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Hanger (tool)
A cutlass is a short, broad sabre or slashing sword with a straight or slightly curved blade sharpened on the cutting edge and a hilt often featuring a solid cupped or Basket-hilted sword, basket-shaped Hilt#Guard, guard. It was a common naval weapon during the early Age of Sail. Etymology The word "cutlass" developed from the 17th-century English use of ''coutelas'', a 16th-century French word for a machete-like mid-length single-edged blade (the modern French for "knife", in general, is ''couteau''; in 17th- and 18th-century English the word was often spelled "cuttoe"). The French word ''coutelas'' may be a convergent development from a Latin root, along with the Italian ''coltellaccio'' or ''cortelazo'', meaning "large knife". In Italy, the ''cortelazo'' was a similar short, broad-bladed sabre popular during the 16th century.Ossian, RobThe Cutlass(accessed Jan. 25, 2015) The root ''coltello'', for "knife", derived ultimately from the Latin ''cultellus'' meaning "smaller knife" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sword
A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed tip. A slashing sword is more likely to be curved and to have a sharpened cutting edge on one or both sides of the blade. Many swords are designed for both thrusting and slashing. The precise definition of a sword varies by historical epoch and geographic region. Historically, the sword developed in the Bronze Age, evolving from the dagger; the Bronze Age sword, earliest specimens date to about 1600 BC. The later Iron Age sword remained fairly short and without a crossguard. The spatha, as it developed in the Late Roman army, became the predecessor of the European sword of the Middle Ages, at first adopted as the Migration Period sword, and only in the High Middle Ages, developed into the classical Knightly sword, ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falchion
A falchion (; Old French: ''fauchon''; Latin: ''falx'', "sickle") is a one-handed, backsword, single-edged sword of European origin. Falchions are found in different forms from around the 13th century up to and including the 16th century. In some versions, the falchion looks rather like the seax and later the sabre, and in other versions more like a machete with a crossguard. Types The blade designs of falchions varied widely across the continent and over time. They almost always included a single edge with a slight curve on the blade towards the point on the end and most were also affixed with a quilloned crossguard for the hilt in the manner of the contemporary arming swords. Unlike the double-edged swords of Europe, few actual swords of this type have survived to the present day; fewer than a dozen specimens are currently known. A number of weapons similar to the falchion existed in Western Europe, including the Messer (weapon), Messer, hanger (weapon), hanger and the backs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Kidd
William Kidd (c. 1645 – 23 May 1701), also known as Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd, was a Scottish-American privateer. Conflicting accounts exist regarding his early life, but he was likely born in Dundee and later settled in New York City. By 1690, Kidd had become a highly successful privateer, commissioned to protect English interests in the Thirteen Colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1695, Kidd received a royal commission from the Earl of Bellomont, the governor of New York, Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, to hunt down pirates and enemy French ships in the Indian Ocean. He received a letter of marque and set sail on a new ship, '' Adventure Galley'', the following year. On his voyage he failed to find many targets, lost much of his crew and faced threats of mutiny. In 1698, Kidd captured his greatest prize, the 400-ton '' Quedagh Merchant'', a ship hired by Armenian merchants and captained by an Englishman. The political climate in Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Fly
William Fly (died 12 July 1726) was an English pirate who raided New England shipping fleets for three months in 1726 until he was captured by the crew of a seized ship. He was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts, and his body publicly exhibited in a gibbet as a warning to other pirates. His death is considered by many to mark the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. Career William Fly's career as a pirate began in April 1726, when he signed on to sail with Captain John Green to West Africa on the ''Elizabeth''. Green and Fly began to clash until one night Fly led a mutiny that resulted in Green being tossed overboard; Fly then took command of the ''Elizabeth''. Having captured the ship, the mutineers "caused a Black Flagg to be hoisted", renamed the ship ''Fames' Revenge'', elected Fly as captain, and sailed to the coast of North Carolina and north toward New England. They captured five ships in about two months before being captured themselves. Following Fly's capture, Cotton Mather tri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buccaneer
Buccaneers were a kind of privateer or free sailors, and pirates particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from the Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, during a time when governments in the Caribbean area were not strong enough to suppress them. Martinique was a home port for French buccaneers as well as pirates like Captain Crapeau. Originally the name applied to the landless hunters of wild boars and cattle in the largely uninhabited areas of Tortuga and Hispaniola. The meat they caught was smoked over a slow fire in little huts the French called ''boucans'' to make ''viande boucanée'' – ''jerked meat'' or '' jerky'' – which they sold to the corsairs who preyed on the (largely Spanish) shipping and settlements of the Caribbean. Eventually the term was applied to the corsairs and (later) privateers themselves, also known as the Brethren of the Coast. Although c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Small Sword
