New Shipwreck - Take a stab at dating artifacts.

Pirate Diver,

As I know Burt Weber and his team are waiting in Santo Domingo, for what - I do not know. I could see members of his crew wandering streets of Colonial City of Santo Domingo during last ten days.

Lobo
 

Lubos, your PM has an answer my friend.

Aquanut - Yeah, I'm in love with this little cannon too. I want to make sure the commission has the full report before I post too many dimensions here, but it's 3 feet long with a 45" diameter in front of the cascabel and 33" behind the muzzle flair. The span of the trunions is 22" and the bore looks like 3" but I need to get a caliper inside to verify that this number is exaclty correct. I'll have a full cannon data sheet filled out once the electrolytic reduction allows for the gentle removal of the remaining encrustation, but that takes a fair bit of time.

I took some better pics when we got it back to our luperon base, before it went into the tank. I'm going to add all dimensions to those photos for Francis, and with his permission I will post them here later. Here's a few more shots of how we found it.

Jason


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Fisheye, nice joke about the sub, my friend! What you described is old rusty hull of small ship lying on the beach east f Jeremie. I will mail you some photos of WW II submarine for you to know how they looked like.... :wink:

Lobo
 

Thanks Jason,
The dimensions you posted gave me a good idea of the size. Short suckers weren't they!
The tennis shoe reference was helpful too...
Aquanut
 

Nice little cannon, to bad some people are looting the wrecks for important historical artifacts.
 

Trond said:
Nice little cannon, to bad some people are looting the wrecks for important historical artifacts.

Actually, it's too bad people are buying looted artifacts thereby creating the market for more looted artifacts.
 

TheMuseumGuy said:
Trond said:
Nice little cannon, to bad some people are looting the wrecks for important historical artifacts.

Actually, it's too bad people are buying looted artifacts thereby creating the market for more looted artifacts.

Yes you are right, and Its tragic. Almost all of the historical places over here where i live right now is being looted by thief's armed with detectors at night.
When i have meetings with the Museums, there are always some sad news like this. And we cant do anything about it.

In the wrong hands, a metaldetector is a very effective tool for wiping out our history.
 

Good news! The weather broke today, still overcast but the swells have subsided greatly and the visibility is coming back quickly. tomorrow, we will be in the water again and we will certainly have more photos and video for you in the evening. We have more holes to punch with the dredge on some other timbers and catch-all reefs, as well as the large debris field near the single cannon that we discovered in the last 5 minutes of good weather we had 2 weeks ago. We are all very excited and hope to have great news tomorrow.

Jason
 

Good Luck Jason,
Tomorrow's the day. Ma˜nana. (I never have been able to figure out how to put that squigly sign over the n).
Aquanut
 

Very exciting Jason, can't wait to see more photo's and video. Love the cannon, any idea on how old it is?
Best of luck to you and the boys :thumbsup:
aquanut, I think you need a Spanish version of window's and key board :D
 

aquanut said:
Hi Jan,
Welcome to our home. Wish you the best of luck down there an look forward to the time you make it to the "States" to tell us all about your adventure. Listen to Jason for he's is a real treasure hunter, so listen and learn. He'll keep you alive and teach you what you need to know. The cool thing about him is ... he doesn't know he's all cool yet.
Aquanut

Hi Aquanut,
thank you also, beleive me, I will do my best to learn from this guys... It is the best "school" I can get!
I'm just waiting for better weather to go and see (and maybe help) them in action.

Jason, please, make many pictures and videos as you can!
 

We made a few pictures today, but nothing very good. The sea was better today, but far from perfect...of course we will try again tomorrow. We got into the 18 cannon site and anchored up. Sandy and I went down to get the dredge head (which was now buried of course). It took us an hour with our blower pump and a 500 lb. lift bag to retrieve it. :D

When we came up, Scott was ready to get the skiff out from between the reefs, so we headed for the single cannon. There was about 6" of visibility over there, and still a lot of surge on the bottom. I walked along the beach up-current from our site, and found a nice little wooden pulley that had washed up in the storms. This was just over a mile east of our most easterly site, so we may have our first clue to yet another wreck in the area. I'll get a pic of it later today.

Jan, during the bad weather, I travelled to La Isabela (site of the second attempt at a European colony in the new world). I took lots of photos there, which may be helpful to you for our other project. I'll email them to you this evening. Soon I will make a post here with the pics also.

Jason
 

aquanut said:
Good Luck Jason,
Tomorrow's the day. Ma˜nana. (I never have been able to figure out how to put that squigly sign over the n).
Aquanut

press Alt and stay holding it..then click 0241....ñññ....... Hasta mañana!!!
 

thañk you my frieñd ;D
 

The seas were very flat here today, unfortunately they had the clarity of chocolate milk after all the rain we had with these storms. We got out and got a little prep work done (blindly) but decided not to fire up the dredge unless we could see what we were sucking through it. It usually cleans up pretty quick in the area, so hopefully tomorrow we'll have some more news.

Here's some pics of some other artifacts retrieved from a different site, and the Mortar going into conservation. Enjoy.

Scott Berry and I guiding her into the tank
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Finally ready for water and electrlytic reduction
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We all breathed a sigh of relief when this little gun finally got some water....a year from now we hope she'll be sitting in Santo Domingo at the museum. For you tech types, we added a connection around the muzzle and another just in front of the cascabel, and are using large pieces of stainless angle as anodes. The water was nasty when we got done with the connections, so pics will have to wait for the first water change.
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Here is the little pulley I found the other day on the beach near our site.
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Along with some bottles and a grinding wheel pulled from yet another wrecksite...this site is a much newer wreck but deserves some investigation as well.

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