Cutoe, cutlass, hangers and short swords in the 17th-18th centuries, with a brief consideration of the swords used by pirates around the year 1700. / historicalfencing / scholagladiatoria
A few things that come to mind: - a hanger is less likely to get into things when sheated and a ship is a very busy place - cutting is more compliant with so and so sight, without glasses I can shoot and cut much better than I can thrust, not many people who needed glasses had them, and you may have problems seeing in dark parts of a ship, in the jungle and everywhere at night - thrust fencing is based on fine motor skills, which evaporate quickly if you drink grog, and are the result of training, which costs time and money and requires a master, whereas some basic cut and parry could be passed from senior operator to junior operator - a point to investigate could be cost, I suspect storta, hangers and the alike could be had more on the cheap than swords
Or to make a similar comparison, choosing cutting blades to issue could be similar to choosing shotguns - you can be moving too frantically to aim precisely, and still hit your target effectively.
All good points. Another point is that a cutting weapon is more likely than a thrusting one to be of use in situations on board and while boarding not directly related to fighting, ie cutting ropes. There would be situations when you might want to employ a sharp edge more than a point.
As a former river sailor, there are times where we needed to cut ropes (we call them lines), especially if they were hard down and impossible to untangle
Concerning cuts vs stabs @10:50. My grandfather was a surgeon who served in Burma in WW2 and Vietnam and who worked as what they called a 'General Surgeon" in those days which meant he operated on the chest and abdomen. I asked him about different wounds and their difficulty. He always said wounds similar to those from artillery were the worst and nearly inoperable, being that they essentially tore and shredded. The same could be true with gunshot wounda but he said they could vary greatly. Stab wounds by comparison were easy with modern medicine since they were much cleaner; though location mattered (ie arteries). I don't know if he ever mentioned any cutting type wounds, but based on what he said before I would guess he'd say they'd be the easiest. Of course, this all is with modern medicine, or mid 20th century modern medicine at least! Miss you Granddaddy!
You partially touched on this but another advantage is using it like a machete. If you're in somewhere like the Caribbean or parts of South America alot of it is jungle and swamp. An axe wouldn't be all that useful at clearing a trail through vines but a Cutlass or hanger would be.
The modern machete, especially In Latin America, is the descendant of these old style of blades. Where in Europe the Bill Hook, Axe and hatchets, and the Saxe Knife were the daily tools; the machete is the general equivalent in the Americas. The machetes designs and uses came from the hangers, sabers, scimitar copies and wide bladed side swords of the day in Europe and evolved into the machete tools used today everywhere on the American continents from the southern tips of Chile and Argentina to the Northern Wilderness of Canada.
Not saying you're wrong, but the Amazon Rainforest is historically (and presently) a very big chunk of South America. Also Central America is rainforests, deciduous forests, cloud forests, and mangrove forests sprinkled with beaches on top of mountainous terrain.
This is the sort of talk that you do best Matt. No long rambling side offshoots, full and clear explanations. Just the job.
6 лет назад
Also cuting weapons offer more targets. You can cut at extremities, like lower arms easily, while thrusting them is perhaps possible, but a lot harder.
Exactly. Silver even talks about that: "And yet more for the blow: a full blow upon the head, face, arm, leg, or legs, is death, or the party so wounded in the mercy of him that shall so wound him. For what man shall be able long in fight to stand up, either to revenge, or defend himself, having the veins, muscles, sinews of his hand, arm, or leg clean cut asunder? Or being dismembered by such wound upon the face or head, but shall be enforced thereby, and through the loss of blood, the other a little dallying with him, to yield himself, or leave his life in his mercy?" That's part of (but not the only part) why traditional foil target is just the torso, and why smallsword manuals do at times talk about limb attacks but don't give them nearly the credit of something straight to the chest or even face. I've sparred smallsword on occasions where I make it a point to try to get the opponent's weapon hand (probably the only useful limb target with a point like that) and - while possible - found it damn hard to do with regularity.
Marxiavelli24 I think the case for bandit knights is a bit exaggerated. Most of those would probably have been out of work soldiers comming back from campaign or mercenaries between jobs, while the knight would have a lot more recources to draw on.
True. Imagine the younger son of a duke swearing fealty to someone of lesser rank. Somewhat socially awkward, loss of prestige and income. A bit like the owner of a factory having his son working on the production floor, as a laborer.
