This was great fun! For those of you who are wondering, cutlass and boarding pike stocks were officially removed from Royal Navy ships in the latter part of the 1930's, but some 'ceremonial' examples were rationed on ships already in commission, some of which would see use later in the war, albeit very rarely.
Amongst the old French Marines (Compagnies Ordinaires de la Mer) it was traditional for an officer's portrait to be painted with a boarding pike rather than the more traditional swords used by other arms.
Another thing for those who are wondering about the fact that the British were still building boarding pikes in the 1890's. Keep in mind that until Sir John Fisher became first sea lord in 1904, the Royal Navy still had converted ironclads (wooden ships that had steam engines installed and iron plates added) in commission. Sir John Fisher described them as "a miser's hoard of useless junk" and decommissioned them.
There are several reasons why a boarding pike would be fitted with an ash pole. Firstly, it's abundant. Ash trees take to being _pollarded_ very well. This is a pruning method which essentially involves docking back the limbs heavily, which in-turn produces clusters of "suckers", which are basically ready-made poles. In even earlier times, this same method produced the waddle from which the walls of homes and fences were woven. Secondly, another big advantage ash offers is that it has the highest strength to height ratio of any wood. There are certainly tougher woods out there, but they tend to weigh a lot more! Lastly, the structural integrity of ash is virtually unaffected by humidity. Great vid, really enjoyed it.
@@5peciesunkn0wn Pollarding usually involves pruning limbs back to a major junction, leaving the junction only; making the limb look like a club, sort of. The tree then responds to the shock this causes to its system with an explosion of new growth. This new grow tends to grow in 'clumps', from those junctions at the end of the pruned limbs, and tends to be fast-growing and fairly straight.
@@EgaoKage Aah. I'm thinking of something different, but similar then. Apparently England has a lot of trees with this one huge root that they harvest 'poles' from which was used for arrows, bows, staffs and so on, but is mostly used for fencing pieces nowadays.
These videos are the best. I have never heard about boarding pikes before this. Now i want one. Note: I received my first sword ( viking era one) yesterday . Thats what Matt do to us all
In the movie Master and Commander the French on board the Acheron used boarding pikes to defend their deck when the crew of the Surprise tricked and then boarded them after hitting them point blank with a full broadside of cannon fire.
20:46 The famous Brown Bess, the primary weapon of the British infantryman from Blenheim to Waterloo was officially known as the Long Land Musket. There was a shorter version used by the Royal Marines known as the Sea Service Musket.
some thoughts on pike thickness: 1) using a spear like that can double as a battering ram 2) in the 16/1700's when they were originally deployed, small boat landings were more common, a pike can be a steering pole like on a gondola. 3) the added weight lends armour piercing use. on the 1600's brigandines/jacks were still around although a conquistadors plate is probably too much.
@@ugandanknuckkles9667 It takes much more energy to accelerate a blunt weapon. Swings are harder to recover than a miss, and you aren't 100% certain to destroy the brain with each hit you DO connect with. A pike like this is NOT a bladed weapon. The edges of that triangular spike aren't sharp. It's just a solid, very robust point on the end of a long stick. perfect for puncturing skulls at a safe distance.
Well with Cutlass use there was at least one documented case of a coxswain using a Cutlass to fend off a north Korean boarding party when his landing craft was stuck aground during the Korean war. So other than the cool story about someone doing it that means the USN had them in inventory till at least the Korean war.
What a great collaboration I'd love to know more about the tactics for age of sail- late Victorian and Edwardian ship to ship close combat and how it changed as repeating firearms early mechanical machine guns etc came to the fore
It’s a very dynamic time period in Naval history, but the more you learn about it, the more gradual the changes seem. Drach has a bunch of great videos that may interest you
The latter discussion of boarding parties reminds me of something I read a while back. Colonial setting, where the navy has landed an army unit to attack a local fort. Army attack parties are driven off a couple of times, then a naval landing party storms the walls in short order. It could be like that sticky jam jar lid, where the army had "loosened it up for you". But the author suggested that the landing party had fewer firearms, so got stuck right in, whereas the soldiers were likely to exchange volleys, and lose impetus.
Very interesting! I expected boarding pikes to actually be much shorter than conventional spears, but now I know some basic principles to boarding actions, the way they repel boarders, their length makes more sense. . The manuscript for my novel (in editing now), a group (specializing in fighting with tight spaces) of that did use their pistols conventionally at first before switching to melee weapons; I didn't realize that was an actual tactic. But I was very intrigued about the alternative, holding off the pistol as a wild card. The group in question fight overwhelming numbers twice, and the leader takes a nasty wound when they were trying to use their pistols in both hands in the panic of facing such odds. After watching this I'm considering in the second time switching tactics, to use the sword in one hand and dispatch foes as needed with the pistol (though then discarding for the second pistol would've been much slower and harder). But the tidbit about combination of weapons makes me wonder again if they should maybe mix it up (since they do have a lot of single-shot pistols between them).
a long stick to push things away is pretty standard on ships. typically they have a hook so they can be used to pull things towards as well, but a long stick that doubles as a weapon is very helpful.
