Two cannons were found over the Presidents Day weekend on
the Oregon Coast which may come from a ship which remained
stranded in 1846.
The cannons were found on Saturday and on Monday on the
beach at Arch Cape.
According to historians and archeologists, they might be the
remaining from the three cannons that were on the survey schooner Shark.
The first cannon was found in 1898 five miles north of Arch Cape and
that is where the Cannon
Beach got its name from.
The first of the two cannons was found by Mike and Miranda Petrone,
his daughter, of Tualatin, on Saturday when they were taking a walk on the
beach.
The second one was found on Modnay by Gary McDaniel, a supervisor with the Oregon Parks
and Recreation Department's Nehalem
Bay management unit, while he was documenting the first find.
Petrone and Miranda took the
cannon for a stump at first.
He said: "I go, 'Gee,
that's a funny-looking stump.' Miranda said, 'I don't think it's wood, Dad.
It's rusting,' " the Seattle Times reports.
The two dug a little bit and found that it was in fact cannon.
Petrone announced the Cannon Beach Historical Society and the mayor came in to
see the discovery.
Petrone, 40, declared that he was excited that they’ve found
the cannon.
He said: "I'm ecstatic. 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."
According to McDaniel, the two cannons seem to be the ones mounted
on the USS Shark and that they are heavily encrusted but even so they are “in
pretty good shape.”
David Pearson, curator at the Columbia
River Maritime Museum in Astoria,
said that it will take a few days to see if the cannons came from the Shark
which was launched from the Washington,
D.C., naval yard.
The state archaeologist and other state parks officials were
responsible with their removal from the sand.