Cutlasses are one my favourite swords and certainly one of the most popular in this period. Although very posh officers might still carry a rapier, the cutlass was the naval sword. While it came to be an iconic pirate sword, it was the iconic mariner blade. It was ideal for fights on a ship. Shipboard combat in this time was truly CQB, close quarters battle. The hanger was a short sword issues to infantry and support troops during this period. A sword was the sidearm until pistols became sidearms..
I remember the first time I came across the word 'hanger' (as a weapon) was in Gulliver's Travels, where Gulliver has to draw his hanger to defend himself against huge animals like wasps and rats - in Brobdingnag, of course. I don't think I had to look it up in a dictionary, because it was obvious from the *context* that it must be some kind of sword.
Hmmm. You mentioned quite a bit about the difference between a thrust from a spadroon and a slash from the hanger, but you didn’t seem to have mentioned anything about the different type of wound one would suffer getting stabbed with the cutlass. That might’ve been an interesting bit to add. Cheers!
One of my favourite cuttoes is the one made for (and carried by) Washington in the Rev. War. Very light, fancy looking but looks like it would work very well in close quarters and looks like a good cutter.
This is the first good resource dealing with the cutoe that I've been able to find. I live in a Suburb of Cleveland Ohio, in the United States, and we've got a few cutoe exhibited at a local museum, but very little information is given at the exhibit. In addition, our first president, and Revolutionary War general, George Washington carried a cutoe -he had previously carried a small sword- which is in some museum somewhere. Despite perhaps our most prominent historical figure carrying one, there is very, very little information available here about that style of weapon. Thank you for making this video. You've answered a lot of questions that I had about cutoe, but was previously unable to find answers to.
awesome video! i love the detailed visual combat analysis videos like this (stab sword vs swing sword) and sword vs axe and the like. I hope you do more videos like this!
Lots of 18th century officers complained about men using their hangers to cut firewood in the written records. Avoiding that and hatchets being more good for land clearing seems to be why most regular British Army units in the French and Indian War were ordered to leave their hangers in storage in whatever port they landed in and were issued hatchets instead before going off to the American frontier.
The main advantage is the intimidation factor. Small swords aren’t as intimidating looking as a cutlass and for pirates the main goal is to get your target to give up without a fight. That’s very different from a battlefield context where there’s very little chance of scaring the other side into backing down.
Intimidation could be a factor. Maybe. But a Smallsword when pointed at you is still intimidating. It's not a toy. Intimidation relies upon psychology mostly. A shopkeeper would very much be intimidated by just about anything. A pirate, sailor or privateer may need a bit more to be intimidated. Like a blunderbuss. Maybe a Pappenheimer rapier would be more intimidating than a Smallsword. At least it has more reach and protection. Both are deadly if used correctly. We are talking about combat troops after all. You are going to need more to intimidate them. They've seen it all. Cannons. Swords. Guns. Keelhauling. Torture.
Another disadvantage of thrusts is that it can take a moment to withdraw a blade from an injured/dying enemy. That could be a problem if his buddy is arm's length away trying to kill you.
It's always interesting to me when you describe something like that as short or describe it as a good close quarter weapon. In the circles I travel people debate weather a 6inch blade is too long at grappling distance. Just goes to show how things can change. I would not want to go up against what you are holding with a 6 inch blade... but then again no one is walking around with one of those today. You just can't get away from fighting systems. No matter how much you think you are getting away from martial arts and into "real world" fighting you are still hopelessly looked into the marshal discipline of your time. One day people will be practicing early 21st century marshal arts and debating the value of drop leg holsters or some nonsense 😂
Gawd only knows what they will make of the knife crime epidemic in London. I don't think there is any martial arts or finesse there, first to shank your opponent with a kitchen knife wins, stabity stabity stab.
However, Karambits have get a corollary to it, I've been training with them and finding them to be the optimal grappling blade due to ergonomic design which allows for the hand to be opened while the weapon retained ready and can be used to hook and do draw cuts from various angles, and their size is generally related to your hand size and are usually about 3-4 inches only even though the curve gives them a longer cutting surface. However, with other Filipino weapons you can get up to 28" to 34" total length and still comfortably clear in grapple distance.
