his blue, alongside the plainer 1839 Fatigue Marine who came at the end of the green years, and before the return to blue of the 1859 Dress Marine.

W. Britain model 13049. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), solid metal hand-painted in a matte finish. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Supplied in original W. Britain packaging.