Epaulettes

[Mick Alton]

I'm just being curious really. Why do engineer's epaulettes have a purple chasing around the gold?

[ETwhat?]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+are+merchant+navy+epaulettes+purple

[AlternativeNavs]

Although I found the reply post a laugh, what would the point in a forum be if we just 'google'ed everything. Im sure most of the questions asked on hear could be answered by a trip to google.

[ETwhat?]

I couldnt be bothered typing a big long reply though so answered the question in the most time efficent way possible, its all about enabling people to make their own success

[The H]

From what I could find it is in honour of the engineers that died on the Titanic. (According to google)

[size4riggerboots]

Yeaaaah this is one of those times when there's a lot of guff thrown up by Google, it's a very popular myth, and there is some truth to it, but that's not actually quite it... This is the best answer I found on my trawl of the interweb... (it's a copy and paste job, so please forgive any bad spelling!)

"Hello everybody, I'm marine engineer.
Many people even those belonging to shipping profession have got a lot of confusions regarding the purple stripes. But, a lot of people are their who have cooked a lot of funny stories about the purple coloured stripes.
Story 1: Some people think that the purple color is due to the purple coloured overalls of all the engineers working on titanic ship. And to give respect to all the engineers of Titanic, purple stripes turned to be the symbol of loyalty and dedication of engineers towards their profession and the purple overalls changed to purple stripes.
Story 2: Some people think that there was a person named Jone who was a britisher and worked with full joy. And he was deadly dedicated to his profession and to honour that guy, he was awarded a little purple coloured heart. And that heart got converted to purple stripes.
Reality: There are no such reasons at all but this purple colour is used to distinguish the engine side from the deck side. And the purple colour is selected because of the colour of overalls of all the engineers working on titanic. But this colour has got no connection with dedication and all, because then, this statement will become a contradiction for deck side people. They have also got dedication toward their profession but they don't have any purple stripes.
So, gentlemen, purple stripes are just a symbol to recognise engine officer from deck officer."

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_th...#ixzz1dhm9El5T

[Steve]

I expect it's a crossover from RN usage dating back to the 1850s, somewhat before RMS Titanic was conceived. See Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_N..._rank_insignia

See also from the National Maritime Museum: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/sea-and...in-the-titanic