Model 1841 Naval Cutlass by Ames

Model 1841 Naval Cutlass by Ames - Inventory Number: SWO 294 

The 1841 U.S. Navy cutlass is scarce. Only 6,600 of them were made from 1842 through 1846. Ames sent three cutlasses of slightly different configuration to the Board of Naval Ordnance in November 1841. The Navy selected this pattern and a contract for 3,000 was signed late in 1841 or very early in 1842, with delivery of the first 500 made in March 1842, another 1,000 by May, and the remaining 1,500 before the end of the year.

Ames based his pattern on the M1832/3 army short sword. Both have short, wide, straight, double-edged blades with slight wasp waist and the grips and pommels use the same or a similar mold: the grip has scales (or feathers in some interpretations) and is secured by three rivets, and the pommel is cast with an eagle on either side. The cutlass blade differs, however, in having a median ridge without fullers and the guard offers greater protection to the hand, using knuckleguard formed from a flat piece of brass with reinforced edge, descending from the pommel and widening to form a counterguard around the blade with a quillon terminating in a disk. They were formidable weapons intended not only for hand-to-hand combat, but the necessary preliminary of cutting through enemy anti-boarding nets just to get to close quarters in boarding an enemy vessel.

These usually show long and hard shipboard use. This one shows such service. The blade has a good edge and point, a dark patina and some shallow salt-and-peppering, or “freckling” here and there, dings on cutting, no sharpening. The obverse ricasso is stamped in small block letters, “N.P. AMES / SPRINGFIELD / MASS.” This is in line with the blade and upside down. The reverse is stamped “U.S.N” date not discernible but would have been produced in 1846, also in very clear lettering, in line with the blade, though right side up. 

The navy was active in the Mexican War not only on blockading duty, but in amphibious operations in California and the Gulf of Mexico, and on land as well, most notably at Vera Cruz, where it not only landed a large army force, but erected and manned a naval gun battery on shore that took part in the bombardment of the city. When the Civil War broke out, the navy had to expand quickly to blockade the coast and control the rivers. A new pattern of cutlass, contracted for in May 1861 began to arrive in June, but older cutlasses were called back into service, making them veterans of two wars and more than twenty years’ service.

This is a very representable example of a scarce USN regulation cutlass, with a rack number indicating actual issue.

*To purchase this item directly with a credit card, please click on this link.

Inventory Number: SWO 294