Musket balls with teeth marks???

[CaribbeanDiver]

We were looking at a web site last week that claimed to be selling musket balls with teeth marks. ?It said they were used to bite down on during surgery and to generate saliva. ?We laughed and laughed. ?Teeth marks!!!

So yesterday we found 34 musket balls with what looks like teeth marks! ?Very close examination can not come up with another possibility. ?Does anyone have any background on this issue?

We'll think twice before laughing at crazy claims!

Thanks for your thoughts.



Rich

PS - The second photo, ball near the top is the most compelling. ?The last photo is of a new friend that visits us often. ?Our site is in a large bowl, about 2 acres, surrounded by 9' rock/coral walls. ?This guy flies in, does laps and flies out. ?Pretty cool.

 

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[hollowpointred]

it is true that people used to chew on bullets during surgury or when they were very thirsty.i have seen civil war bullets like that before. beings you found so many...........it looks like quite a few people werereally thirsty on that ship!

 

[dudes2112]

Dang, give me something a little softer to chew on!

Those are really cool.

Dudes

 

[CaribbeanDiver]

Hollow,

The interesting thing is that we found these all together. Surgeons pack maybe? We have found maybe 40 others, most by themselves, and none of those have marks.

Pretty cool.

I just wish our site was closer. With todays gas costs, it is about $200 just to get to the site!

Rich

 

[JakePhelps]

Sometimes soldiers would carry one in their mouth for faster reloading and im sure some were nervous and bit down on them.

They are sometimes advertised as "pain" bullets for wounded people being amputated, hence the term "bite the bullet"

Some are said to have been chewed on to get the saliva going in your mouth, hey no one knew about lead poisoning back then :P

they are said to have been chewed down to size if the ball was a bigger caliber then they wanted is another one

another theory is that they chewed them to make them shatter upon impact, causing more damage, sort of like hollowpoints...


So there are many explanations to these strange finds....i just know i wouldnt put one in my mouth and chew it

 

[SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS]

C.D,

like their land locked brothers, sea squirrels will do that to anything that looks like a nut.

have a good un.............
SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS

 

[hollowpointred]

never seen an english mold for musket balls cornielius. could you elaborate a little bit more on the broad arrow thing,im not quite understanding.....there was a design on the ball?

 

[CaribbeanDiver]

Have never seen an english mold, we'll keep looking ?

None of the musket balls we have found have had broad arrows but about 10% of the 11lb cannon balls did. ?A couple of the small shots (grape shot) had broad arrows, but that was about 1 in 30.

With knowledge of firearms, it would seem very unwise to mark a small lead shot with the broad arrow. ?I would like to see one some day.

Rich

 

[Mr. Morbid]

Thanks for shareing the pics... All I can saw about biteing down on the musket/grapeshot balls is man that would really jack up your teeth...

 

[CaribbeanDiver]

And the lead poisining won't be much help.

I went back to the site and found 60 additional balls with no teeth marks, 1' down below these. All 34 on the top layer had marks. Go figure.

 

[treasurediver]

While digging on shipwrecks, I have often observed how fish grabbed some kind of worm as soon as we uncovered it in the sand. The visible part of the worm looked just like a musket ball, but then it streched to a foot or so when the fish pulled on it.
The same kind of fish would also repeatedly grab any musket ball that we uncovered. Grab it with his teeth and then drop it again. the musket ball wold be marked with fresh teeth marks.
Treasurediver

 

[CaribbeanDiver]

That would be one huge fish to make the marks on mine (see photo)!