(Updated, November 2018) Dutch S-bar hilted sword (lacking a scabbard) that belonged to Vice-Admiral William Bligh (1754-1817). The hilt consists of a half-basket, open knuckle-guard, with a large anchor forming one of the bars. The straight quillons have a rounded knob at the end. The sword has a plain rounded brass pommel, a tang button and a back-piece. The white fish-skin grip is bound with three gilt wires. There is a plain gilt band at the base of the grip. The curved, flat-backed steel blade has one broad shallow groove running to within 102mm of the point. The blade is not decorated. The sword lacks a scabbard but does have a purpose-made canvas storage bag that is probably early (WPN1062.1).

This weapon is described by Captain H.T.A. Bosanquet in 'The Naval Officer's Sword' (1955; no. 62, p. 78) as a cutlass or hanger, but it is definitely a regulation sword of the type introduced in 1772. Bosanquet further mentions that it was shown in the Royal Naval Exhibition of 1891 as item no. 2679, with a description stating that it was the 'Sword of the Dutch Admiral [i.e. Admiral de Winter] delivered up to Captain Bligh on the quarter deck of the Director, 11 October 1797'. That is what it says in the printed 1891 catalogue. Bosanquet however adds that it may have been that of Vice-Admiral Reintjes of the 'Jupiter', which he appears to have copied from the label used when it was displayed in 1891 (since he probably first saw it then), but this is almost certainly an error since Bligh played no part in that capture. Although De Winter's 'Vryheid' struck to Bligh's 'Director', De Winter himself was taken to surrender to Duncan on the 'Venerable', by a boat of the British frigate 'Circe' before Bligh's first lieutenant John M'Taggart came on board to take formal possession of his flagship. De Winter certainly took another sword with him (which Duncan declined to accept when offered in submission), so if this weapon is his it was one he left on board. M'Taggart only subsequently arrived on 'Vryheid' to find its captain (Lodewijk Willem van Rossum) mortally wounded and immovable, so instead sent the second-in-command, Captain-Lieutenant Harco Hilarius Hora Siccama, with De Winter's secretary, to submit formally to Bligh on 'Director'. They may have taken this weapon as one of De Winter's, albeit of outdated design: the Dutch regulation fighting pattern had changed to a straight-bladed type in 1795. Alternatively, allowing that verbal tradition easily becomes confused, it may have been Van Rossum's or even Siccama's. It was lent to the 1891 exhibition by a Bligh descendant (Mrs Mary Jane Nutting), so is practically certain to have been acquired at Camperdown, even though exactly whose it was is no longer clear, as is how it later passed from Mrs Nutting to a fairly distant cousin in the extensive Bligh family, Henry Littlehales-Barker. It is not clear if the canvas storage bag is original but if the sword was surrendered without the now-missing scabbard, it was perhaps made while the weapon was in Bligh's early possession.