The history of the scouting camp blanket

Some leaders have managed to collect no less than 4 camp blankets!  Yes, four! and still have 100’s of badges to sew on!  This is something our squirrels and beavers can strive towards, if the fancy takes them!

But where did the now ubiquitous camping blanket come from? The answer to this can be traced back through the centuries, stretching before the two World Wars to the days of the earliest frontier traders in Canada and the American West. And in fact, its earliest beginnings predate even that.

There was a weaver called Thomas Blanket (Previously Blanquette), who we can thank for the actual blanket.  Go way back to 1339, living and working in Bristol, he set up a loom and created a bed covering to make the straw pallets more… well, palatable 🙂

By the end of the Elizabethan period, blanket making was on the up and up.  Yorkshire was a firm lead in production of the blanket, but they were made all over the country, including Witney in Oxfordshire, who supplied Hudson’s Bay Company blankets produced from Cotswold wool, who exported to North America. 

These blankets became highly sought after by traders and Native American Tribes, because of their warmth.  Trappers traded them for (eek!) beaver pelts, which again were in huge demand for the hat trade.  

So, let’s just bring that information back around to scouting…  French-Canadian voyageurs made their blankets into ‘capotes’, which are long hooded cloaks, not dissimilar to how we wear them today to attend our camp fires.

The wool blanket was also common issue to military forces throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Both Napoleon’s and Wellington’s armies were supplied with them, as were Union and Confederate forces in the American Civil War. In the 20th century, they subsequently became field issue for troops in the Great War and the Second World War on both Axis and Allied sides too. Blankets also went to sea, and cabin blankets were first made in the early 1700s. In almost all cases, these military blankets were a drab khaki or grey colour. Following the cessation of these conflicts, forces veterans often kept them for their own use, while surplus blankets were frequently co-opted by other outdoorsy types, including numerous Boy Scout troops. In turn, this gave rise to the Scouting tradition of the camp blanket as a wearable reminder of shared adventures and experiences, gradually becoming adorned with embroidered Scout badges.

The classic Hudson’s Bay Point Blanket is still in production today and they remain heirloom pieces in many American and Canadian families, handed down through successive generations. 

I wonder if you will do this with your ‘camp blanket’