New Shipwreck - Take a stab at dating artifacts.

[ScubaFinder]

Stumbled onto this wreck the other day, it's a strange one and I was hoping some of you smart folks could discuss dates and nationality with me based on the few artifacts I have recovered so far. I only have one day at this site so far, I hope to have many more artifacts to look at soon. Pics below, first a breifing of the site.

There is only one cannon, it's 5 feet long and the only notable attribute I see is that the cascabel is very small compared to other cannon I've seen. There is a depression nearby where a cannon has been removed, and the remaining cannon appears to have been moved there as it is not grown into the coral at all. I assumed this was the work of a local fisherman, and this was not the site of the wreck, but after detecting the area a bit, I'm certain the wrecksite is nearby. All of the hardware pictured below is bronze, and all was found within 100 feet of the cannon. No timbers, ballast, anchors, or anything else is in the immediate area. I have a mag survey planned for next week to search for the rest of the wreck. I'd like to keep this thread going and I'll keep posting new pics and videos as we progress. We are currently excavating another site very close by, but these are two different wrecks and all of my attention and study are on the first one. I'll try to start another thread soon with some pics and videos of the first site.

Enjoy the pics, and thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Here are two heavily encrusted sword blades, I have them in electrolisys now but the metal is wrought iron, and I doubt we will have much detail left when complete. Time will tell.


A piece of Chinese porcelein, very thin white porcelein. My hope is that there is enough pattern for someone to determine which dynasty it's from or something.


And another....


A bronze cinch ring...that should tell us something eh?


I wish the price of bronze would go up, this weighs nearly 5 lbs.


A myriad of bronze spikes.


Some small nails


And some pins


And some poor shots of the cannon, I have better ones but they are still in the camera on the boat.

 

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[treasurediver]

Looks like a good area with lots of shipwrecks.
The cannon is probably from a different shipwreck than the spikes.
The cannon looks much older than the spikes.
Spikes 1800 to 1850
Cannon 1700
Could you give a closeup picture of the "porcelain? specially the break. Porcelain does not usually have the surface cracks. This looks like a glazed clay, not porcelain.
The "swords" are more likely barrel hoops or other flat stock.

Looks like very shallow water, like Bahamas. In shallow water corrosion is faster.

With better pictures a better analysis could be done.

Treasurediver

 

[ScubaFinder]

Thanks treasurediver, there are definitely a lot of shipwrecks here, I'm in the Dominican Republic, not Bahamas. It's certainly possible that the cannon is from a different wreck, as I believe it was moved here for later removal by local fishermen. I suppose it could be from the wreck we are excavating, but we have 18 cannons there so far and all are 7 footers and identical. There is a pic of one of them below also for comparison. Also, take a look at the anchor from the other site...these things had 14 foot shafts, with maybe a 6 foot span on the flukes. The flukes are huge for the span also. I'll start another thread with more details from the other wreck soon.

Maybe I'm just confused on terminology, but all of the Kang Hsi dynasty "china" I saw from the 1715 fleet in Florida (I worked in the conservation lab with Bill Moore so I've seen quite a bit) had the cracks in the glaze just like this one. I posted a picture below of the break.

On the sword blades, I thought they were parts of barrel hoops or mast rings as well until I broke some encrustation off. You can clearly see the blade shape end-on and the grain in the oxidzed iron. I won't remove them from conservation right now for photos, but once a lot of the encrustation was removed, it's easy to see that they are indeed sword blades. Hopefully I'll find the handles in the next few days.

 

[Smithbrown]

There is not enough detail on the cannon to make a definite identification.

Smithbrown

 

[ScubaFinder]

Smithbrown, you have a PM. I have an HD video of the cannon I'd like you to see, but I'm not allowed to post it in public right now. Was hoping you'd see this thread.

Jason

 

[pcolaboy]

Jason,

I wonder if that heavy bronze piece with the round eye in it could be a rudder gudgeon? It may be on the small side but you never know.

 

[ScubaFinder]

Not a bad thought Pcola, but all of the corners are rounded like it was made for a rope to slide through or something along those lines. Nice drawing, where did that come from? It looks vaguely familiar, but all of my books are in Florida (I know...brilliant move). :-)

Jason

 

[pcolaboy]

Not a bad thought Pcola, but all of the corners are rounded like it was made for a rope to slide through or something along those lines. Nice drawing, where did that come from? It looks vaguely familiar, but all of my books are in Florida (I know...brilliant move). :-)

Jason

Got it on Wikipedia. I just realized that the scale tape is in centimeters . I was also thinking maybe an oarlock from a long boat but that second 'shaft' coming off of it would probably rule that out easily. Oh well.

Awesome finds bro!

Pcola

 

[Bobadilla]

Excellent, Jason! One more time, congrats! I could be up there with you after I finish the meeting with R. here in Santo Domingo. We must go to here the lab to look for some old artifacts for the identification.

