Did Engineer Officers in the Royal and Merchant Navy wear purple cloth between the rank stripes on their uniform as a sign of mourning for the engineers who died in the Titanic?
There is no truth in this story. Purple was just the colour assigned to the engineering branch when it was decided to distinguish the different branches from each other by means of coloured stripes. A memorandum was issued by the Royal Navy to this effect in 1863 and read:
With a view to distinguishing the several branches of the Naval Service from each other, Her Majesty has been pleased to sanction the introduction of distinctive colours between the gold lace stripes at present worn on the sleeves of Uniform as follows:
- Medical Department to wear alternate stripes of scarlet
- Paymaster's Department to wear alternate stripes of white
- Engineer's Department to wear alternate stripes of purple.
The coloured stripes were initially made of velvet but were later replaced by coloured cloth and the use of this was finally abolished by the Royal Navy in May 1955 except for the Medical and Dental Branches.
There was no official uniform for the Merchant Navy until September 1918, although some of the larger shipping lines had had their own company uniforms for many years before this, and some had followed the Royal Navy and introduced the same distinctive colours for their Engineers, Medical and Purser's Departments.