Regarding the sword of this thread, I feel it is similar to some other hangers and even before that with the French heart and half heart type straight hangers. IIRC there is an article pair from Petard that show a nice evolution of French swords in the 18th century.
Anyway, the straight hangers were secondary arms and tools continuing with Rose and Starr into the 19th century. My old French hanger almost a ringer for the Rose artillery sword. I know other countries continued as well.
Maritime use would make sense. My oldster is listed as a sabre troupe marine. Also the Rose article showing the similarity near a century later. The French went from full to half then no counterguard with the 1750s revolutions of brass hilts.
From old to new would be my quite wide bladed Starr 1818. As so many variations we see, they seem to have a common chromosome as to blade length, even with the early Ames militia swords with 21" blades (25" in the 1850s).
Here is the Petard article. I'm linking from my Google drive if the system won't upload the file (I guess it did).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9A...ew?usp=sharing
Cheers
GC
>sigh so may of my files are too big to share on my bedside brainiac.