Pirate swords and weapons

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Ian

Thank you Rick for bringing us back to the ethnographic aspects of this topic. We have traveled far and wide, including westerners. Many of the Ilanun (Iranum) were a plundering group. I posted last year some drawings from the 1840s in the following thread showing some of these pirates: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...&postcount=498


Some of the weapons, including lantaka, are illustrated.

Thank you Ian, and Rick. In the pirate spectrum, there are many factions and theaters of operation for this maritime phenomenon, and these more exotic areas definitely bring in the ethnographic factor.

In the thread just posted by Pirate Lady, on Zheng Yi Sao, the woman who took over the huge Chinese pirate confederation that had been run by her late husband (over 400 junks and up to 60,000 pirates!), who operated in the South China sea in early 19th c.

It seems to me that the European pirates operating in from the Atlantic from Madagascar to the Red Sea, and Indian Ocean may well have ventured as far as the South China Sea in some cases. There are unproven accounts of Captain Kidd reaching an island off the coast of Viet Nam (said to be near the China Sea/South China Sea).
I am wondering if perhaps some of the native weapons in use in these areas of piracy in the many asian archipelagos might have diffused into pirate armories via capture of European vessels frequenting or trading in those areas. Though doubtful there was direct contact between our European pirates and the Eastern versions, the diffusion of weapons through networking it would seem.

I was thinking that the unusual 'scimitars' with notably clipped points etc. seen in the woodcuts of pirate notables in 'Johnson' (1724) might have been influenced by these exotic sword types of Asia, Indonesia, Philippines etc.