I think I've got a wrench to throw into your etymology here. In the late 16th century you can already find a lot of english mentions of a weapon called the "curtal-axe" or "curtilace" (albiet I've occasionally just seen it translated as "falchion"). It was a sort of curved broadsword which became extremely popular among French and Spanish heavy cavalry during the second half of the 16th century as an anti-armor weapon. You can see these "curtilaces" feature prominently in a number of Hogenburg's illustrations, in particluar his illustration of the battle of Dreux, and they do look a whole lot like the stereotypical pirate cutlass. How exactly the cutlass would have gone from being essentially a knightly weapon, intended to be used against opponents in heavy armor like the horseman's mace or battle axe, to a pirate weapon though I don't really know.
I think that cuthoe is just about the perfect sword for the 21st century. The same things they wanted then is what you need now, quick to draw, easy to wear/conceal, good for CQB and multi-directional attacks, and capable of opposing much larger weapons. I'd prefer a Zombie Tools gladius tho
Only Matt would describe a two foot long broad blade as light and dainty ;-) Mind you, there is a zwiehander in the background ..... Ive seen it suggested that sailors / pirates preferred shorter blade cutlasses as they were easier to use on the decks, and especially below decks, on a ship where space is confined and a short blade is more suited to the potential fighting environment. Having been on a couple of tall masters I could see the point - below decks is cramped and above deck there are ropes and tangle risks everywhere. What do you think Matt? Also....potential for a follow up on the use of boarding pikes and axes.
Yeah, basically half-pikes that are a bit handier in combat. While a musket is better of course, they had their uses for repelling boarders and clearing decks.
@@Tareltonlives For a cool story about their use, look up the the Taking of Banda, when Captain Christopher Cole captured a Dutch outpost while greatly outnumbered by giving his men boarding pikes during a torrential rain. Apparently bayonets and swords were a poor match against a small band of pike wielding Brits.
As a sometime tall ship sailor myself, I'm ashamed that the point about the rigging had not occurred to me. OTOH, it is easy to overstate how much rigging is even within twice an arm's reach.
It may be from Italian or French. We know of several types of cutting weapons and long knives from 14th century Italy, Cultelo or Coltelo, Cortelas, Coltellaccio, Cultellesia, Cultella, and also in old french, Coutelas. This is probably where it stems from.
You noted that that sword could be a tool, but only for cutting meat. The first buccaneers came to the Caribbean to hunt cattle and wild pigs and trade the meat, so those swords would have been excellent tools for them.
@@jordanhicks5131 here in FL and south Ga. A lot of hog hunters still use knifes that look alot like his cutoe\ hanger. Or still alot of bowies. Knifes.
@@tbjtbj4786 they also work well for clearing light brush to set up a shooting hide. I also carry a folding saw for that, kinda like how british empire pioneer short swords had a sawback
The modern machete, especially In Latin America, is the descendant of these old style of blades. Where in Europe the Bill Hook, Axe and hatchets, and the Saxe Knife were the daily tools; the machete is the general equivalent in the Americas. The machetes designs and uses came from the hangers, sabers, scimitar copies and wide bladed side swords of the day in Europe and evolved into the machete tools used today everywhere on the American continents from the southern tips of Chile and Argentina to the Northern Wilderness of Canada.
Even the lewis and Clark expedition carried a version of 24"ish blade cutlasses with T guards. It's basically the original explorer's machete. I recently commissioned a 22"blade hand and a half t guard cutlass and I am really surprised at the versatility and ease of use, it can slice clean through 2"saplings with a good swing, and it's compact enough to not get in the way when stowed.
Dear Matt. It would be very nice of you to give some stats of the weapon. Length, width, thickness of the blade at the hilt and distal taper are very important. Thank you!
A sword looking very similar to your cutoe was found in the shipwreck of the Golden Fleece, the ship of Pirate Captain Joseph Bannister that was destroyed by the Royal Navy in an epic battle in 1686.
A point that seems to really not come up looking at these historical examples is around the stress and chaos of a life or death brawl in a very close space. One of my conceptual benchmarks for self-defense is “can I envision something working in a world war one trench raid or in a celler in Stalingrad?” Maybe add to this short list a packed deck of a 17th century ship, or storming or defending period fortifications. What these kinds of scenarios have in common is a lack of space. No real room to fence. And I’m also assuming a level of fear rage and intensity. Using my imagination, I can see a cutlass being as useful as a trench knife, or sharpened shovel. But I don’t see jumping into an enemy trench with a small sword.
