May 17, 2022 Early Arms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/17/2022
By the 1730s, the Board of Ordnance shifted from procurement of brass-hilted “hangers” or cutlasses to ones with iron hilts for the Royal Navy. Iron hilts, more resistant to hacking blades, provided greater protection to a sailor’s hand in close combat and with the burgeoning of the industrial revolution in England, water-powered, rolling mills and trip hammers provided a cheaper mechanism for providing such arms, which had heretofore proved more expensive to produce than brass-hilted cutlasses. Always referred to in Board of Ordnance (BO) records as “Sea Service Swords”, this pattern of Royal Navy cutlass had a straight blade, with a single, narrow fuller and a hammered and forged, sheet-iron hilt of “figure-8” form, with a wooden grip, also wrapped with iron sheet. Contracts for such were first given to Thomas Hollier, who seemed to have a virtual monopoly for supplying cutlasses to the BO, but following his death, Samuel Harvey I (fl. 1748-1778) seems to have enjoyed similar status, in that he was the sole contractor for most Sea Service swords procured during the French & Indian War through Revolutionary War periods. Overall length of this Harvey cutlass is 33 - 1/4", while its straight blade is 28 - 1/2" long and 1 - 1/4" wide at ricasso, with a single, narrow fuller terminating approximately 6 - 1/2" from the spearpoint tip. It bears the maker’s mark of a running fox with “HARVEY” within on both faces of the blade, with a partially-obscured inspection mark, crown/[?], on the left face at ricasso. The hilt consists of a well-forged figure 8 or double-disk form guard of robust iron stock (1/8" thickness), the front lobe (acting as the crossguard) has a rudimentary quillon, being a short tab emanating from the lobe and turned down in loose curl to the front, 1 ¾ inches wide at the apex. The lower lobe of the “knucklebow” is well-cupped and the overall hilt well forged and finished (those of the French Revolutionary era generally flatter and of thinner stock, which was initially die-cut, then hammered and filed). The iron-wrapped grip is wider at the front lobe, tapering slightly to the rear. CONDITION: The point is slightly blunted and the sword overall demonstrates uniform light-moderate freckling expected from salt-air use and storage. The blade is a dull gunmetal grey and the hilt a mixture of that and black, as approximately 60% of the original japanning remains, mostly on the grip and inner surface of the guard.