Historical Maritime Combat

[Monterey Jack]

Greetings, all!

Just wanted t' take the time to alert those of ye who hadn't heard about the cutlass and boarding weapons classes being taught this year at ISMAC (International Swordplay and Martial Arts Convention) in Lansing Michigan. There be a class on Cutlass, as well as hand axe (tomahawk) and knife fighting. There will also be an as-yet un named special event for all you interested in boarding actions with steel.

You can find out more about the classes at Artofcombat.org; simply click on the upcoming events page. Also fer those interested, there be a yahoogroup on historic maritime combat ye can join that will coincide with the discussions in the class.

Hope t' see ye there!

Fair winds to ye!

Monterey Jack

[Jonathan Hawks]

Sounds interestin. Thank fer the info mate.

[Gentleman of Fortune]

There has been some discussion on this board, and others about just how much "weapon training" your average sailor/pirate had during the GAOP.

I think, in the end, the consensus has been that it was "not much, if any."

While this goes against what you would think for people that might have depended on the sword for their livelyhood, it begs the question that, "if there was no training of weapons for seaman during this time, what would these classes teach?"

What is it based off of? Moderen interpretation of what should have been done with these weapons?

I would love to see a GAoP boarding axe arms manual if anyone has one!

GoF

[JoshuaRed]

Boarding Axe 101:

Option A: Embed 'er in their hull and hoist yerself up wit' it.

Option B: Ember 'er in their heads until they strikes colors.

Option C: Throw it really hard at 'em and hide in the hold till it's over!

[Monterey Jack]

Th' gentleman of Fortune brings up an important point!

The average crewman had precious little formal training, and as a lot of the documents Gilkerson mentions bear out, even the officers training didn't do 'em a world of good.

What these classes do, is take the practicality of a given hand weapon and put to the most proficient use. The Boarding Actions class ( a special and separate class held on a riverboat this year!) take what was learned from the cutlass, military sabre, and tomahawk / longknife classes and puts them to use in what would be a simulation of a boarding action where the user has to fight with what he has. As for cutlass, Hutton, Roworth and several others have great advice for close quarter work that while efficient, is certainly anything but gentlamanly! These are the techniques we're talking about. The cutlass is a very down-dirty weapon when used in the right hands and bears little resemblance to a duel-type sword. Two hands can be used, grapples (that go back as far as Marozzo) that were common in brawling , and devestating blade-assists where the torso takes heavy slicing blows.

Boarding axe and hawk are the same way. The hawk class was originally taught by retired Col. Dwight McLemore and uses some nasty binds and counters with a hawk that he took from first-hand accounts. Same with the Bowie work. Steve Huff is teaching it this year and has built on Mac's original work.

So, while there are no formal texts on the styles, the styles are actually "non-styles" of the average fighting man and quite historically correct.

Should prove to be a fantastic class,

Monterey Jack