Is this a cannon? Object found at historic fort in North Carolina being investigated
Something resembling a cannon has been found buried in the sand near historic Fort Caswell on the North Carolina coast.
The Fort Caswell Environmental Stewardship Program posted a photo of the object on its Facebook page Wednesday but did not divulge its exact location on Oak Island.
The state’s Underwater Archaeology Branch was curious enough that it got involved in trying to identify the object, according to the nonprofit program that offers environmental field trips near the 19th-century fort.
In update posted Thursday afternoon, the stewardship group said experts had decided it was a pipe and not a an actual cannon.
“There has been a lot of chatter the last couple days about what this may be. Someone posted about finding a cannon on our beach. And many believe it does look like a cannon, which alerted the Underwater Archaeology Branch,” the program said.
“Archaeologists and other history experts have been to the site and/or seen photographs, trying to determine exactly what it is, cannon or pipe. Taking an up close look, it doesn’t appear to have cannon characteristics.”
The cylinder is iron and measures 10 inches around and 6 feet long. The gap inside is 8 inches in diameter, officials said.
The stewardship program invited people to guess what it might be, and said it would post the final determination at some point. Most commenters continue to insist it’s a cannon, though some say it could be a very big pipe.
J.D. Shadduck of Oak Island told McClatchy News he was fishing at Caswell Beach Sunday when he spotted the object. His wife, Lori, later shared a photo on a Facebook page devoted to local shell collectors, he said.
”It was my first time there fishing. The tide was low, so that’s how I saw it,” said Shadduck, who operates Inklanation Custom Tattoos on the island. “It looks like a cannon to me.”
Fort Caswell is in Brunswick County and was built on the eastern tip of Oak Island “between 1826 and 1838,” NCpedia reports. However, it was not fully armed until the Civil War, when it became “one of the main Confederate defenses of the Cape Fear River.”
The U.S. Army resumed control after Confederate troops abandoned it, and it stayed part of the military until after World War I, when it was sold, according to NCpedia.
Since 1949, It has been owned by the Baptist State Convention of NC and serves “as a facility for programs and ministries of the Convention,” according to the Fort Caswell website. The fort is not open to the general public.
This story was originally published January 14, 2021 at 8:17 AM with the headline "Is this a cannon? Object found at historic fort in North Carolina being investigated."