Well, simply given that every infantryman was issued a bayonet (and the long musket to mount it on) whereas the Marine contingent was AFAIK the only sizeable part of a ship's company to be issued long muskets at all... I'm very sure bayonets at sea were comparatively rare. To the best of my knowledge, they were also rarer in more general terms too.
In ship fighting on or below decks apart from the general press of sweaty scrapping matelots, the cramped structure of the ship is an issue too. You don't want to thrust ,overpenetrate and get your point stuck in the hull bulkheads or have your strike parried by the deckbeams above your head.
Such swords were also widely used by Americans during the Revolution, both regulars and militia. George Washington's famous main battle sword, made at Fishkill, NY, was a cutoe. It survives in amazing condition, and is truly a thing of beauty, with its green ivory grip, and silver mountings. This is a link to a video from where it's currently kept in D.C. - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PiClfS5MfI0.html Also, Matt, could you please do a video on tomahawks and their use? There is so much you can talk about! You could also include various other 17th-18th century one-handed axes, such as boarding axes, as well as the various one-handed war axes used by the Ottomans during the same period. But, PLEASE do a video on tomahawks no matter what! Thank you! 😁
With regards to gunshots from the period the most lethal aspect is probably secondary infection. At the time, bear grease was the go-to lube for musket balls. This was a rendered tallow that would go rancid pretty fast. So these balls-which were by no means perfectly spherical-were travelling relatively slow by modern ballistic standards and were covered in all of these little pits and crevices. That rancid tallow would stick pretty well to it all the way downrange. You would not even live long enough most times for lead poisoning to set in because of sepsis or "blood poisoning".
Thrusting swords are very good in a 1-1 duel but in a situation where there can be multiple people closing the distance from all directions is less advantageous.
He is off on the gun shot vs sword damage effects. A bullets damage wound path closes behind it and knife or sword wound is open longer and allows a greater blood flow.
Your comment about the small sword being better than the cutlass brought to mind the battle that saw the death of blackbeard. I read the attackers acknowledged the cutting power of the cutlass and its ability to overpower the smallsword and the strategy they developed was to simply keep pouring men at the pirates until their heavier weapons wore them down.
I just recently got my first Calvary saber and I love it generally I was more into katana type weapons and then I found long sword 🗡️ and now the sabre man I'm not going to have any more room on my walls
Having a short and thin small sword ⚔️ that is easily maneuverable that can thrust and slash would be better than having a shorter and broader blade sword 🗡️ that is heavier and is mainly used for cutting and chopping. They both have their strengths but the more nimble the better for CQB. The faster you can attack the better.
Would you do a review of some of the weapons/historical authenticity/fight scenes of the first (and only the first) pirates of the Caribbean film. I'd love to get your take on that.
Could you make a close-up of this cutlass? Because I've think for half the video that it was a inverse recurve blade due to the type of grind lines that can be seen on it. I can't picture what the cross-section would be like...
I wonder if the smaller swords/sabers would also have been used as a machete-like everyday tool. that hunting hanger looks like a good fit for all around multi-tool/weapon as you said-->back-up/bowie knife --> the extra weight for a tertiary weapon would be minimized by its [utility] value.
As always, a fascinating video. Matt could you someday do a video on being Left handed in sword use? Most early swords were ambidextrous but by the time ornate handguards came into fashion, what did a left-hander do in the military...learn to fight right handed? I guess the rich could have custom made weapons.
I have seen several spellings and pronunciations of this type of sword. The title of this video uses cutoe. However, the spelling I believe to be most accurate is the French word, couteau. The exact translation of couteau is knife.
Very interesting video. I gather that both French and British line infantry in the French and Indian War were equipped with hangers but I'm curious if these weapons were used regularly in combat (I.e.: in comparison to war club, tomahawk and knife) during that period?
As a sailor and having been on both modern men of war and ships of the age of sail, they are compact spaces. In combat densely packed spaces especially in the age of sail. I would take a cutoe cutlass or hanger over small sword spaldroon or rapier any day. If you thrust there is a good chance your blade will stick inside them and you have a lot of people all around you and no other weapon. No to mention the need to probably cut downed rigging, gun tackles ect.
I suppose another element to cutting rather than stabbing is that you might not always want to kill your opponents in ship to ship combat or raiding parties. Sometimes you might want to take prisoners for ransom and they're worth a lot more if they're still breathing, you also might want to enlist new crew members or to simply take slaves for later sale. A couple of nasty cuts or lost fingers might be enough to take the fight out of merchant sailor without making them either a death waiting to happen or a useless cripple, in either case they're more valuable/useful to you as a pirate.