__NoTOC__ The small sword or smallsword (also court sword, Gaelic: or claybeg, French: , lit. “Sword of the court”) is a light one-handed sword designed for thrusting which evolved out of the longer and heavier rapier (''espada ropera'') of the late Renaissance. The height of the small sword's popularity was during the 18th century, when any civilian or soldier with pretensions to gentlemanly status would have worn a small sword daily. The blade of a small sword is comparatively short at around , though some reach over . It usually tapers to a sharp point but may lack a cutting edge. It is typically triangular in cross-section, although some of the early examples still have the rhombic and spindle-shaped cross-sections inherited from older weapons, like the rapier. This triangular cross-section may be hollow ground for additional lightness. Many small swords of the period between the 17th and 18th centuries were found with colichemarde blades. It is thought to have app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rapier
A rapier () is a type of sword originally used in Spain (known as ' -) and Italy (known as '' spada da lato a striscia''). The name designates a sword with a straight, slender and sharply pointed two-edged long blade wielded in one hand. It was widely popular in Western Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries as a symbol of nobility or gentleman status. It is called because it was carried as an accessory to clothing, generally used for fashion and as a weapon for dueling, self-defense and as a military side arm. Its name is of Spanish origin and appears recorded for the first time in the '' Coplas de la panadera'', by Juan de Mena, written approximately between 1445 and 1450: As fencing spread throughout Western Europe, important sources for rapier fencing arose in Spain, known under the term ("dexterity"), in Italy and France. The French small sword or court sword of the 18th century was a direct continuation of this tradition of fencing. Rapier fencing form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigging
Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support and control a sailing ship or sail boat's masts and sails. ''Standing rigging'' is the fixed rigging that supports masts including shrouds and stays. ''Running rigging'' is rigging which adjusts the position of the vessel's sails and spars including halyards, braces, sheets and vangs. Etymology According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition "rigging" derives from Anglo-Saxon ''wrigan'' or ''wringing'', "to clothe". The same source points out that "rigging" a sailing vessel refers to putting all the components in place to allow it to function, including the masts, spars, sails and the rigging. History Theophrastus in his '' History of Plants'' ( 300 BCE) states that the rigging on King Antigonus' fleet was made from papyrus reed. Types of rigging Rigging is divided into two classes, ''standing'', which supports the mast (and bowsprit), and ''running'', which controls the orienta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boarding (attack)
Naval boarding is an offensive tactic used in naval warfare to come up against (or alongside) an enemy watercraft and attack by inserting combatants aboard that vessel. The goal of boarding is to invade and overrun the enemy personnel on board in order to capture, sabotage, or destroy the enemy vessel. While boarding attacks were originally carried out by ordinary sailors who are proficient in hand-to-hand combat, larger warships often deploy specially trained and equipped regular troops such as marines and special forces as boarders. Boarding and close-quarters combat had been a primary means to conclude a naval battle since antiquity, until the early modern period when heavy naval artillery gained tactical primacy at sea. A cutting out boarding is an attack by small boats, preferably at night and against an unsuspecting and anchored, target. It became popular in the later 18th century, and was extensively used during the Napoleonic Wars. This heralded the emphasis on st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seax
A ''seax'' (; also sax, sæx, sex; invariant in plural, latinized ''sachsum'') is a small sword, fighting knife or dagger typical of the Germanic peoples of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages, especially the Saxons. The name comes from an Old English word for "knife". In heraldry, the ''seax'' is a charge consisting of a curved sword with a notched blade, appearing, for example, in the coats of arms of Essex and the former Middlesex. Etymology Old English ''seax'' and Old Frisian ''sax'' are identical with Old Saxon and Old High German ''sahs'', all from a Common Germanic ''*sahsą'' from a root ''*sah, *sag-'' "to cut" (also in saw, from a PIE root *sek-). ''Scramaseax'' or ''scramsax'' () is sometimes used for disambiguation, even though it is not attested in Old English, but taken from an occurrence of ''scramasaxi'' in Gregory of Tours' ''History of the Franks''. The name of the roofer's tool, the '' zax'', is a development from this word. Description ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falx
The was a weapon with a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge used by the Thracians and Dacians. The name was later applied to a siege hook used by the Romans. Etymology is a Latin word originally meaning 'sickle' but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge like a sickle. was thus also used to mean the weapon of the Thracians and Dacians, and the Roman siege hook. Dacian ''falx'' In Latin texts, the weapon was described as an ' (whence ) by Ovid in and as a ' by Satires of Juvenal, Juvenal in . The Dacian came in two sizes: one-handed and two-handed. The shorter variant was called (sickle) in the Dacian language (Valerius Maximus, III, 2.12) with a blade length that varied but was usually around long with a handle one-third longer than the blade. The two-handed was a polearm. It consisted of a wooden shaft with a long curved iron blade of nearly-equal length attached to the end. Archaeologic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tang (tools)
A tang or shank is the back portion of the blade component of a tool where it extends into stock material or connects to a handle – as on a knife, sword A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter ..., spear, arrowhead, chisel, file, coulter, pike, scythe, screwdriver, etc. One can classify various tang designs by their appearance, by the manner in which they attach to a handle, and by their length in relation to the handle. ''Nakago'' is the term in Japanese, used especially when referring to the tang of the katana or the wakizashi. Full vs partial tang A full tang extends the full length of the grip-portion of a handle, versus a ''partial'' tang which does not. A full tang may or may not be as wide as the handle itself, but will still run the full length of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
