Spontoon

Origins

The spontoon takes its name from the Italian spuntone, by way of the French esponton. It appeared in the seventeenth century as a smaller relative of the partisan, a broad-bladed staff weapon carried by officers and guards. At that time infantry regiments still included blocks of pikemen armed with the long Pike. As the flintlock musket and the bayonet took over around 1700, the pikemen disappeared, but officers and sergeants kept staff weapons. Sergeants carried the Halberd, and company officers carried the spontoon, sometimes called a half-pike. By the middle of the eighteenth century it was a standard part of an infantry officer's equipment in the British, French, Prussian, Austrian and other armies.

Design & Construction

A spontoon was a wooden staff, usually of ash, with a steel or iron head. Overall length was about six to seven feet, short enough to carry on the march and long enough to outreach a musket and bayonet. The head was a flat, double-edged blade, commonly leaf-shaped, with a small crossbar or toggle below it and a socket and side straps that fixed it to the shaft. Some European spontoons had wide, decorated blades engraved with a royal cipher or coat of arms, and these were as much symbols as weapons. Others, especially American ones, were plain and often made by local blacksmiths. The foot of the staff usually had an iron shoe.

Combat Use

In battle the officer's place was with his platoon in the firing line, and his job was to control its fire and movement. The spontoon suited that role. Held level, it could be used to dress the ranks or press them forward. It was used for saluting, and it marked out the officer to his men. In a close fight it was a real weapon, at least as useful as the light sword an officer also wore.

Opinion about it was divided. Some armies decided that officers should carry firearms instead, and French infantry officers gave up the spontoon around the time of the Seven Years' War. British officers serving in North America often left their spontoons in store and carried light muskets called fusils, which were better suited to wooded country.

In the Continental Army the argument went the other way. In general orders issued in December 1777, George Washington directed every officer to provide himself with a half-pike or spear. His reasoning was that firearms drew an officer's attention away from his men, and that an officer with no weapon in his hand looked awkward. A further order early in 1778 set a length of about six and a half feet. Anthony Wayne was among the weapon's strongest supporters. By regulation, then, the company officers of the Maryland and Delaware regiments who fought at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Guilford Court House should have carried spontoons, although how many actually did so in the field is not recorded. Their men were armed with the Charleville Musket and its bayonet.

Legacy

The British Army abolished the officer's spontoon in 1786, leaving officers with the sword alone. In 1792 it took away the sergeant's halberd and gave sergeants a plain pike of spontoon type, about nine feet long with a crossbar, which they carried through the Napoleonic Wars and up to 1830. Sergeants used these pikes to guard the regimental colors, and British sergeants carried them at the Battle of Waterloo.

In the United States the weapon lingered into the early nineteenth century. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark both carried espontoons on their expedition to the Pacific in 1804 to 1806. Lewis's journal records that he used his as a rest for his rifle, and that in June 1805 it saved him from a fall when he slipped on a wet bluff above the Marias River. After that the spontoon passed out of use except in ceremony. It is described with other staff weapons in the overview of Pole Weapons.