Considering what you said about the distinction in potential lethality between cutting and thrusting: In a modern self-defense context, could the distinction between a cutter and a stabber be enough to be perceived as two distinguishable levels of force?
Mark Suarez probably depends on the jurisdiction and the people doing the investigation's level of knowledge in such matters. But regardless it will still probably boil down to assault with a deadly weapon
Isn't fighting aboard a ship somewhat similar to fighting in trenches? In the trenches they also took to shorter blades and cudgels and stuff, and less to long swords. Trenches are probably more cramped than a deck, but especially on military ships there were an awful lot of people aboard.
You keep saying that cuts are (generally) less lethal than thrusts, and I'm broadly inclined to agree, but we also have historical accounts of people having limbs amputated or having their skulls and torsos split. No modern knife can split a person in two or chop off a head, yet we read about this often in historical sources. Nobody who's had their head chopped off or had their torso split is going to make it back for doctors to complain about their wounds.
It will be very good for backup weapons if you can use it as a tool. For daggers or knives it is possible. Can they use this thing as a tool? for cutting ropes or meat, maybe ....
could cutoe/cutlass etc weapons also be cheaper to produce than a small sword or rapier type weapon? could that also be the reason why sailors including officers had them? I read a number of the Kydd novels by Julian Stockwin and he described Kydd buying a short sabre fairly similar in length to the police sword you had on that video, including the sharkskin grip! it was cheaper I think than a rapier or similar for a lowly lieutenant newly promoted! and he chose a shorter blade so as is less likely to get tangled in rigging and other confined parts of a ship! so cost might be a factor?
@@AnimeSunglasses also known as a church gun or a wedding gun. Usually engraved or a rare model of pistol, often stainless steel or nickel plated, fancy grips are common. It's perfectly functional as a pistol for self defence but it's more for show
BBQ guns predated stainless firearms . The concept also extends to flashy grips ( stag, mother of pearl, exotic woods, etc ) on a non- engraved gun , particularly since the grips would be more visible while the gun was holstered . And the holsters themselves , floral carved , dyed backgrounds , or at the least a nice basketweave .
Another point on the stopping power of a cut. Can't say from experience, but I imagine on average it hurts more to be cut than stabbed (particularly with a narrow point) because the damage of the thrust is much more localized while the cut is damaging many more nerves on the surface. Thus it would be much easier in the heat of the moment to not immediately realize the extent of the damage from the thrust and fight on after being run through, with the reaction to a cut typically being much more immediate. Disclaimer: I'm not on expert on pain and reactions to it. If anyone knows of research on this, please share.
More of this era please. Can you do a detailed video on police hangers please? with lots of rambling and context, and possibly give your opinion on Terry Pratchetts Night Watch series, do you think the police force in the night watch (Vimes etc) carried police Hangers? Serious question its very important to me for recreating the swords from Discworld for my Channel.
What about the economic differences? Was steel good enough for a cutlass cheap compared tk one that could handle a fine point? Or could there otherwise be a price difference?
Very interesting, Matt. I could of course look it up myself, but I'm not sure what a 'hanger' is, as opposed to a standard cutlass. Perhaps it's to do with blade length ...
Many thanks, John. I got around to looking it up on Wikipedia, and I was interested to learn that cutlasses may be the forerunners of machetes, and that they were used as agricultural tools.
Robert Rogers' Standing Orders mentions the use of cutlass by his men, Their operating environment is the wilderness of New England and Lower Canada. I assume these men used personal weapons, and brought them mainly to be used as machete, Does anyone have further information on this?
Personnaly I think cutlass came from the french "coutelas" , the pronotiation is close. We use the term "coutelas" for naming a big large knife. Many terms of the pirate world cames from french, like bucanneers , barbecue ( embrocher de la barbe à la queue ) .
When these get mentioned I always come back to Gulliver's travels as he used his hanger to kill the giant bees. I wonder what the weapon would be like in Swift's understanding.
A slash or strike is rarely intended to be a killing blow. Instead it is about creating a weakness that can then be exploited. A slash delivered with a cutlass during an aggressive charge will easily knock back the lighter smallsword and put you in a face to face scenario where the cutlass now can deliver a killing blow.
So amazing and educational. Would you say some of the weapons were the same in the 16th century? Im writing a story in that time period and i want accurate weapons. Thanks!
