Wow, Mark! You might just have something there. The early-type boarding axes did look just like yours. You will note similar examples in Neumann and in Gilkerson (the axe drawn from an artwork dating to the mid-18th. The problem, as always, with boarding axes is with the provenance. If unmarked (which most if not all of the early types were), it becomes a guessing game of whether it is a boarding ax, trade ax, tomahawk, etc. What we can say for certain is that it is early, 1700's, appears hand-forged and of the type used for early boarding types. It has been surmised that the early trade axes coming to the Americas from Europe were all trade axes, but sailors found them an excellent shipboard tool, leading to the boarding ax pattern. Please post more pics when it arrives!
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