British ribbed iron grip brass sword anomaly

[Jim McDougall]

These ribbed iron grip brass swords seem to fall into a category of their own as possibly cutlass, artillery swords, police or militia swords which may be from period 1800-50 but without specific classification.

They have a resemblance to these type swords which were used by British coast guard, possibly dockyard security forces, and by that virtue seem to perhaps have fallen into the police and militia category. Examples like this, without langet, have been known to Dorset militia c.1800, during the ongoing concerns of 1790s of French invasion.

As per Robson (1975, p.153) there were mountain artillery units which began around 1850 with the Hazara Mountain Train, followed by the Peshawar Mountain Train in 1853. These were units who packed small howitzer screw guns which were dismantled on mules. It is unknown what type swords they carried but noted SHORT curved ones with brass hilts.

In 1896 there was an official pattern made with similar ribbed iron grip which is why I thought perhaps these stirrup hilt types of early 19th c. might have been prototypes.

The British army Royal Horse Artillery had no permanent mountain batteries until 1889. Interestingly, the RHA typically used light cavalry sabers, of M1796 pattern on course. When the M1821 came out, the changeover was remarkably slow, probably even more so in these remote units in the Raj.

I am wondering perhaps if this might be one of a number of the early iron ribbed hilts from early in the century with intent for maritime, militia or police use, which ended up going to one of these mountain troops, and in accord with RHA custom, mounted with M1796 Lt. cavalry blade.

No markings on hilt or blade.

To clarify, the images are of my own example.........the page is from Robson's book, and the images noted are not shown. Those images are of the M1821 type hilt and the 1896 form, which are not relevant to this type in this case.