Moro keris/kalis ID

[adamb]

Thank you, everyone, for your extremely valuable observations.

To answer one of the above queries, yes, at some stage the scabbard was daubed, rather roughly, in yellow paint. The yellow paint, I should note, is clearly on top of the edges of the old label bearing the inscription and thus quite evidently post-dates it. There is also a crack in the scabbard that runs through this label. The fibre string binding on the scabbard might pre-date the yellow paint job, though I'm not sure about that; there seems to have been an attempt to glue the binding in place on the scabbard after it had been painted, so perhaps the binding was moved to paint below it and then shifted back into place.

Now to the inscription on the label: it's rather odd. Parts of the writing are not well-preserved and I'm working on taking close-up photographs with the hope I can decipher some or all of it in time. However, the part of the inscription that does seem legible to me and some colleagues (and, I should note, was for the most part already deciphered by the former owner's wife who spent considerable time, and ingenuity, reconstructing the text) is as follows:

"...[it was?] a present from the .... [illegible] Timor to Admrl Lord Nelson".

I am told by a historian colleague that the label "is in a neat English secretarial hand of the 19th century...the same style starts to pop up as early as the 1670s and remains quite similar after that".

I do not know what to make of this inscription at the present time, but it is interesting.

There is more writing in black ink, newer and in a different hand, over the yellow paint on the top of the cross-piece, which is as follows:

"Clayton Co", followed by an "M" below it.

I have attached pics of the label, including one in which I've used an image enhancement program to show the writing more clearly, perhaps not very successfully. (Apologies in advance if any images are rotated 90 degrees, I do not why this happens when I upload images to the system).

NB: The former owner of this keris from whom I acquired it bought it at a gun show in Brisbane, Australia, in the 80s or 90s; I'm told that the person who was selling it at that time casually mentioned the label but did not seem to attach much significance to it.

Any insight much appreciated!

[Rick]

The script is interesting indeed. If the entire ensemble has been together since it was made, then it is very old as Adm. Nelson died oct 21 1805.

Maybe the weapon was posthumously gifted, maybe not.

[David R]

Just a quick note, I have been told there were two Admiral Nelsons, one of them Admiral Lord Nelson and the other later in date not a lord. There are also a lot of Admiral Nelson pubs in the UK.

[Ian]

The British and Portuguese have a longstanding friendship and alliance, that has included mutual military assistance at various times, for several centuries. It would not be surprising that a resident of a Portuguese colony (most likely East Timor, Timor L'este) might choose to recognize a prominent British admiral.

I agree that the handwriting is similar to British writing in the 18th and 19th C. That seems consistent with the sword style, which may date to the first half of the 19th C as others have noted. However, the handwriting style is similar to some other European styles of that general era (such as French and Italian). There are differences in writing style between these countries, but the sample is really too small to say definitively where the writer may have been educated.

It is surprising, in some ways, that this piece surfaced in Brisbane, Australia. While Timor is quite close to the northern coast of Australia, notably the Northern Territory and Western Australia, it is some distance from Queensland. Perhaps it was a WWII find by an Australian soldier serving there.

I doubt that this item ever made it to Lord Nelson. As far as I recall, his distinctive service was in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. If the sword had been found in Great Britain, that would seem more persuasive. But turning up in Brisbane makes me think it never got out of the Lesser Sundas, where it ended up in the hands of an Australian who brought it back.

For various reasons it's an intriguing piece. Congratulations on finding such an enigmatic item for your research.

[adamb]

Thanks for these observations and opinions on the label. The former owner's wife had an interesting theory: that William Bligh acquired the sword from (Dutch) Timor during his post-“mutiny on the Bounty” sojourn in Kupang and then in England presented it as a gift to Nelson when he served under him.

I’m getting multispectral images taken of the label today and hopefully that will allow me to decipher some more of the writing, but it’s possible the script may be “…it was a present from the Gov of Timor to Admrl Lord Nelson”.

And a direct descendant of Nelson emigrated to the New South Wales colony in the early 1800s; if there really is a Nelson connection, perhaps this is how it ended up here (again, much of the legwork on this has been done already by the former owner’s wife, who very much enjoyed going down a few rabbit holes over this most interesting theory).

It’s possible of course that someone of this era (perhaps in the early NSW colony) simply wrote this false claim about Nelson to enhance the value of the keris. However, as a colleague pointed out to me, if one were to try and pass off a weapon as having belonged to Lord Nelson it would probably make sense to choose a royal navy sabre or some other type of recognisably English blade that Nelson might reasonably have had in his possession, rather than this fairly obscure type of keris from a remote part of island Southeast Asia.

[David]

Well, this kris becomes more fascinating by the minute. I will be very intrigued to hear the results of the multispectral imaging Adam, so please do keep us informed.
I will say though that from my understanding this kris blade is more of a type and style that we would see more towards the end of the 19th century than the beginning, with it's fairly wide blade and more rounded tip. It doesn't seem like the kind of kris that would have been made at the end of the 18th century to the start of the 19th. Still, an interesting story that should be followed up to the limits of our abilities i would think.

[adamb]

Originally Posted by David

Well, this kris becomes more fascinating by the minute. I will be very intrigued to hear the results of the multispectral imaging Adam, so please do keep us informed.
I will say though that from my understanding this kris blade is more of a type and style that we would see more towards the end of the 19th century than the beginning, with it's fairly wide blade and more rounded tip. It doesn't seem like the kind of kris that would have been made at the end of the 18th century to the start of the 19th. Still, an interesting story that should be followed up to the limits of our abilities i would think.

Thanks David. Indeed if it can be demonstrated that a keris of this particular style/type could not possibly have existed in the late 18th century or early 19th when Nelson was still alive then the most likely explanation is that the label was fabricated in the distant past or is a clever modern forgery.

I know that this forum has seen many discussions about the ages of Moro/Sulu keris/kalis, and that this is a complex subject, with many unknowns, and I further note that the members who have commented on this particular blade so far vary in their opinions on its age, with early to late 1800s all seemingly conceivable at this stage; but, can I ask what support there is to be found in the idea that this keris did actually exist in the timeframe required for the Bligh-Timor-Nelson hypothesis to be at least possible (not talking plausible at this stage, just possible) from a historical perspective?