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Old 21st November 2017, 07:52 PM   #18
Jim McDougall
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Route 66
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Well made note Mark on the dull edge of the cutlass. if that were not the case, the wound suffered by the captain of the Shannon would have split his head like a melon.
It seems funny with the sailors holding these in a fencing stance. These were anything but sharp cutting swords, and by these times, as Mark noted, more like bludgeons. Quite different than boarding in the earlier times of fighting sail and pirates.

The notion of 'fencing' in the manner of every 'swashbuckling' movie or romantic flashing blades in literature is of course, just fun, but mostly nonsense.
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