Excellent points and information, Jim! You bring up an important aspect of many of these brass/iron ribbed hilt swords...that many of them weren't naval at all. That being said, with the dock marking, I feel safe to assume at least a partial maritime provenance. Another iron-ribbed British sword often seen (and many times falsely attributed to the "private purchase naval" catagory are police swords) A police-type sword would fit this pattern, in that the naval dock workers were essentially a division of the naval police authority(sort of like MPs, I guess?). The Indian mountain artillary gunners is a very interesting development and could very well define the pattern a little better. Indian weapons ed after Brit patterns, especially maritime, bear many close resemblences. Friedrich Holler as maker definately fits the timeline for the import blade. Very interesting item and I hope someone might be able to pinpoint this marking down more pat. (Jim, you said you had one of these and you didn't think about me at Christmas! Tisk tisk
