Marine archaeologists working on a wreck off the coast of Sicily have discovered five large cannon from a British ship, believed to have sunk in a major battle with Spanish galleons.
The team searching waters near the city of Syracuse said the “exceptional” find dates back to the Battle of Cape Passaro in the early 1700s.
Pictures taken by divers show the cannon were barely covered by sand.
The discovery has helped pinpoint the exact location of the famous battle.
The cannon have now been brought to the surface - after 300 years in the deep sea - and cleaned.
According to the archaeologists, they are in such fine condition that - in some places - the barrels still gleam in the light. Read more.
RALEIGH, N.C. - A piece of pirate history that’s been resting on the ocean floor for nearly than 300 years was brought to the surface Wednesday morning and is on its way to the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.
Underwater archaeologists brought the eight-foot cannon from the wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning.
The cannon will be on display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort Wednesday afternoon.
The cannon has been resting at the bottom of the Beaufort Inlet since Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The ship wrecked off North Carolina’s coast in 1718.
To date, 12 other cannons have been recovered from the site. Read more.
DETROIT — A centuries-old cannon found by a Detroit police dive team has been pulled out of the water.
Divers retrieved the artifact Wednesday, and the Detroit Free Press reports it’s headed to a new home.
Detroit Historical Society curator Joel Stone says it’ll go into a cannon bath at the Historic Fort Wayne in Detroit to help preserve the metal from rust.
The cannon is eventually expected to be displayed at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit or the Detroit Historical Museum.
Police divers found it during a training exercise in July.
The cannon was located 20 feet underwater behind Cobo Center. The Detroit News says the cannon spent more than 200 years below the surface.
How it got in the water remains a mystery. (source)
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla.— Archaeologists from the St. Augustine Lighthouse raised a cannon from a shipwreck off the coast today. They hope the cannon will give them some clue to help identify the wreckage. Read more.
MOSS POINT, Miss. — An expert in the field of underwater archaeology brought his state-of-the-art technology to the Escatawpa River recently to look for a “small” piece of artillery thought to be a mid-19th century cannon.
A grant from the Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area and private donations made possible an extensive magnetometer survey directed by Michael K. Faught, a senior maritime archaeologist with Panamerican Consultants Inc. of Memphis, Tenn.
Newspaper accounts and oral history indicate Moss Point’s town cannon was dumped in the river near and slightly north of the present-day downtown river walk and piers.
Dr. Chris Wiggins of Pascagoula is leading an effort to locate, raise and restore the cannon. A Jackson County orthopedic surgeon, he is president-elect of the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society.
“Tradition held that the cannon had been left over from the Civil War,” Wiggins said. “Through the later part of the 19th century, it was fired at special town celebrations. However, after a premature detonation injured two teenagers in April 1864, it was thrown into the Escatawpa River where it has remained, all but forgotten.” Read more.
Diver Joe Lepore steadies a heavy 17th-century cannon as it’s lifted by an airbag from the seafloor near the mouth of Panama’s Chagres River in a recently released picture taken in 2010.
The newly recovered cannon is among six believed to have belonged to the fleet of 17th-century buccaneer Capt. Henry Morgan, whom later accounts painted as a bloodthirsty pirate.
In 1671 Captain Morgan’s current flagship, Satisfaction, hit a rocky reef and sank as he sailed out of the mouth of the Chagres River en route to sacking the Panama Viejo, now called Panama City.
Three more of Captain Morgan’s ships either slammed into the same reef or collided with each other and also went down. But the determined Welsh privateer reassembled what remained of his fleet and continued on to plunder the city. Privateers were private sailors under contract to states—in Captain Morgan’s case, Britain. Read more.