TY both, that WAS fun. I beleve we may still have some pikes in our badly under funded RCN. * Isn't the ceiling of your ship called a "deckhead" a wall is a bulkhead, but each navy has it's own dialect perhaps.
The other reason for the difference in thickness is the armies of the world had to carry their pikes while they marched, so the less weight they had to carry the better. Same reason why the army colt revolver was lighter than the navy one.
15:40 Doing an about face with a pike or bayonetted rifle in a confined space? Assuming you're starting with the standard stance of left hand forward about level with your chest and the right hand lower down close to the right hip you bring the left hand up to the right shoulder and right hand down so the pike/musket runs parallel to your right side then do your pivot. It's similar to certain drill movements so it would come naturally. I can't say how well it work for overhead obstructions with a 7 foot pike but I believe the standard combined length of musket and bayonet from this period didn't usually exceed 6 feet.
There are few things quite as terrifying in my mind as trying to board an enemy ship, mid ocean - whilst it's being desperately defended by pikemen and canon, pointblank firing grapeshot. Those guys had balls of steel - chapeau - horrific. Great presentation gents, thanks for the nightmare fuel!!
Love this! But then, I do love all things Royal Navy (Victory is on my Holiday list)... Could you please do a video on the shorter muskets/rifles used on ships, preferably noting the first ones used? A "ship's carbine" was used in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I'd love some help on the historical accuracy and origins of this. Cheers mate!
The last time cutlasses were used by the Royal Navy was in WW2 when they boarded an armed German merchant ship off the Norwegian coast. The Germans gave up quickly after suffering some losses, following the action a number of British POWs were released. As Corporal Jones, referring to the cold steel said ‘they don’t like it up em Mr Mainwaring’.
Yes, that was the German Vessel”Altmark”. Boarded by the Royal Navy inside “Norwegian territorial waters” while Norway was neutral. It caused diplomatic incident.
Good for defense aka preventing bording, but needs to be shorter then normal The attackers if higher than defenders they can bap defenders back msking room for attackers with sabers 10:46 use gun in reserve for strong oponits, use your sword Or atack with gun to fin them out then use sword and gun to hook enemie sword 12:20 not everyone usee them as spears csn get stuck and you hsve to be still so if used in formations they can be wiped out by a Canon, also hard to turn around and move your weppon vs someone with a cutlass
In my local small town used book store I found Boarders Away With Steel: Edged Weapons and Polearms by Wililan Gilkerson (USA pov). Very interesting and a beautiful large format hardcover with great photos and illustrations ... for about C$10 or 8 pounds of Sterling. Great reading. Thanks for all your work. Cheers!
Brilliant timing! Our crew is practicing boarding pike & cutlass as we speak! It should be noted that due to the Navy Board issuing defense contracts to makers, boarding pikes were made with either a lance-like tip as shown here or a spear tip depending upon the maker. They were ordered as needed per ship from what we've seen, but as ships paid off and were broken up, equipment was reissued to new ships, eventually seeing both types being wielded by one crew. Both, however, would still have langets & the butt cap. Wonderful pieces.
I find that I appreciate the enthusiasm for history you both have when at first I just appreciated dedication to finding the truth. Cheers lads, here's hoping for the internet to continue to grow those like you and the cheap variety channel type "common myth" internet continues wither. And I hope you both can someday see children who got interested on your work grow to become historians and proper enthusiasts themselves too. Y'all deserve to be around for that someday.
In one of the Flashman novels, Fraser writes about RN sailors following a 'stamp and go' drill while facing Malay pirates. He suggests that the technique was unstoppable. Any hint as to how cutlass drill worked out in the field?
Some things don't change much. And boarding pikes are very very much still in use to fend off boarding of law enforcement on illegal fishing boats. Not as sharp but more designed to make it impossible to bring the boats alongside. Mostly makeshift sharpened pipe stuck out like cactus spines so that a police boat can't get close. Porcupines what they are called sometimes, the modern version. But in effect, they are still boarding pikes.
You know, I would love a guide on telling the difference between medieval/renaissance pikes and later boarding pikes. I see a lot of artifacts that are just labeled as "medieval pike" that look exactly like 1800s boarding pikes.
It's called the deck-head. I understand that it was common for netting to be strung, to deter boarders. I think that this would greatly influence both the strategy and the utility of the chosen weapons.
I have a question for both of you fine gentlemen: Why did the boarding pike not become obsolete at the same time for the same reason as the land pike(for the most part)? Why would the opposing side not fire a volley with musket and swivel and then rush the ship with cutlass and pistol? It seems like a simple solution to an enemy pike formation on the deck of a ship you wish to board. Your partnership is some of the best content you both have, and I love the collaboration! Cheers!
Less people overall and with the pikes everywhere, I suppose you couldn't really know who the pikemen are if they wait until the guns fire and then grab the pikes and mount a defense while you reload?
Hmm. I never knew it was fairly simple spear. When reading the Patrick O'brain series I always wondered how a naval pike was special and imagined them to be a lot like a pike pole.
Naval close combat is a fairly rarely discussed topic. It doesn't take too long to consider pikes having a use until modern small firearms achieved enough firepower to dismiss them.
I'm wondering if the extra thickness of the shaft has to do with the quality of the available wood. In my part of Canada the old timers often say that the wood available today isn't nearly as strong as the wood from old growth trees available a hundred plus years ago.
I have heard very very much the same. That we literally just don't have the kind of wood they did back then. Heard it from carpenters and cabinet makers.
It has to do with the grain of the wood. Old growth timber grows very slowly, especially in the first part of the tree's life, and this leads to more growth rings per inch of trunk/branch diameter. This means the wood is denser, heavier, and less flexible at a given weight. I was taught that the growth rigs being more numerous made the wood stronger like plywood, but I vaguely recall thats a myth. What isn't a myth is that close straight grained lengths of wood can be incredibly strong. My axe handle is well over a hundred years old, and until about 19608 was in regular daily use to fell trees and split firewood, it is still rock solid, flexible, and makes for a lively tool in the hands. The contrast with a modern axe handle is noticeable. Also, with many more big monster trees several hundred years old to choose from, there was simply more top grade wood in existence at in the first place. Lumber barely good enough to craft the more important timbers of ships is extremely expensive nowadays, and in some species of tree, such timber literally no longer exists. Whereas in the age of sail, the entire new world was being logged for the first time by europeans. The Native American Peoples didn't have much use for the kind of timbers one needs to make knee braces of main masts. Such trees were normally left alone both because such monsters are a LOT of work to fell, and because in an non industrial culture, there isn't much call for the kind of timbers that might hold up a steam engine, support mineshaft, and so forth. We decimated those forests, at first, which is actually pretty sustainable. Quite quickly thereafter, however, clearcutting began, and now the few old growth trees in existence are either in the remotest national parks (and endangered by tree thieves on the daily) or are freaks protected by growing in a completely inaccessible location that forbids them having been chopped down. Such trees are so valuable that people have been known to take them down in sections while in the tree, and then transport them by helicopter, one of the most dangerous occupations in existence which shows you just how scarce once common lumber has become.. Such trees are often sold as logs for over a hundred thousand dollars to be used by instrument makers, restorers of fin furniture, or in the case of some woods, veneer for fancy plywood, and the cost multiplies through a web of brokers and other parasites which keeps the loggers poor and makes the rich richer as usual, as we wouldn't want the money going to those risking life and limb when it can go to a Weyerhaeuser CEO's yacht fund.
@@charlesparr1611 Some notes of good news: Most of the wealthy are being more and more easily fooled by polymers and cheap knock offs and so the drain on the expensive woods has reduced. They have no taste or knowledge, I've been in endless multiple million dollar homes made of the cheapest crap you won't see in a apartment building from the 80's even. Here is hoping that they accept the crap they are being sold and the old growth can return eh? My wife bought a solid cherry dining table for 350$ from just such a neo-wealthy type. He told us stories of how it was his grandfather's but didn't seem to care about anything other than now it was scratched and they wanted a glass table. Solid cherry, all the fine seats and fresh upholstery and the leaf ...for 350$ So maybe those old trees can come back, protected by the lost wisdom of the people who would exploit them. ..If they survive their time as ultra commodities.
On the pistol could depend when you board, would think the first "wave" would want to use it to help break up defenders especially if they have a pike. Those following up will have more "space" to save it.
Agree, I think the "Indiana Jones move" is rather for officers or NCOs, not first wave/frontline. Also the situation he describes is rather 1 on 1 fighting, like after the defences were broken.
The videos I remember seeing with people doing ship melee combat fights had them hold the discharged pistols with the barrel along the wrist like a mini-shield.
My favorite incident of use of boarding pikes was this: In 1604, a group of English "Sea Dogs" in a small galleon, the Tiger (commanded by Sir Edward Michelbourne), encountered a wako junk ("a junk of the Japons", as Michelbourne put it). Ostensibly it was a friendly meeting, between pirates from East and West. The wakos were allowed to board the Tiger, drinks were exchanged, etc. Suddenly, the Japanese turned on the English, and killed many of them with their swords. It looked as if the Japanese might have taken the Tiger, but Michelbourne rallied his men, and handed his best fighter pikes. With these they "killed three or four of their leaders", while the rest of the Japanese on board were driven into a cabin. The English then turned two 32-pound culverins on the cabin, and blasted the Japanese at point-blank range. Michelbourne commented, "Their legs, armes, and bodies were so torne, as it was strange to see how the shot had massacred them".
Well timed for me, as I'm trying to pull together a set on tactical naval rules for the American Civil War era. Most references I'm seeing to boarding actually turn out to be after the ship has struck, but one datum I'd like to find is a sense of how long a contested boarding action might be expected to last. Too early for operational analysis to be a thing, but if anyone could point me toward a more-or-less period source giving a somewhat concrete estimate I'd be grateful.
I'm thinking of the word deckhead, the naval version of ceiling to some degree. So it would have storage on the deckhead. Weird word, but it works well enough.
I was introduced to Drach back when Matt had him at the old house. Since then Drach has practically become a daily requirement for me. Nightly for sure. Y'know, naval based sleep-aid and all.
Interesting stuff. I'd love to see you talk about some of the Mandalorian armored combat from the last 2 episodes of the Mandalorian this season. Scifi action where the armor ACTUALLY WORKS! What a thought! I'd love to hear your take sir.
I wonder if those pikes were used as a tool in a non-combat scenario. Like for pushing something away from the board or reaching for something floating by and such? Out of my experience it could be even good as an improvised boom for a boat's sail (we used oars which are somewhat clumsy). Like whatever mission I'd take a couple of those with me on a boat every time.
This was great fun! For those of you who are wondering, cutlass and boarding pike stocks were officially removed from Royal Navy ships in the latter part of the 1930's, but some 'ceremonial' examples were rationed on ships already in commission, some of which would see use later in the war, albeit very rarely.
Love this collaboration project, great stuff!
Who is this guy who keeps posting your alt channel while pretending its his own?
Have watched you both religiously for years! Always glad to see you collaborating, I recall your cameos in Matt's content from Tewkesbury :)
This was a great video that retained my interest, so I wasn't BOARD(ed) at all. 😁
:) :) :) :)
Of all the rare things in Matt's collection the most precious is a friend who likes history.
Also ones who leave weapons for you.
And when multiple friends leaves you armaments, you have a polyarmory🤣
Heheheheh.
I suspect Matt has many friends like that.
Now, the next step up is friends with Battleships.
Amongst the old French Marines (Compagnies Ordinaires de la Mer) it was traditional for an officer's portrait to be painted with a boarding pike rather than the more traditional swords used by other arms.
Another thing for those who are wondering about the fact that the British were still building boarding pikes in the 1890's. Keep in mind that until Sir John Fisher became first sea lord in 1904, the Royal Navy still had converted ironclads (wooden ships that had steam engines installed and iron plates added) in commission. Sir John Fisher described them as "a miser's hoard of useless junk" and decommissioned them.
The crossover we never knew we needed 😲
Good to see Drach popping up on different channels.
I love when my favorite 'Tubers collaborate. I actually found Drach because of your previous colab on boarding actions!
There are several reasons why a boarding pike would be fitted with an ash pole. Firstly, it's abundant. Ash trees take to being _pollarded_ very well. This is a pruning method which essentially involves docking back the limbs heavily, which in-turn produces clusters of "suckers", which are basically ready-made poles. In even earlier times, this same method produced the waddle from which the walls of homes and fences were woven. Secondly, another big advantage ash offers is that it has the highest strength to height ratio of any wood. There are certainly tougher woods out there, but they tend to weigh a lot more! Lastly, the structural integrity of ash is virtually unaffected by humidity. Great vid, really enjoyed it.
Pollarding results in like, a root with 'staff' like trees growing out of it along the ground right?
@@5peciesunkn0wn Pollarding usually involves pruning limbs back to a major junction, leaving the junction only; making the limb look like a club, sort of. The tree then responds to the shock this causes to its system with an explosion of new growth. This new grow tends to grow in 'clumps', from those junctions at the end of the pruned limbs, and tends to be fast-growing and fairly straight.
@@EgaoKage Aah. I'm thinking of something different, but similar then. Apparently England has a lot of trees with this one huge root that they harvest 'poles' from which was used for arrows, bows, staffs and so on, but is mostly used for fencing pieces nowadays.
I like the idea of having a gun to deal with the best enemy swordsmen. Very Indiana Jones.
Very Boxer rebellion. :)
@@mikepotter5718 really proud of that one aren't you
Excellent video, thank you! FYI the 'ceiling' in a ship is called a deckhead.
Thanks
or just the 'overhead'.
These videos are the best. I have never heard about boarding pikes before this. Now i want one. Note: I received my first sword ( viking era one) yesterday . Thats what Matt do to us all
Oh yes.
In the movie Master and Commander the French on board the Acheron used boarding pikes to defend their deck when the crew of the Surprise tricked and then boarded them after hitting them point blank with a full broadside of cannon fire.
The combat triangle: Cutlass beats swivel gun and pistol, pike beats cutlass, swivel gun and pistol beats pike!
I love seeing Drach popping up in all corners of UA-cam, especially on channels I didn't know I would enjoy!
20:46 The famous Brown Bess, the primary weapon of the British infantryman from Blenheim to Waterloo was officially known as the Long Land Musket. There was a shorter version used by the Royal Marines known as the Sea Service Musket.
*Long Land Pattern musket ;)
some thoughts on pike thickness:
1) using a spear like that can double as a battering ram
2) in the 16/1700's when they were originally deployed, small boat landings were more common, a pike can be a steering pole like on a gondola.
3) the added weight lends armour piercing use. on the 1600's brigandines/jacks were still around although a conquistadors plate is probably too much.
Drach pops up on this channel and earlier today, on The Tank Museum channel doing his Bottom 5 Tanks. He's all over UA-cam!
You can’t stop him. You can only hope to contain him.
We call the ceilings "the overhead", at least in the US Navy when I was in.
Don't wory, I subscribe to both of your channels. Drachnifel and this. I just love listening to people who know what they're talking about.
A very interesting aspect of naval warfare that I never really knew or thought about. Thanks gents!
Come the Zombie Apocalypse pikes will be well back in fashion.
Love these more specific deep dives which are rich in detail ❤
I'm certain blunt weapons would be the meta instead of bladed ones in a zombie apocalypse.
@@ugandanknuckkles9667 It takes much more energy to accelerate a blunt weapon. Swings are harder to recover than a miss, and you aren't 100% certain to destroy the brain with each hit you DO connect with. A pike like this is NOT a bladed weapon. The edges of that triangular spike aren't sharp. It's just a solid, very robust point on the end of a long stick. perfect for puncturing skulls at a safe distance.
Zombies will run right down a smooth pike. You want wings or forks to keep them back, like a boar spear :)
Well with Cutlass use there was at least one documented case of a coxswain using a Cutlass to fend off a north Korean boarding party when his landing craft was stuck aground during the Korean war.
So other than the cool story about someone doing it that means the USN had them in inventory till at least the Korean war.
I'm more inclined to think that's the case of an oddball who brought his own weapon, Mad Jack Churchill style. Pretty baller nonetheless.
Pirate swinging on rope overhead: "Yarr!" Bosun wielding pike underneath: "They do NOT like it up 'em!"
This was so interesting. I had no idea cutlasses and pikes were used so recently in history.
Awesome crossover. Always great when you team up with others in the history content creation community.
Not the collaboration I was expecting, but a great gift none the less.
Very cool collaboration. Do more of these!
What a great collaboration I'd love to know more about the tactics for age of sail- late Victorian and Edwardian ship to ship close combat and how it changed as repeating firearms early mechanical machine guns etc came to the fore
It’s a very dynamic time period in Naval history, but the more you learn about it, the more gradual the changes seem. Drach has a bunch of great videos that may interest you
Omg! So wonderful to see you both together! Fan of both of you, much love from New York
The latter discussion of boarding parties reminds me of something I read a while back.
Colonial setting, where the navy has landed an army unit to attack a local fort.
Army attack parties are driven off a couple of times, then a naval landing party storms the walls in short order.
It could be like that sticky jam jar lid, where the army had "loosened it up for you".
But the author suggested that the landing party had fewer firearms, so got stuck right in, whereas the soldiers were likely to exchange volleys, and lose impetus.
Other factor to consider, in the Age of Sail, nothing could climb like a sailor.
Very interesting!
I expected boarding pikes to actually be much shorter than conventional spears, but now I know some basic principles to boarding actions, the way they repel boarders, their length makes more sense.
.
The manuscript for my novel (in editing now), a group (specializing in fighting with tight spaces) of that did use their pistols conventionally at first before switching to melee weapons; I didn't realize that was an actual tactic. But I was very intrigued about the alternative, holding off the pistol as a wild card. The group in question fight overwhelming numbers twice, and the leader takes a nasty wound when they were trying to use their pistols in both hands in the panic of facing such odds.
After watching this I'm considering in the second time switching tactics, to use the sword in one hand and dispatch foes as needed with the pistol (though then discarding for the second pistol would've been much slower and harder). But the tidbit about combination of weapons makes me wonder again if they should maybe mix it up (since they do have a lot of single-shot pistols between them).
There seems to be no end to the extent of Drach's knowledge. Wonderful.
He is very well read!
Now this is a surprise to be sure, and very much a welcome one! 😊
a long stick to push things away is pretty standard on ships. typically they have a hook so they can be used to pull things towards as well, but a long stick that doubles as a weapon is very helpful.
No matter where you are, if a fight happens, a long stick has been mankind's best friend lol.
TY both, that WAS fun. I beleve we may still have some pikes in our badly under funded RCN.
* Isn't the ceiling of your ship called a "deckhead" a wall is a bulkhead, but each navy has it's own dialect perhaps.
The other reason for the difference in thickness is the armies of the world had to carry their pikes while they marched, so the less weight they had to carry the better. Same reason why the army colt revolver was lighter than the navy one.
15:40 Doing an about face with a pike or bayonetted rifle in a confined space? Assuming you're starting with the standard stance of left hand forward about level with your chest and the right hand lower down close to the right hip you bring the left hand up to the right shoulder and right hand down so the pike/musket runs parallel to your right side then do your pivot. It's similar to certain drill movements so it would come naturally.
I can't say how well it work for overhead obstructions with a 7 foot pike but I believe the standard combined length of musket and bayonet from this period didn't usually exceed 6 feet.
Very glad to have learned about this guy
Drach is everywhere! Here, Bovington, with Ian, with everybody! Matt, great video. Thank you!
"Imagine you're on your ship, rocking and rolling." So, the Sabaton Cruise? 🤘🤣
Or an Alestorm video 🤣
I like both of your channels and the colabs are perfect!
Thank you Matt and Drach!
Two of my favorite UA-camrs
Great collaboration! Thanks!
When you were talking about the thickness of the wood, I was wondering if the whole thing floats?
Collaberations such as this really help cement the community of likeminded people we all enjoy
There are few things quite as terrifying in my mind as trying to board an enemy ship, mid ocean - whilst it's being desperately defended by pikemen and canon, pointblank firing grapeshot.
Those guys had balls of steel - chapeau - horrific.
Great presentation gents, thanks for the nightmare fuel!!
Love this! But then, I do love all things Royal Navy (Victory is on my Holiday list)...
Could you please do a video on the shorter muskets/rifles used on ships, preferably noting the first ones used? A "ship's carbine" was used in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I'd love some help on the historical accuracy and origins of this.
Cheers mate!
The last time cutlasses were used by the Royal Navy was in WW2 when they boarded an armed German merchant ship off the Norwegian coast. The Germans gave up quickly after suffering some losses, following the action a number of British POWs were released. As Corporal Jones, referring to the cold steel said ‘they don’t like it up em Mr Mainwaring’.
Yes, that was the German Vessel”Altmark”. Boarded by the Royal Navy inside “Norwegian territorial waters” while Norway was neutral. It caused diplomatic incident.
Good for defense aka preventing bording, but needs to be shorter then normal
The attackers if higher than defenders they can bap defenders back msking room for attackers with sabers
10:46 use gun in reserve for strong oponits, use your sword
Or atack with gun to fin them out then use sword and gun to hook enemie sword
12:20 not everyone usee them as spears csn get stuck and you hsve to be still so if used in formations they can be wiped out by a Canon, also hard to turn around and move your weppon vs someone with a cutlass
Great video and fantastic to see Drach
In my local small town used book store I found Boarders Away With Steel: Edged Weapons and Polearms by Wililan Gilkerson (USA pov). Very interesting and a beautiful large format hardcover with great photos and illustrations ... for about C$10 or 8 pounds of Sterling. Great reading. Thanks for all your work. Cheers!
Used book stores can have great stuff, always feels like finding gold dust in a stream.
Interesting to see Drach in your shed. Good show!
Brilliant timing! Our crew is practicing boarding pike & cutlass as we speak! It should be noted that due to the Navy Board issuing defense contracts to makers, boarding pikes were made with either a lance-like tip as shown here or a spear tip depending upon the maker. They were ordered as needed per ship from what we've seen, but as ships paid off and were broken up, equipment was reissued to new ships, eventually seeing both types being wielded by one crew. Both, however, would still have langets & the butt cap. Wonderful pieces.
I find that I appreciate the enthusiasm for history you both have when at first I just appreciated dedication to finding the truth.
Cheers lads, here's hoping for the internet to continue to grow those like you and the cheap variety channel type "common myth" internet continues wither.
And I hope you both can someday see children who got interested on your work grow to become historians and proper enthusiasts themselves too. Y'all deserve to be around for that someday.
In one of the Flashman novels, Fraser writes about RN sailors following a 'stamp and go' drill while facing Malay pirates. He suggests that the technique was unstoppable. Any hint as to how cutlass drill worked out in the field?
Damn! Drach gets around. Good to see ya.
Very nicely presented. Thank you...?
Loved this video. It's crazy how so recently there was stuff that seems so medieval
Some things don't change much.
And boarding pikes are very very much still in use to fend off boarding of law enforcement on illegal fishing boats. Not as sharp but more designed to make it impossible to bring the boats alongside. Mostly makeshift sharpened pipe stuck out like cactus spines so that a police boat can't get close. Porcupines what they are called sometimes, the modern version.
But in effect, they are still boarding pikes.
You know, I would love a guide on telling the difference between medieval/renaissance pikes and later boarding pikes. I see a lot of artifacts that are just labeled as "medieval pike" that look exactly like 1800s boarding pikes.
I love it when subscriptions collide.
I learned something very cool today. Thank you.
this boarding pike is also very similar to later period cavalry lances
they were that short only 7ft?
Love that Drachinifel
Only the best guests on this channel. Great stuff.
It's called the deck-head.
I understand that it was common for netting to be strung, to deter boarders. I think that this would greatly influence both the strategy and the utility of the chosen weapons.
When discussing storage above your head, this is commonly called the "overhead" aboard ship. USN, Retired.
I have a question for both of you fine gentlemen: Why did the boarding pike not become obsolete at the same time for the same reason as the land pike(for the most part)? Why would the opposing side not fire a volley with musket and swivel and then rush the ship with cutlass and pistol? It seems like a simple solution to an enemy pike formation on the deck of a ship you wish to board. Your partnership is some of the best content you both have, and I love the collaboration!
Cheers!
Less people overall and with the pikes everywhere, I suppose you couldn't really know who the pikemen are if they wait until the guns fire and then grab the pikes and mount a defense while you reload?
The "ceiling" in a ship is referred to as the "Overhead", at least in the U.S. Navy.
Egads! Drach seems to be everywhere these days!
Great video!
Hmm. I never knew it was fairly simple spear. When reading the Patrick O'brain series I always wondered how a naval pike was special and imagined them to be a lot like a pike pole.
I would like Drach to 'cosplay' various naval uniforms. I think he'd look great.
That’s a cool idea, actually!
Well done
Naval close combat is a fairly rarely discussed topic. It doesn't take too long to consider pikes having a use until modern small firearms achieved enough firepower to dismiss them.
Just finished judging a single stick tournament. Fun to see how close these weapons are to us.
you guys worked well together in that vieo😊
Oh, man. I'm excited for this one.
Good video thanks guys 👍🏻
Fckin legendary collab
For age context, the model T Ford came out in 1908. A decade after it, snd during it's service lifetime
I'm wondering if the extra thickness of the shaft has to do with the quality of the available wood. In my part of Canada the old timers often say that the wood available today isn't nearly as strong as the wood from old growth trees available a hundred plus years ago.
I have heard very very much the same. That we literally just don't have the kind of wood they did back then.
Heard it from carpenters and cabinet makers.
It has to do with the grain of the wood. Old growth timber grows very slowly, especially in the first part of the tree's life, and this leads to more growth rings per inch of trunk/branch diameter. This means the wood is denser, heavier, and less flexible at a given weight. I was taught that the growth rigs being more numerous made the wood stronger like plywood, but I vaguely recall thats a myth. What isn't a myth is that close straight grained lengths of wood can be incredibly strong. My axe handle is well over a hundred years old, and until about 19608 was in regular daily use to fell trees and split firewood, it is still rock solid, flexible, and makes for a lively tool in the hands. The contrast with a modern axe handle is noticeable.
Also, with many more big monster trees several hundred years old to choose from, there was simply more top grade wood in existence at in the first place. Lumber barely good enough to craft the more important timbers of ships is extremely expensive nowadays, and in some species of tree, such timber literally no longer exists. Whereas in the age of sail, the entire new world was being logged for the first time by europeans. The Native American Peoples didn't have much use for the kind of timbers one needs to make knee braces of main masts. Such trees were normally left alone both because such monsters are a LOT of work to fell, and because in an non industrial culture, there isn't much call for the kind of timbers that might hold up a steam engine, support mineshaft, and so forth. We decimated those forests, at first, which is actually pretty sustainable. Quite quickly thereafter, however, clearcutting began, and now the few old growth trees in existence are either in the remotest national parks (and endangered by tree thieves on the daily) or are freaks protected by growing in a completely inaccessible location that forbids them having been chopped down. Such trees are so valuable that people have been known to take them down in sections while in the tree, and then transport them by helicopter, one of the most dangerous occupations in existence which shows you just how scarce once common lumber has become.. Such trees are often sold as logs for over a hundred thousand dollars to be used by instrument makers, restorers of fin furniture, or in the case of some woods, veneer for fancy plywood, and the cost multiplies through a web of brokers and other parasites which keeps the loggers poor and makes the rich richer as usual, as we wouldn't want the money going to those risking life and limb when it can go to a Weyerhaeuser CEO's yacht fund.
@@charlesparr1611 Some notes of good news: Most of the wealthy are being more and more easily fooled by polymers and cheap knock offs and so the drain on the expensive woods has reduced. They have no taste or knowledge, I've been in endless multiple million dollar homes made of the cheapest crap you won't see in a apartment building from the 80's even.
Here is hoping that they accept the crap they are being sold and the old growth can return eh?
My wife bought a solid cherry dining table for 350$ from just such a neo-wealthy type. He told us stories of how it was his grandfather's but didn't seem to care about anything other than now it was scratched and they wanted a glass table.
Solid cherry, all the fine seats and fresh upholstery and the leaf ...for 350$
So maybe those old trees can come back, protected by the lost wisdom of the people who would exploit them. ..If they survive their time as ultra commodities.
On the pistol could depend when you board, would think the first "wave" would want to use it to help break up defenders especially if they have a pike. Those following up will have more "space" to save it.
Agree, I think the "Indiana Jones move" is rather for officers or NCOs, not first wave/frontline. Also the situation he describes is rather 1 on 1 fighting, like after the defences were broken.
For the Royal Navy at least, the front rows carried a cutlass and a pistol, the second rows carried a pike, in OFFENSIVE boarding actions.
The videos I remember seeing with people doing ship melee combat fights had them hold the discharged pistols with the barrel along the wrist like a mini-shield.
My favorite incident of use of boarding pikes was this:
In 1604, a group of English "Sea Dogs" in a small galleon, the Tiger (commanded by Sir Edward Michelbourne), encountered a wako junk ("a junk of the Japons", as Michelbourne put it). Ostensibly it was a friendly meeting, between pirates from East and West. The wakos were allowed to board the Tiger, drinks were exchanged, etc. Suddenly, the Japanese turned on the English, and killed many of them with their swords. It looked as if the Japanese might have taken the Tiger, but Michelbourne rallied his men, and handed his best fighter pikes. With these they "killed three or four of their leaders", while the rest of the Japanese on board were driven into a cabin. The English then turned two 32-pound culverins on the cabin, and blasted the Japanese at point-blank range. Michelbourne commented, "Their legs, armes, and bodies were so torne, as it was strange to see how the shot had massacred them".
Thanks
Well timed for me, as I'm trying to pull together a set on tactical naval rules for the American Civil War era. Most references I'm seeing to boarding actually turn out to be after the ship has struck, but one datum I'd like to find is a sense of how long a contested boarding action might be expected to last. Too early for operational analysis to be a thing, but if anyone could point me toward a more-or-less period source giving a somewhat concrete estimate I'd be grateful.
I'm thinking of the word deckhead, the naval version of ceiling to some degree.
So it would have storage on the deckhead.
Weird word, but it works well enough.
I was introduced to Drach back when Matt had him at the old house. Since then Drach has practically become a daily requirement for me. Nightly for sure.
Y'know, naval based sleep-aid and all.
So you put the knob end in the hole? If you say so.
The "ceiling" is called a "deck head" on RCN ships, so I imagine it's the same in the RN.
Drach is everywhere now and I am NOT mad about it
When lubbers get their salty sea legs, they call a ceiling a deckhead.
That's what I was taught! Deck (floor), bulkhead (wall), deckhead (ceiling), overhead (anything attached to the deckhead, such as storage or bunk).
Always a good time when Drach shows up! Quite the *pike there
Thanks for the video. "Git back" *STABBY-STABBY*
HELL YEAH, I LOVE BOARDING PIKES
I think these were in warband: Napolonic wars, for the british sailors, they called them hunting spears or something
Interesting stuff. I'd love to see you talk about some of the Mandalorian armored combat from the last 2 episodes of the Mandalorian this season. Scifi action where the armor ACTUALLY WORKS! What a thought! I'd love to hear your take sir.
"Ye olde pointystick" for the win! Hahahaha
I wonder if those pikes were used as a tool in a non-combat scenario. Like for pushing something away from the board or reaching for something floating by and such? Out of my experience it could be even good as an improvised boom for a boat's sail (we used oars which are somewhat clumsy). Like whatever mission I'd take a couple of those with me on a boat every time.
What a nice surprise. Always good to see that dryly funny bastard Drach. Almost as good as the yearly Matt with Lucy.
In the US Navy the "ceiling" is called the "overhead".