Boarding Pike

Origins

Ships have always been boarded, and sailors have always needed a long weapon to keep attackers off their decks. On land the Pike was a long infantry weapon, often 16 feet or more. At sea there was no room for such a length among the rigging, guns and crowded decks, so navies used a much shorter version, often called the half-pike. It appears in English naval stores lists by the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth century every warship in the British, French, Spanish and Dutch navies carried a supply. The Royal Navy's official lists set the number for each ship according to its size.

Design & Construction

A boarding pike was plain and cheap. It had a straight wooden shaft, usually of ash, about seven to eight feet long, although lengths varied between navies and periods. The head was a forged iron point, sometimes leaf-shaped and sometimes a narrow spike of square or triangular section. Many heads had long iron strips, called langets, running down the shaft and nailed in place, so that an enemy could not easily cut the head off with a cutlass or axe. The butt might have an iron cap or spike. Pikes were stored upright in racks around the masts and on the quarterdeck, where they could be grabbed quickly. They needed almost no training compared with a musket or pistol, which suited a crew made up of many landsmen.

Combat Use

A warship's crew was divided into groups for battle, and some men were named as boarders. When the order came to repel boarders, men with pikes lined the rails and gangways. They thrust at enemies climbing up the side or jumping across from another ship, and they pushed men back into the sea. A few pikemen at the rail could hold a gap while others fought with the Boarding Cutlass and Boarding Axe. Boarding nets were rigged above the rails to slow attackers down and give the pikemen time to strike. Pikes were also carried by boarding parties and by men in boats cutting out enemy ships from harbors. At the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 the crew of the French Redoutable, trained by Captain Jean Lucas for close fighting, swept the upper deck of HMS Victory with musket fire and grenades and tried to board her. The British beat off the attempt, and HMS Temeraire came alongside and forced Redoutable to surrender. Later in the day British crews boarded and took several beaten French and Spanish ships.

Legacy

The boarding pike stayed in use as long as wooden sailing warships did. American warships still carried pikes during the Civil War of the 1860s, when naval battles were already being fought by steam and armored ships. As guns grew more powerful and ships were built of iron, boarding became rare, and the pike disappeared from naval stores in the later nineteenth century. It was one of the cheapest weapons ever issued to a navy, and it is now a common item in maritime museums alongside the cutlass and the Sea Service Pistol.