Best regards,
Lobo

 

[ScubaFinder]

Gracias Lubos, you go dig through old buttons wth Rick at the lab, and I'll go dig through sand with Scott at the wreck. Sounds fair to me, see you when you get done. Thanks for all the hard work in the books, you deserve a few days under the water...it's all coming together now.

Jason

 

[treasurediver]

You certainly have some interesting sites there.
Attached a few pictures of Khang Hsi Porcelain for reference.
Treasurediver

 

[Darren in NC]

Congrats, buddy! Nice to see you posting again. We miss you here in our area of the pond. You give new meaning to being a "ScubaFinder"

 

[ScubaFinder]

Thanks Darren, I miss you guys too. You can congratulate me when I'm bringing up gold. ;-) We start digging on the other site in full force Tuesday, it's certainly looking interesting so far.

Nice china treasurediver! OK, so assuming these are glazed clay, what does that tell me. I've heard that copies from Mexico are generally made from terra cotta colored clay, these are white clay. I'm hoping some of these atifacts can give someone an idea of approxmate date and/or nationality, or even what port she might have hit along the way. I should have another set of divers on the site Tuesday, and maybe they'll find something more conclusive. Still awaiting word on the cannon, but I agree it's not from the same wreck. Any other thoughts anyone?

 

[RELICDUDE07]

Nice work jason.I have heard in the old days some treasure hunters would move the cannon from a good treasure wreck site to another wreck close by,to keep people from getting mag hits....Hard to see the truth yet but to me thats the fun part...

 

[OldGold74]

Hi Jason, I am sure the cannon belongs to the wreck if shallow most likely the rest were removed after the wreck or up until today or it only carried a small amount of cannon, the porcelain is 18th C it looks like it was made for trade or ship use, and maybe delft copy - this was mass produced up and until the 19th C - It could be of any nationality English, Dutch or Spanish or others, the blades alone without the handles are very unusual, very, they could be bayonett? Interesting wreck, too early to guess stay focused dont decide the cannon is from another site until you have more facts or you might waste time ,,,,,or not.
You decide, enjoy the freedom and all the best. GFH

 

[diverlynn]

Jason,
I will pass along the photos to my host. He is 1 of 2 of the historians here in Peru. He's still camping and will be home tomorrow.

Diverlynn

 

[ScubaFinder]

Thanks Lynn, more importantly, how are things going with you?

Relic, what's up man? Here in the DR you have old treasure hunters and fishermen to contend with. They'll sell a cannon for a few hundred bucks and triple their salary for the month. The area we are in now is very hot, we've had people pay the fishermen NOT to tell us what they've seen, and we've had the Marina de Guerra run two boats out of our territory this month. All that tells me is that we are very close. ;-)

GFH - good advice, and I never make up mind completely until I have all the facts. Problem is, it's Semana Santa here (Dominican Easter) and nobody works, I got one dive on the site before things shut down...so I have nothing to do but ponder what it is and dream of getting back down there. The sword blades were ripped from the coral by local fishermen (hence only the blades, you can see the break points in the first picture), as was the cannon. All were sitting right next to each other completely encrusted, but not attached to the coral below. I can rock the cannon back and forth by the trunion...all three were moved there from somewhere else, without question.

Thanks for all the help, hopefully I'll have some new artifact pics to post in a few days.

Jason

 

[OldGold74]

Jason if this is the case and you are in Luperon, then go focus on another site, I know plenty of people there and elsewhere, if the fisherman ripped them from the site, you would see many other tell tales and you can be rest assured that others were there before you, I dont doubt that you and your arrgh chaps have what it takes but it seems that you guys are just getting going, in a few years time you will laugh at what I type this time you make take offense, in the DR it is easier for you to find on your own. no disrespect to D Lynn but f.. it, go find another wreck, the DR are a dime a dozen, that cannon is either older or 19th C and thats a red wine guess, the porcelain was made for trade and has nothing to do with Spain on this site short of coincidence, youre close but trust me just started with the DR game of "smoke and mirrors" go find your own wreck not these, if you made it this far then you will succeed good luck and all the best GFH.

 

[ScubaFinder]

Just for the record, I'm not here with my ARRG chaps. I've been here 7 months, so I'm not completely "new" to the DR either. The people I work with have been here 23 years. We just stumbled onto this one while preparing to excavate another site nearby. It's quite a mystery, and like any good treasure hunter, I want to solve it.

I know what you mean about wrecks being a dime a dozen here, just last week we found 3 new wreck sites in one day. The problem here is deciding WHICH wreck to dig into. We have some really good research in the area, so we are investigating anything we find, we know one of them is what we are looking for, but there should be a few more close by. I LIVE in Luperon, but these wrecks are not near my home...our contract with the Minister of Culture here gives us almost 300 square miles of the north coast. Tell me I'm not a busy man. :-)

 

[RELICDUDE07]

Keep us posted with alot of pictures , i think you are very close if someone tried the old bait and switch of the cannon on ya.. Dont let them get me gold