The New Zealand Bowie Knife Connection By John Steele

     I am a lover of large fighting and survival knives, just the sort of things which men need in this world to keep their T-levels up. While I thought I knew a fair bit about the Bowie knife, this was mainly American knowledge.     Gustavus von Tempsky, born in East Prussia in 1828, one year after Jim Bowie’s famous Vidalia Sandbar fight, was an adventurer who moved to Australia during the gold rush period, but did not make much money, so he tried his hand in New Zealand. He wound up in the Forest Rangers, a type of special ops designed to fight the Maori uprising in the bush. Firearms in the 1860s were more reliable than in Jim Bowie’s day, but von Tempsky felt that men should be equipped with a Bowie knife, and the fighting techniques he had learnt while in America and Mexico. So, he introduced the Bowie knife to New Zealand. This is what a leading expert on the Bowie, Paul Kirchner, has to say about the  significance of this fine act of cultural exchange:
  http://bowieknifefightsfighters.blogspot.com/2011/04/bowie-knife-fighter-gustavus-von.html

“To equip his troops, Tempsky had about 30 bowie knives made to his specifications by a cutler in Auckland. They were crafted from wagon springs, one of the few sources of steel available to New Zealand blacksmiths in 1863. The blade was about nine inches long, 2½ inches wide near the handle, and ¼-inch thick. Tempsky taught his men to use the knife in close-quarters combat, holding the knife in the left hand to fend off an opponent's attacking blows while using a revolver with the right hand. Here's a brief mention of Tempsky in Britain's Roll of Glory; or the Victoria Cross: Its Heroes and Their Valor:

Captain Swift had been instrumental in organising a corps of Forest Rangers, who did good service under a very brave German named Von Tempsky, himself destined to be shot. In one action a Maori, hidden in the branches of a tree, fired at a man of the 13th, the ball piercing his Crimean ribbon, and tearing its way to his heart. Von Tempsky brought the native down by a good aim; and, seeing that he was not dead, drew the bowie-knife he always carried, and finished him, saying: "There; you vill never kill anoder Englishman."

Tempsky is mentioned in The Adventures of Kimble Bent:

He was a good shot, a finished swordsman, and could throw a bowie-knife with deadly accuracy. It was in Mexico that he learned the use of the knife, and he never tired of impressing on his men its advantages in bush fighting. Here's an anecdote from the New Zealand Railways Magazine (May 1, 1935):

One of my old-soldier acquaintances in the Waikato had been a corporal in Jackson's and Von Tempsky's Forest Rangers. He had a farm near Te Awamutu. Customarily, out on the farm and in the bush, he wore a sheath-knife on his belt. The knife was a veteran like himself. It had been nine or ten inches long of blade, but the point had been broken off, and he had reground and pointed it; even then it was like a young bayonet. He told me its story. “That's one of old Von's bowie-knives,” he said. “He had a lot made for us at a blacksmith's in Auckland when the Forest Rangers were divided into two companies and he had command of one. You know, old Von was a terror with the bowie-knife. He had learned to use it in Mexico and Central America. Certainly it came in handy in the bush, and as we had no bayonets it was comforting to know you had a good sticker on your hip for a scrimmage. I've had that knife more than thirty years. See how it's worn down. “I've used it for all sorts of jobs, hacking bush tracks, pig-sticking, skinning sheep, cutting up my tobacco and my loaf of bread. It'll last my day, my boy!” Old John the Ranger told of one of his warpath mates, a Jamaica negro who had been a sailor and gold-digger like himself before he became a Ranger. At meal-times he used to apostrophise his bowie-knife thus: “You old son of a gun, you've dug into a Maori's vitals, you have, at Waiari, you know you have! Come on now, you're going to cut up me vittles!”

     I found this a fascinating, since so little is written about this aspect of our history. Our oestrogenic, emasculated society frowns at weapons, and all things that elevated man above the animals in the past. It is interesting that a replica Bowie has now been produced by knife company, Svord. It is way out of my price range, but one gets what one pays for.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMntqsjNKfw