A Very Fine 17th Century Spontoon. Central Double Edge Blade With Side Wings. Used For Over 140 Years in Military Service Including From the English Stuart to Early Hanoverian Reigns, The French-Indian War & Revolutionary War In The Americas

With original long, studded full haft, around 8 foot long, with steel foot. Spontoons (also spelled “espontoons”) appeared later than halberds, coming into use in the late 17th century. The word seems to come from the Italian spuntone, meaning “pointed.” A spontoon’s iron point, sometimes decorated with tassels, was fitted to a sturdy hardwood shaft measuring from six to nine feet in length. The weapon’s distinguishing feature were sidewings sometimes plain and sometimes elaborately ornamental, perpendicular to the main blade.

Spontoons may have evolved from earlier spear-like weapons called pertuisanes or partisans. The partisan had a large blade, sharp on both sides. The blade was wider at the bottom, where twin symmetrical blades of various shapes sprouted from the sides. Rather blurry lines separate the spontoon and a number of other spear-like staff weapons. There were hybrids known as “partisan spontoons,” and some 18th-century European accounts refer to officers’ weapons as partisans rather than spontoons. Other sources refer to spontoons as “half-pikes,” and some simply call them spears.

Although the British serving both in America and Europe, used them in the French Indian War {aka the 7 Years War} quite liberally, we put aside a lot of their use as pole weapons during the Revolutionary War, yet spontoons formed a large part of the equipment of the US Continental Army. Captain Daniel Morgan led a portion of the Continental attack on Quebec on December 30, 1775. His men carried spontoons in addition to rifles and scaling ladders. Attacking a two-gun battery, they drove the defenders into a nearby house. Morgan ordered his men to “fire into the house and follow up with their pikes (for in addition to our rifles, we were also armed with long espontoons), which they did, and drove the guard into the street.”

In several surviving written orders, General George Washington insisted that Continental officers carry spontoons. At Valley Forge on December 22, 1777, Washington directed that each officer “provide himself with a half-pike or spear, as soon as possible.” Washington did not want his officers to carry muskets, which he believed had a way of “drawing their attention too much from the men.” He needed the officers focused on commanding their men, not distracted with loading and firing a musket. Additionally, Washington believed that an officer with neither firearm nor spontoon had “a very awkward and unofficerlike appearance.”

In America, spontoons held on into the early Federal period. A North Carolina militia law of 1787 required infantry officers to carry “side arms or a spontoon.” Because militia officers might well wear civilian clothing, a spontoon or sword served as an indication of superior rank.

The U.S. War Department ordered 120 spontoons for its officers in 1800. Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark each carried one during their transcontinental expedition of 1804-1806. Both officers would have reason to be glad they were burdened with these heavy staff weapons. In what is now Montana, on the night of May 26, 1805, Lewis nearly stepped on a rattlesnake. Guided by the sound of the rattles, Lewis stabbed about in the dark with his spontoon until he killed the snake. Three days later, Clark killed a wolf with his spontoon. Lewis’s spontoon would twice more save his life, once in driving away a bear and another time when the captain saved himself from falling 90 feet from a precipice by bracing himself with his weapon’s long staff.

Lewis and Clark may have been the last American military officers to get any real use out of the spontoon. Watchmen and policemen in some cities carried smaller versions of spontoons until about 1860, but by the time of the War of 1812, they had essentially disappeared from military life. However, William T. Sherman, in an 1890 article in the North American Review, pointed out that U.S. militia laws still on the books stated that “each commissioned officer shall be armed with a sword or hanger and spontoon.” So, strictly speaking, all militia officers without spontoons were in violation of Federal statutes until the militia laws were revised in 1903.

The British Monarch's Royal Bodyguard, the Yeoman of the Guard, wearing their scarlet and gold full dress Tudor style uniforms, still carry the traditional spontoon polearms {see photo in the gallery at the Tower of London}. In the gallery is a photograph of spontoons in a Swiss castle museum gallery. This one is polearm type number four on the right.

It has its original studded haft but since it has been in armoury display for likely two centuries all its surface velvet is now gone and overall surface worn.

what is incredibly interesting is the iron foot of the spontoon, it is a 17th century Civil War pike head, that has likely lost its point so the haft has been turned around the spontoon head fitted, and the pike head left in place to be used as its foot.

See photo 10 in the gallery to show exactly how the pike {now an iron foot} would have looked with its point intact, the pike is on display in the Metropolitan Museum in the USA.

Delivery completely assembled with its haft is within the UK mainland only due to length.

Two links to a similar spontoon and a pike in the Metropolitan Museum below, for reference

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/25095

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/25847

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Code: 25649