Found a Cannon Today

I found a cannon today. That seems pretty cool. How many other people found a cannon at work today?

Off of the north shore of Fort George there are cannons in the water. They are a snorkeling attraction. Three cannons are visible above the sand today. We know from a previous study that are five cannons in this area, very close together.


Thomas Brown wrote that he outfitted the battery at Ft. George with 16 cannons in the 1790s. In 1967, the British Directorate of Overseas Survey completed an Ordnance Survey Map which located six cannons on a hand map of the cay.

In July 2008, a magnetometer survey was completed around Ft. George Cay. The magnetometer is a survey instrument that records the magnetic field in a given area. It is used to locate underground iron objects. The results of the magnetometer survey included seven large iron “anomalies” on the north shore of Ft. George. They basically said there were seven cannons in the water. That means an extra cannon.

On the second day of the survey Robert and I located the five known cannons. At the end of last week we located the number six cannon. This cannon was sitting just a few inches under the sand with the cascabel toward the sea and the muzzle toward the beach.

Today, I found cannon number seven. This cannon has never been documented at Ft. George before today.

At the end of our day today, Robert and I hing aroudn Ft. George to do a little extra "water work." This means we swim aroudn looking for stuff. We calculating that the cannon would be around 50 meters south of the know cannons, based on the grids on the magnetometer survey map. I ran a measuring tape off of the existing cannons and marked an area at 64 meters. Then I began to swim up and down the beach with a metal detector. About forty five minute later we hit a very large iron artifact. I blew the sand from the cannon with a small SeaDoo (if you remember this is the personal propolsion device I learned to use a few weeks ago). A few minutes later there it was under about eight inches of sand.

The cannon sits upside down with the muzzle pointing back towards the other cannons. It is 4 foot eleven inches long. The muzzle in 3” in diameter. This would have been a 4 pounder. It was an amazing find at the end of a long day. By tomorrow the cannon will have been consumed by the sand again, but now we know that it exists. And it makes a good story.