Description:
Infantry half pike with double-edged pointed blade at one end and rounded metal point at the other. The pike was bought at a 1968 auction of Barnard family belongings at the Francis Barnard farm in the Patten Hill district of Shelburne, Massachusetts, which had been in the family since 1790. The pike is a type of polearm (a lineal descendent of various forms of lances used during the Middle Ages); the full pike normally had a 14-16 feet-long shaft and the helf-pike shaft ranged between 6-8 feet. Polearms as weapons had been virtually abandoned by most European armies by the American Revolution; the halberd, pike, and spontoon were replaced by the fusil and bayonet although halberds and spontoons were still carried as symbols of rank and in ceremonies. In early British regiments, the officers carried spontoons which could be used signal orders to their troops; the halberd was the symbol of a sergeant in most European armies; and the pike was the enlisted man's polearm. England officially abolished the halberd in 1791, the spontoon in 1786, and the pike around 1700. Neither American-made halberds or spontoons followed any uniform style, and many were copied from the British. During the American Revolution, Gen. George Washington considered polearms an effective weapon; in 1778, a council of Washington's brigade commanders developed official standards requiring that spontoons have a 6 foot staff with a 1 foot iron section. When the Continental soldiers were suffering from arms shortages, weapons such as pikes were considered as supplements. Seargant Roger Lamb of the 9th Regiment of Foot recorded in his memoirs: “The pike, however, which Doctor Franklin suggests the use of in the mode of fighting, fit for raw levies like those of the Colonists opposed to regular troops, must be thought on some occasion a weapon of more advantage.” Pikes were not adequate weapons when opposed to an enemy armed with firearms and soon the idea was disposed with; “However, the rebels could procure but few of the real pike or hasta, and had they been all armed with it, they could not prevail in any degree to withstand the grape and musquetry fire which swept away whole lines at once.” The pike largely became a defensive tool with men on ramparts of fortifications employing them to repel an enemy attempting to scale the falls. James Thatcher records in 1776 at Mount Independence, a fort constructed during the American Revolution by the Continental Army across Lake Champlain from Fort Ticonderoga: “Among our defensive weapons are pike, about twelve feet long, armed with sharp iron points, which each soldiers is to employ against the assailants when mounting the breastworks." Similar accounts and archeological finds have been made at other fortifications constructed by the Continentals, such as West Point in the Hudson Highlands and Fort Griswold in New London Connecticut. Col. Montgomery Pike’s 15th U.S. Infantry, raised in anticipation of the War of 1812 reutilized the use of the pike in formations of infantry. Col. Pike readopted the three rank formation, used at the beginning of the American Revolution but then tactically replaced with the two rank formation, and issued the rear rank with shortened muskets and 12 foot long pikes. By doing this, a unit could have more ability to overwhelm an enemy in close courters. The tactic was used effectively at the storming of Fort York on the 27th of April 1813 in the beginning of the invasion of Canada, however Pike was mortally wounded when the forts powder magazine exploded.
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