Cannons wash up on beach on Oregon Coast.

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Pair of cannons found on Oregon Coast could be from 1846 ship
Posted by The Oregonian February 19, 2008 13:30PM
Categories: Breaking News

Courtesy of Steve Hill
Pre-Civil War era cannons washed up on the Oregon Coast this week.The discovery of a pair of pre-Civil War era cannons on the Oregon Coast this week has caused a stir among archaeologists, historians and coast residents who have flocked to Arch Cape Beach to get a look.

The cannons, which residents and a state park official speculate came from the USS Shark, a survey schooner that ran aground on the Columbia Bar in 1846, washed up this week. One appeared Saturday and the other appeared Monday night as a state park official was documenting the discovery of the first one.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department received an emergency permit to remove the cannons today, according to David Woody, beach ranger.

The Oregon National Guard is bringing an eight-wheeled crane from Camp Rilea in Warrenton. Parks officials need to determine if timbers around the cannons are driftwood or part of the cannons.Then they'll place the cannons in saltwater to help preserve them. Removal won't happen until the cannons are exposed during low tide late this afternoon.

Woody thinks the cannons may have been under as much as 20 feet of sand.

The first cannon was spotted by a Tualatin father and daughter, Mike and Miranda Petrone. Petrone said he and Miranda were walking along the beach and spotted stumps in the coast, but something about one of the stumps looked a little odd.

"I go, 'Gee, that's a funny looking stump.' Miranda said, 'I don't think it's wood, Dad. It's rusting.'"

So the pair did a bit of digging and soon the rough form of a cannon took shape. Petrone called the Cannon Beach Historical Society. Before long, the mayor showed up to check out Petrone's discovery.

Petrone, 40, said he's thrilled he and his daughter found the lost cannon.

"I'm ecstatic," he said. "I have been on that beach since I was a little tot. I haven't found anything bigger than a glass ball. To find this was pretty amazing. I was in awe."

Gary McDaniel, a supervisor with the state parks department's Nehalem Bay management unit, said the cannons appear to be from the USS Shark. The first cannon washed up in 1898 and is the namesake of Cannon Beach, about four or five miles north of Arch Cape.

The cannons that washed up this week are the same dimension as that of the original cannon. McDaniel said the cannons are heavily encrusted, still have their wood mounts and are "in pretty good shape." He said the state archaeologist and other state parks officials will help coordinate their removal. A park ranger remained at the site overnight to ensure the cannons were not tampered with.

"Our phones are ringing off the hook with our own people trying to coordinate the recovery," McDaniel said.

David Pearson, curator at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, said the USS Shark was launched from the Washington, D.C., naval yard in 1821. He said it will take a couple of days to determine whether the cannons are from the Shark.

If they do turn out to be from the ship, "they would be very significant to the history of Oregon."

Pearson said the Shark had 10 carronades - a short cannon fastened to the vessel with a single bolt on a wood mount. The ship's original mission was to survey the Columbia River to help settle a dispute about the northern border of the United States. But by the time it arrived, the dispute had been settled so the ship went ahead with its survey mission of the Columbia - one of the first vessels to do so, Pearson said.

But when it returned, the bar had shifted and the ship ran into a submerged sandbar and wrecked near the south spit of the mouth of the Columbia, an area near Fort Stevens State Park.

A rock memorializing the vessel is now part of the maritime museum's collection, Pearson said. It reads, "Here the Shark was lost. September 10, 1846." Pearson said the rock sat in the middle of Astoria for a long time before it was relocated to the museum in 1965.

He said the museum also has on display an officer's sword believed to be from the Shark.

After it wrecked, part of the ship's wreckage came ashore near Hug Point. A trio of carronades was among the wreckage. At the time, a Navy sailor was sent to recover the wreckage but he was able to reclaim only one of the cannons. He moved it to higher ground, but it eventually was covered in sand and disappeared until 1898 when it washed ashore. That cannon later became the namesake of Cannon Beach.

Pearson said it's likely the two cannons found this week are from that same wreckage.

"The potential that these two were with that one are quite high: same location, same measurements, everything matches," he said.

Joanne Hill, a longtime resident of Arch Cape, said this morning the discovery has set the community atwitter.

"It's thrilling," she said. "The whole neighborhood and town are abuzz. It really is quite a wonderful discovery."

-Noelle Crombie and Michael Rollins
 

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WOW The Pacific Ocean Oregon coast has been Generous this year in giving up Some nice wrecks..
This is the second one found in 08
Living on the Oregon Coast myself I must say being a parks worker for Lincoln City
the beaches here are bare this year more than I have ever seen.
the sand levels are dropping for some reson, it seems the ocean is making some changes here.
Now I know we get sand wash out every year in the winter but not like this.
I wouldnt call the Sand washing out this year normal.
Something is changing...
I would have to wonder what is causing the change.

Could it be that alaska has had more storms this year that always affects our ocean in how rough it is here.
could it be the warmer year we have had.
in 41 years I have never seen the ocean take away so much sand.
I notice that in the Siletz bay the mouth is changing as well its wider now more than double the size it was in the 80s
and i went to the beach the other day and it was all bedrock normaly all sand....hmmmm
Whats Happening? is the ground level dropping i know certain ereah of Hwy 101 are under constant construction because it sinks 3 to 4 inches a year.
could Oregon be slipping into the ocean a bit at a time.


hmmmm?
 

it seems hard to believe the cannon just washed up recently....could it be that becsause of the big storms, that the sand covering them has been drug out, exposing them?
Fortunate
 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/26/beach.secrets.ap/index.html


Here is a great article on CNN this morning. In part it states:

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- The storms that have lashed Oregon's scenic coast this winter have dredged up an unusual array of secrets: old shipwrecks, historic cannons, ghost forests -- even strangely shaped iron deposits.
art.oregon.wreck.ap.jpg

Visitors check out a shipwreck discovered after Pacific storms washed away much of the foredune.

One of the first ships to emerge from the sands was recently identified as the George L. Olson, which ran aground at Coos Bay's North Jetty on June 23, 1944.

The shipwreck has become a tourist attraction on the southern Oregon coast. Interest became so great that authorities had to reroute traffic around the ship and post signs warning visitors to leave it alone because it is now an archaeological site.

The curiosities began showing up after December when Pacific storms pummeled the state, damaging thousands of homes and causing an estimated $60 million in damage to roads, bridges and public buildings.

Hardest hit was Vernonia, a Coast Range town of about 2,400 people, where floodwaters damaged about 300 homes, ruined schools and temporarily closed businesses.

The storms also brought high seas, which caused beach erosion. Although sands commonly shift in winter, this season appeared especially dramatic. There were reports that up to 17 feet of sand eroded away at Arch Cape.

"It's really an unusual event, the magnitude of it," said Chris Havel of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

Other shipwrecks have emerged recently -- a wooden ship near Bandon, also on the southern coast, and another where the Siuslaw River flows into the ocean near Florence. Little is known about either ship, Havel said, and sands have reclaimed the Siuslaw wreck.

Ships aren't the only things surfacing on the coast.

-Continued on the web page-
 

Fascinating! Wish I was closer so I could see them all in person but I sure appreciate the photos! :D
 

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