Gully

A gully is simply a big knife. It was not usually a fighting knife but could be used as such in a pinch. Some gully's were folding pocket knives but for the most part they were similar to the knife you would find in your kitchen. (The folding knives were smaller.) In any case, the gully was another tool that was commonplace among sailors and were quite often used in mutinies simply because nothing else could be had. Today, the gully would be replaced by such knives as a Buck knife or Swiss Army pocket knife.

The gully was better suited for hacking than stabbing and typically only one side of the blade contained an edge. (In some instances part of the top side of the blade also has an edge) It had numerous legitimate uses on board a ship, being everything from the sailors eating utensil to his main tool for cutting fouled rigging and such.

Typical folding knife used throughout the 17th Century and into the 19th Century. Folding knives had the advantage of taking up less space and could be carried in a pocket without a sheath. Pocket knives proved popular among sailors and eventually evolved into more elaborate pocket knives containing other utensils, typically a scaling blade, and marlinespike, and still later such items as cork-screws and even tooth picks and screw drivers.

English Sailor's Pocket Knife

Typical of the pocket knives issued to sailors throughout the world, this English pocket knife is from around the end of the nineteenth century. It is shown here in contrast to the pocket knives used by sailors during the Golden Age of Sail/Piracy. Even in earlier times, some pocket knives had multiple blades but such knives would have been a rare treat for the common sailor. The pointy thing at the top is a marlinespike, a common feature on most multiblade knives these days, although usually smaller.

The billhook was is a popular work knife used for everything from cutting vegetation to carvig up meat. Surprisingly, this large knife was considered essential for the the preperation of food and just general chopping. Of course a knife that cleave open a sea trurtle's shell could just as easily split a head. The billhook was part of a soldier's kit and thus soldiers stationed on stips would carry these nasty implements. Pirates would also have such knives aboard ship.

Other knives of a more offensive nature were common among sailing vessels in the Caribbean. The most common of these was a "Boucan" knife. The boucan was the knife used by Buccaneers. They came in all sizes and shapes and appear to be nothing more than a cut down cutlass. The knives were originally used when the buccaneers hunted wild pig and oxen on the Islands around Santa Domingo and Jamaica. These knives were still primarily a utility knife but could be used effectively in combat. The were primarily designed to hack or slash an opponent as opposed to stabbing.

Modeled after and/or made from broken cutlasses, the boucan knives were originally long bladed knives used on wild game when hunting. Of course they also made handy self defence weapons. The knives would be used in cutting the animal apart and preparing the meat for smoking or barbecueing (what the native islanders called "boucan"). A cutlass proves unwieldy when cutting apart animals and smaller knives would not have had a strong enough blade to hack through bone and sinew.