Fish or Cut Ballast

[signumops]

Irene did cut some beach front in Brevard. Not much, but, enough to start throwing ballast and other stuff on shore. In the pic below, you can see some small stones which are granite. I have been picking up others which are larger, and smaller, but all are "cut" granite. All the fasteners so far are iron, and almost all are twisted. This wreck supposedly threw gold coins during Jeanne.

So, just what boats used cut ballast, and when did they start using it? Getting ready for Katia. This pic was taken today.

I've heard all kinds of angles on "cut" ballast. Anybody got a definitive source?

[FISHEYE]

katia wont even come close,that looks like jetty rocks

[signumops]

I don't hold out much hope for Katia either. Maybe we can all get together and rent a bus bound for New York!? Hell, when FEMA finds out we are on the way, they'll throw a fit... maybe even pay us NOT to come up.

No jetties in the area. No piers either: and there have not been any. Nice try. No cigar. BTW, some of the stones are too big to come from a railbed.

Send me some oysters.

[FISHEYE]

That last batch of oysters came from the gulf before it was destroyed,the best ones to get now come from the chesapeak bay,but they arent cheep,ill see what i can do.

[Old Bookaroo]

This amounts to a pure guess, but I wonder if the stones were cargo and not ballast? Since rock ballast worked so well, why would anyone go to all the work required to cut and fit stone ballast?

British warships, I believe used formed lead ballast - but that we never removed for cargo. It was permanent.

Could be paving blocks for a road, for example. Or cut stones for wall or other construction.

Just a speculation...

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

[signumops]

We have at least two wrecks on the Treasure Coast, near shore, that have iron pig ballast and they are mid-1800's wrecks. There is another with "cut" ballast (as granite and other stones), but, I'm not sure of the age. The San Miguel carried some "cut" stones in 1659(?). By "cut", I mean, generally, NOT river rocks, which are the usual rounded stones you find in rivers or at the mouth of rivers where they empty to sea. There are beaches throughout the Caribbean where these can be found, especially in the Antilles, but not in the Bahamas, unless they were dumped there when a boat was careened or when exchanging cargo for ballast. I suppose that, if you were off-loading cargo, and you needed ballast, you would take whatever was available, however, granite in angular form is not what you find in the southern climes. So, you would not expect galleons carrying cargo as fleet ships to use cut ballast.

Tommy Gore almost always dismissed any ballast pile with cut ballast as a newer vessel which could not be included in the 1715 fleet, nor any other Spanish colonial ship of that period or earlier. I have not found any cut ballast on any of the 1715 ships that I have worked on (I did not find any... there may be some).

Added a picture of a ballast pile that Jeanne Durand had recovered from a site near Fort Pierce. There are only a few pieces that might be described as squared-off. This was a Spanish vessel that carried some treasure.

[stevemc]

The ships would off load their stone ballast at the South/Central American -Caribbean ports when they loaded down with boxes of coins and treasure. There would be a huge pile of ballast at any port. All mixed together. Dutch, Spanish, Portugese, many different countries over the years. When they would bring goods down, they would load up with other goods and also load more ballast. So it is hard to exactly say that each countries ships had this type of stone. I remember early in life working the 1733 fleets, and they all used the 6" to 12" round river rocks. To me all ballast was like that, but it isnt. Some is tiny round "egg" rocks, some is just broken rock, but it all is rock that is not found in Florida or anywhere that the ships went down here in the New World.

[Au_Dreamers]

I think I recall some ballast like that in the mix on 1715 wreck(s). I can't say how much and if I'd have to guess I would say on Douglas Beach site. Just thought it looked familiar and spent more time on DB ballast area than the others, but stopped paying attention to the ballast after moving it hole after hole.

[mad4wrecks]

Some square, cut ballast rocks from the Pines wreck area.

Tom

[Au_Dreamers]

and more importantly...... "This wreck supposedly threw gold coins during Jeanne."

[signumops]

That Pines Wreck stuff is what I was talking about. It's shoulder to shoulder with the Cabin wreck, but I've never seen it there. Also, I have never seen granite with any concretions or lime scabs on it. I don't think I've ever seen any barnacle scabs on it either, like you find typically on other types of rock ballast. Anybody else find granite with barnacles or barnacle scabs?

[stevemc]

As you probably know coralline (the white lime like stuff-purple or orange when alive) can grow pretty thick in just one year, so can oysters, and barnacles. Ask anybody that has a boat in the water and doesnt clean it regularly. So anything underwater could have it, that doesnt date anything. I have marine aquariums and coralline will grow on anything in them very quickly. Pumps, glass, plastic, rocks, anything that isnt alive. So will coral and worm rock. Tube worms. The San Miguel de Arcangel ? wreck off Jupiter has green hard broken stone near and around it, and it is thought that it was ballast. That was 1650s, when it was loaded. Hard to say where it was taken on though. Home port to sail down, or in South America or Panama, or Mexico? The heavy rock will sink fast in soft sand, so it might not have coralline or oysters on them. Unless it was up on a reef for a while.

[Old Bookaroo]

Theory 2.0 - More rampant speculation. Could the stones have been non-commercial quality (too small, split during cutting, &c.) loaded from a quarry? The original vessel could have taken them on because they were cheap (or free) - scrap, if you will?

Please forgive me for suggesting the obvious - are you sure the stones really were cut and not fractured along natural lines? Particularly if they have been in the water a few centuries, it might be hard to tell.

Now if you see the half-sides of drill holes, there wouldn't be much question about it.

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

[stevemc]

British ships started using iron pig ballast in very early 1800, and they stopped using lead sheathing-or stopped putting it on about 1812, so if you found iron pig ballast and lead sheathing on a British ship-British=everything metal would have a broadhead stamped in it, you can date it to 1800 to 1812ish. If after that, it would have had copper sheathing. Spanish, not so easy. They used stone ballast for a while, and did not mark anything. Anchors , cannons and other things can date them.

[signumops]

When I say cut ballast, I'm not sure if it is cut mechanically, but, more likely, fractured naturally or with explosives. I've heard that the advantage of using the rigid angled stone is that it does not shift when the ship rolls, nor cascade against the hull. That's about the only reason I can think of to use it, especially granite. Some stone is, by composition, heavier than others, so maybe that has something to do with it. Still, this stone I illustrated is washing in over a fairly flat limestone bottom, along with large barnacles. Don't usually find many barnacles in the surf zone... they are usually in still, dark water.

[tarpon192]

That Pines Wreck stuff is what I was talking about. It's shoulder to shoulder with the Cabin wreck, but I've never seen it there. Also, I have never seen granite with any concretions or lime scabs on it. I don't think I've ever seen any barnacle scabs on it either, like you find typically on other types of rock ballast. Anybody else find granite with barnacles or barnacle scabs?

The only granite that I know of shoulder to shoulder with the cabin wreck would be the rocks piled in front of the so called galleon at the treasure museum just south of sebastion inlet. Lots of granite is buried under sand, and dunes in this area, that was brought in many years ago by the county.
You never know what the ocean is capable of.
That's my 2 bits.

[signumops]

Those stones Tom posted are not granite. The stones I posted are closer to what you would expect might originate from the rip rap around the McClarty Museum.

[aloysiusinfla]

Having lived in Savannah and spent time on River Street (occasionally crawling), "ballaststone" figures prominently in riverfront development.

Savannah was a cotton exporting port. Ships would arrive lightly loaded but heavily ballasted. The round ballaststones were removed and used to pave roads and build foundations. The ships were then fully loaded with cotton (damp cotton because it was sold by the pound weight), and the ballast left behind.

Bottom line..a heavily loaded treasure ship won't have much, if any, ballast.

The stones are round and smooth because they are picked up from a river, where they are eroded smooth. Just like true beach sand, but that's another subject!

[Bill]

Ballast from two different wrecks, two different countries, and two different eras.
One is 1733 Spanish, and the other is a schooner. Both are in the Keys.

[signumops]

A ballast beach in Saint Lucia...