Boarding Axe Website Latest Update
 

Hi,

I have recently updated the www.boardingaxe.com website with two new additional pages. One on Halberd Type axes and the other for Portuguese axes.

With thanks to Fernando for supplying most of the information for the Portugal page.


As always if you have any information or pictures that will add to the knowledge of boarding axes please get in touch.



Regards, David.

Awesome! I was waiting for you to update that info, David! Always good to see things of a 'nautical nature' updated here.

Excelent job David; great texts in the Portuguese page :cool: .

Thanks Mark and Fernando - yep my Portuguese is pretty good!!

My next project is Imperial Russia.

Regards, David

David, your page looks great and I'm so glad you created it for us naval enthusiasts to use as a source for research. Good luck with the Russian Imperial naval pieces.

So what about the Indian sub-continent! :D I assume they used British pattern axes...or did they have them at all? Have you seen that Indian combination blunderbus/ax in 'Weaponry: An Illustrated History" by Chuck Wills, pg.165? I suspect this is a boarding piece. The book isn't very good, with some mislabeling, etc, but there were a few interesting pics, the ax being one of them.

Hi Mark,

OK I'll add India to the list!
The axe being very much part of the weapon culture there, it would be good to investigate what coastal states had some naval presence before the Brits came.
I have an Indian issue 1845 pattern cutlass with the arrow mark and an 'I' so maybe there is a brit axe issued for India out there somewhere.

I have not seen the blunderbuss/axe or the Chuck Wills book. can you send me a picture of it, if you have one.

regards, David.

Machadinha de Abordagem Brasileira
 

Here is a boarding axe said to be Brasilian, of the Paraguai war period (1864-1870), kept in the (Brasilian) National Historic Museum.
Pity i can't access a larger picture. The following is part of a (roughly translated) text i spotted in a blog, connected with this same axe:


" The axe used aboard had a double function; it was part of a sailors gear. This was necessary in occasions to get rid of rigs of an embarcation damaged by storms or enemy fire …
Besides being used as a tool, it could also be used as a weapon and, for that, part of the ship’s crew was equipped with them, being distributed to specific crew members. An artillery manual specified that, among the gun crew, in case of boarding, the first servants would be the equipage of the 1st wave of attack/defense, the gun chiefs the 2nd wave of attack/defense and the second servants, equipped with axes, would be part of the “fire reinforcement” team, that is, more like members of the repairs equipage than combatants, but even so prepared for combat ".

.

Thanks Fernando, that has obvious French characteristics. I'll add it to my archive.
Regards,
David

:cool: