Weapons: Last update 5th January 2001

Axes -

Clubs -

Cutlass - A heavy sword with a slightly sharpened blade and a solid basket shaped guard to protect the hand and wrist. The name is derived from the medieval French word coutelas or coutelace, being a knife. The caribbean buccaneers used a cutlass upto 3' long. A shorter version was issued to British sailors up unto the 1900's. The cutlasses sharp edge made it ideal for cutting and slashing, which takes less skill than a sword sharpened at the point only. Since the curve was slight and the point also sharpened, a strong and expert swordsman could thrust at his foe as though a rapier.

Dagger -

Grenades - In use from the 1500's, grenades of a limited form were thrown down into enemy vessels as the two ships closed for boarding. They saw use, but are not often mentioned in what I have read. It is possible their use was limited except to dangerous situations, as I am guessing they may always accidentally set something alight.

Musket - The word derives from the Spanish word mosquette, which is a form of sparrow hawk. It's use was fairly simple. It consisted of a long, smooth bore barrel, down which was placed powder then a lead ball. The powder was ignited by various methods, and boom, the ball shot out. Initially muskets of the time were matchlock fired. This meant the ignition was achieved by a chemically treated rope called the match, which was fixed to a small S shaped serpentine. When the serpentine was pressed down (the trigger), the match at the other end of the S moved down to ignite the powder. By the 1690's, the flint lock was in common use. A flint was held in a small vice called a cock. On pressing the trigger, the cock scraped the flint down a piece of steel. The sparks given off ignited the powder.

These types of weapons were never very accurate. Land armies of the time required massed troops to form some sort of firepower, which led to the lines and columns warfare of slugging out musket exchanges. In the 1600's balls were made as needed and powder was of varied quality. Only through the 1700's did this improve. A good shot could reasonably expect to hit a part of a man at 100 yards. The guns did not have any sights, the firer simply looking along the barrel and guessing.

Loading was slow and complicated. It must have taken great courage at the time to stand and load in combat. Matchlocks with the burning rope also gave the soldiers away if they were hiding, due to the smell and light. They were of little surprise use at night. They were also ineffective in wet conditions. Flintlocks were a bit faster loading, but suffered the occassional misfire.

In naval warfare muskets were not a useful weapon. The enemy was fast moving in naval warfare, usually doing something as you were shooting. In boarding actions with bodies running everywhere you could as easily hit a friendly. Pirates generally perfered hand to hand weapons, and also a brace of pistols prepared before combat rather than use muskets. Muskets were more prevalent on naval vessels which maintained a squad or two of marines, and the occassional bucanneer sharp shooter who might sit up in the tops shooting down upon the action.

On most ships the muskets and pistols were stored in a locker, the key being kept by the captain or bosun.

Pikes - Pikes were used in boarding actions as the ships closed, in an effort to minimise the amount of boarders making the distance between the ships. As such, it had a limited use, as once the boarders were across the weapons was of no use in close combat. They do not generally appear in the folklore of the pirate action of this era. I would imagine in vessels that resisted boarding, they were still in frequent use.

Pistols - Pistols had barrels upto a foot long and fired a relatively large ball. A few expensive pistols were made with multiple barrels, but most were single shot. Some cavalry carried pistols, but they were too expensive and inaccurate to be of much practical use. Generally they were regarded as personal defence weapons.

Ship records rarely mention hand guns at all, as they were generally private possessions. By the late 1700's they were reasonably cheap and more common. Flintlocks entered the Caribbean in the late 1600's. In 1718 Blackbeard was reported as carrying three brace (pairs) of pistols. To be certain, more than one pistol was carried due to misfires which were more common in pistols. Blackbeard himself had 5 pistol balls shot into his body when during hi slast action, and it was only a cutlass stroke to the throat that brought him down. They were definately a close combat weapon best suited to boarding actions. The butt of the pistols was in many ways also formed so that the weapon could be turned about and gripped by the barrel such that the butt became a form of club.

Swords in general - Modern folklore conjures images of pirate captains dueling with thin rapier like weapons in a noble manner during their epic struggles over ships & their cargos. This was not the case. They generally used heavy bladed weapons like cutlasses and sabres. These had sharpened blades and were used in slashing and hacking attacks. Rapiers were in use in the early 1600's and were much heavier than the fencing rapiers you might imagine now. In many ways they were still a 2 edged sword more used in slashing than thrusting. They were usually supplemented by a dagger in the opposing hand. While duels involving rapiers was still popular in England in the late 1600's, it was not a feature of piracy in the Caribbean. The myth came about due to Hollywood movies.