My adventure on Astove island

cornelis 816 · Jan 14, 2011

This is a story I told already some years ago but I thought it would be nice to tell it again since we have so many newcomers to this forum . It all started when me and my friend who had a captains license visited the city of Mahè in the Seychelles . We were on a fact finding tour in the islands . One day I visited the local library and found a book written by some divers looking for purple-snails . By paging through it I found a map of Astove island with the location of a wreck on it . The divers out for the purple- snails wrote that they had been diving on this wreck and discovered that there were some cannons . They found one right -away and further down there were some more . The sand had polished them quite a bit showing that they had been in the water for quite some time . All together they found 5 cannon . They called it quits when they did not find any great quantity of snails . Here is where my friend and I come in . We decided to rent a fast boat and some airtanks from the local dive shop . When we finally ended up on the island we noticed that there was a small but well equiped settlement available . The next day we sailed up to the wrecksite and started to dive . We found an old anchor and all of the cannon but when we went further down the slope we noticed a medium sized bronze cannon . Lucky for us the snail divers quit before they ran into this cannon . Now what should we do ? We went back to the settlement and got a hold of a tilting trailer and a large square piece of tarp . We fastened ropes to the four corners of the tarp , and also fastened ropes to the middle of the four sides . The tilting trailer had a winch on it , whichwas very lucky for us . We started back to the wrecksite and fastened the cannon to the ropes , forming some kind of a parachute . With the air out of our spare tanks we airlifted the cannon from the ground . Since the cannon was not very deep it did not take a lot of air . We raised the cannon till it was only about three feet under the surface . We hauled the cannon to a flat beach and rolled the trailer into the water to the point where it was sitting under the cannon . The we released some air sothat the cannon rested on the trailer . We then winched the cannon and the trailer onto the beach. Lucky for us there was a chinese trader in the settlement who was willing to buy the cannon off us . He got a good price since he knew that we could not take it with us anyhow . The value of this story is that it is always possible to discover ship wrecks with value .All it takes is a library and some research . Regards Cornelius

Trembull · Jan 14, 2011

cornelis 816 said:
This is a story I told already some years ago but I thought it would be nice to tell it again sunce we have so many newcoers to this forum..
The value of this story is that it is always possible to discover ship wrecks with value .All it takes is a library and some research . Regards Cornelius

Awesome Story, Cornelis :hello2:

Thank you Sir
This is the kind of stuff I like to read about, Unlike the hatred toward others in the other threads
Daryl

Galen · Jan 15, 2011

Very interesting read. :icon_thumright:

Au_Dreamers · Jan 15, 2011

Thank-you for posting this.
For a little while I escaped this cold snowy landlocked place I'm currently located.

As when I was growing up I became the "cameraman" there observing this with you.
It is these kind of stories that fan the flames for my treasure hunting desires.

Thanks for sharing! :icon_thumright:

cornelis 816 · Jan 20, 2011

Well, there is very little interest in some real stories . So I will keep the rest for people interested in the real things . Cornelius

ivan salis · Jan 20, 2011

what else besides big "bulky" bronze cannons might have been there ? :icon_scratch:

cornelis 816 · Jan 25, 2011

Ivan , God only knows what else was there , or is still there . We rented our boat for a short time and besides that we could not get any air for our tanks on this remote island . It is however a good question since a bronze cannon is not something you will find on any .. non,, important ship . She must have sunk quite a while ago , looking at the shape of the iron cannon . The current was quite strong , but with some time a guy could pick out some slack time . Cornelius

Smithbrown · Jan 25, 2011

Any details or date on the bronze cannon?

inletsurf · Jan 25, 2011

No photos?

cornelis 816 · Jan 25, 2011

Look guys ! We were only there for a very short time . No big city , just a settlement . We had to get rid of the cannon because we had no means of transporting it to Mahé. It was a plain cannon . Whatever was cast in the body could not clearly be decifered . Although it looked like it once had been an important cannon . We had no camera at that time . Untill now we are sorry that we had no opportunity to take some pictures . Cornelius