If you ever saw an old pirate’s cannon lying on the seabed, what would you think? I’ll tell you what: next to nothing. Just a long rock or coral head.
This week into the house came the March issue of The Smithsonian magazine, with (among lots of other good articles*) a piece by Abigail Tucker on excavation in North Carolina of what may well have been the flagship of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the pirate. The ship foundered on a sand bar in 1718. It is a good and technically savvy report on marine archaeology. It provides the picture above right, which in turn tells readers at a glance that restoring a long-sunken cannon is not easy.
This morning’s trawl reveals the ostensible Blackbeard’s booty cannons are not the only ones in the news. By coincidence, news comes that in Panama a project to recover sunken ships commanded by another Brit privateer, Henry Morgan, has lifted six cannons from near the mouth of the Chagres River where they had rested, it appears, since 1671.
In the Los Angeles Times Thomas H. Maugh II gives the news a good ride. He does not get into cannon corrosion – although the images illustrate it. The news here is mainly a lesson in history, and the reason the research team removed the cannons quickly. Already a modern day sort of pirate, the archeology looter, is hard at work in the region, en masse.
Other stories:
- AP: Pirate Henry Morgan’s cannons found in Panama? ;
- Mail Online (UK) The REAL pirates of the Caribbean: Divers recover 17th Century cannons belonging to bloodthirsty buccaneer Henry Morgan. Lavish illus, as per usual at the Mail.
Grist for the Mill: Waitt Institute Press Release ;
* Smithsonian : This is not science, but old news hounds will also enjoy Michael Shapiro‘s The Newsroom Rush of Old ; It is about one thing in the news business that has not changed. It’s good to be fast.
– Charlie Petit
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