Show me your artillery!!!

[The Bushwhacker Detectorist]

Anyone have civil war, or any other type of artillery piece, please show. I want to one day find an artillery shell but for now, I wan’t to see what y’all found.

 

[mrwiskers]

This is a small, 16th century cannon, most likely used as ballast or for trade. The year was 1987, Governor's Beach, Grand Turk island, about 1/4 mile south of Cockburn Town. I found this at the water's edge, with only the ball tip sticking out of the sand. I recruited a team. Using 2x4s for skids & kitchen grease, we excavated this cannon & moved it about 30 yards, to a slope leading up to the road ... one of the guys in the pic was part-owner of the Salt Raker Inn (where we were staying). We intended to move the cannon to the Salt Raker, & clean it, to put it in a garden there.

The weight of this cannon prevented us from moving it any farther. We tried using a small Ford pickup to pull it up the slope, & almost burned out the clutch doing so. We left the cannon on the slope, barrel tip pointing up towards the road. Last time I checked (2011), the cannon was still in that spot.

At that time, there was very little tourist travel to Grand Turk. The beach in front of the Salt Raker Inn was literally littered with pottery shards, a lot of which dated to the Ming Dynasty. There were shipwreck pieces, including wooden plank pieces, iron spikes, cannon balls (I found three 8 inchers), & other related items. Snorkeling in the harbor, one would see huge cannon, galleon anchors & chain scattered @ 25' depth, of bathtub-clear water.

In this pic, the fellow on the left was a doctor from Sebastian, FL, named 'Don' ... ( I'm 2nd from left). Don had stopped on the island to fuel his plane. He invested in shipwreck treasure recovery, & was excited to see all of the stuff I had beach-combed. He & his wife spent the following day in the shallow waters, flipping over rocks & looking for coins. He told us that if we could clean the cannon enough to get a rubbing of it's markings, that his researchers in Spain could identify the ship that the cannon came from, & could get a manifest of it's cargo.

 

[mrwiskers]

... Decades later, visiting the Fort Morgan, Alabama beach, I found this 100# parrot shell sticking out of the surf, near the western tip of the island (see attached pic). It was pointed directly at the fort. Knowing that it was (obviously) unexploded & dangerous, we trekked about a mile around the tip of the island, to the museum. I told the curator what we had found. He was concerned that if alerted, the Navy would just blow it up. so, the curator, a Marine (on leave), my wife & I trekked back to the site. The Marine & I carefully took the shell, marked & buried it in the off-limits bird sanctuary area above the beach. It was the middle of the week, & no one else was around. The curator agreed to get the shell off of the beach. It was to be made inert, & put on display at the museum (which had several small parrot shells, but, none this size).

...(at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Admiral Farragut’s flagship, USS Hartford, had the guns to fire 100# parrot shells ... quite a provenance for this shell)...

Returning to Fort Morgan 4 months later, my wife & I went to the museum to see "our" shell. The curator was there. I approached him & ask about the shell. He looked at me, quizzically. & asked "What shell ?" ... I reminded him of our efforts & agreement a few months ago. ... ... "Oh, that shell" ... ... "well, when we went to retrieve it, it was gone ..." ... ... "someone must have stolen it" ... ...

... ... Yeah ... we hid it, with no one around, anywhere, to see us, in a bird sanctuary, a restricted area, & somehow, someone found it & removed it from a place that was over a mile away from any vehicle access, vehicles being restricted from that area .... r..r..right...