Restoration of cannons found on Arch Cape beach reveal surprising history (OR)

The Oregonian ^ | June 25, 2011 | Lori Tobias

[jazusamo]

It's not exactly a process that goes off with a bang.

More than three years after a Portland-area girl and her dad found a pair old cannons on the beach in Arch Cape, restoration on one of the cannons is finally finished and work has begun on the other. It's slow-going for sure, but patience has paid off in a number of clues to the first gun's origins.

Tualatin beachcombers Miranda Petrone and her father, Michael Petrone, found the cannons in February 2008. Oregon Parks and Recreation took possession of the old guns, storing them in water tanks, then driving them to the Center for Marine Archeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

They've been there since, undergoing reconditioning to remove all the years of encrusted sediment.

Brennan Bajdek, a third-year Texas A&M student studying nautical archeology, got involved in the restoration two years ago and found himself so intrigued, he's made it his thesis project.

"It's exciting for me because I like to play the detective," Bajdek said. "It's one part detective and one part reverse engineer. You're taking apart this weapon that was not meant to be taken apart. You have to use your ingenuity to not damage the artifact. You get to use a lot of skills, finding the bits and pieces to help identify the artifact, then using that information to figure out where and when it was made."

Bajdek and other students worked with chisels and ball-peen hammers to break away the concretion -- sand and rock that had bonded to the cannon through iron leaching from the gun. He describes it as similar to cracking open a nut.

After that, the gun went into an electronic reduction vat for nine months to pull out the chlorides that leached into the metal from the salt. That was followed by a good boiling to remove the chemicals used to clean it up.

Here's what they found:

"On top of the barrel of the gun right in front of the sight, you have an English broad arrow," Bajdek said. "That tells you that it went into service for the Royal British Navy. Then toward the rear of the gun you have the weight 10-0-4. That roughly equates to 1,124 pounds. That's how heavy the gun is.

"When we flipped the gun over, we found the maker's mark, W&G. Wiggin & Graham -- they were a small London- based company that were dealers in iron. With that you have the caliber, 18P -- 18 pounder. And below that you have the serial number, which is probably the most important part of any gun. You can track where a gun was made and where it went."

The cannon was still attached to its wood carriage, which remains intact. Pieces of the breaching rope and leather from the carriage also survived.

"One of the coolest things is the first gun was plugged up with tompion -- a giant plug to keep water from getting in the cannon," Bajdek said. "When we removed the tompion, inside was a ball of cordage. That would have been used for igniting the cannon"

V

The leading theory is that the cannons came off the U.S.S. Shark, a U.S. Navy schooner built in 1821 and used to fight piracy and the slave trade in the Atlantic, then reassigned to the Pacific. It went down on the mouth of the Columbia in 1846, said Dennis Griffin, state archeologist with the Oregon Historic Preservation Office.

"A piece of the ship broke off and that piece had three cannons," Griffin said. "A piece washed up on the beach. The Navy sent one of the lieutenants to see if they could find the cannons. Yes, indeed, they found them. They tried to bring one to the shore, but the tide came in and they lost it."

Griffin suspects that cannon was one found in 1898. It's now a fixture in Cannon Beach. The two found by the Petrones would be the others.

So, how did a U.S. Navy ship end up carrying a British cannon? No one can say for certain, but Bajdek has a theory.

He believes the cannon was on a British ship that came to the U.S. to fight the War of 1812. When that ship was captured, the U.S. might have taken the guns and put them in storage, then reinstalled one of them on the U.S.S. Shark when it was built.

Griffin doubts the other cannon will prove to be British.

"The shape of the barrel and the base of the barrel is very different," he said. "It's unlikely two 18-pound cannons made so differently were made in the same country at the same time period."

Time will tell. Griffin figures it will take another two years before work is complete on the second cannon. Once it's done, the cannons will come back to Oregon, though the U.S. Navy remains the legal owner, he said.

It's still undecided where the cannons will go on view, but when they do, Griffin expects interest to be great.

"These cannons are an extension of our past," he said. "If they are from the Shark, they are probably the earliest artifact we have. We were not even a state yet. There is a whole lot we can learn from this. It makes us think about our history."

[jazusamo]

Many photos at link

[skr]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting the article.

[jazusamo]

Most welcome. I remember when they were found and thought that would be the end of, Lori Tobias did a good job.

[75thOVI]

Not cannons. Carronades. Short range guns, more for close range battering, rather than long range gunnery. Mighty cool though, thanks for posting.

[jazusamo]

Thanks much, I was wondering about the shortness of it.

[The Working Man]

I thought they looked like carronades.

Which means they were probably on the Fore deck or After deck and they used Grape shot mostly. That could also explain how three of them were on a section of the ship that “broke off”.

[SunkenCiv]

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