“Unexpected underwater revelation”: Russian cannons found in the Bahamas

A collection of “unexpected treasures” was found shipwrecked in the waters of the Bahamas under mysterious circumstances.

Allen Exploration (AllenX) recently discovered a collection of 24 individual iron cannons off the northern Bahamas – including extremely “rare” examples dating back to the Crimean War of 1853-1855.

The cannons of the Crimean War were once fired during the Siege of Sevastopol by the forces of the Russian Empire against the forces of an ultimately victorious alliance that included the Ottoman Empire, France, Great Britain and the Kingdom of Sardinia.

But the question of how cannons from the 19th century Crimean War, manufactured thousands of miles away in Russia, ended up in the tropical Caribbean waters of the Bahamas is among the archipelago’s “most unexpected underwater revelations,” according to a scientific report published in Allen Exploration Ocean Dispatches 6 describes.

“Crimean War cannons are not only unique to the Bahamas, they are unique in all the seas of the Americas. Underwater archaeology is certainly only scratching the surface of the countless sunken wonders that still exist out there,” said Carl Allen, director of Allen Exploration and author of the report. Newsweek.

The latest discoveries were made last year by AllenX during an archaeological investigation attempting to find remains of a Spanish galleon named Our Lady of Miracleswhich was lost in 1656. The remains of the galleon are scattered for miles south of the main wreck site.

“We’ve made all kinds of archaeological discoveries here, from gold chains and thumb-sized amethysts to clay tobacco pipes. But to find guns fired in anger by Tsarist Russia hitting the ground over 170 years ago? That’s astonishing,” Allen said in a press release.

The recently discovered cannons are located about 4 miles northwest of Memory Rock on the edge of the western Little Bahama Bank, on limestone bedrock at a depth of about 30 feet.

Among the cannons, an iron cannon has a double-headed eagle engraved on its barrel – the coat of arms of the Russian tsars. Near this cannon, the AllenX team found a broken trunnion – a cylindrical cannon part that serves as a mounting or pivot point.

Cannon pins are usually plain, but this one features three lines of Cyrillic text, allowing the AllenX team to trace its origins to 19th-century Russia.

“Among the dozens of cannons we found in the Bahamas, it’s not uncommon to find English, French, Spanish and Dutch cannons. But they’re all completely plain. These Russian cannons stand out as special thanks to their iconic coats of arms and the wealth of information engraved on their trunnions,” Allen said. Newsweek.

In the report, the team discusses several hypotheses about how the Russian cannons were lost off the Bahamas. The most likely explanation, they believe, is – surprisingly – linked to another conflict: World War II.

The team’s most likely hypothesis is that the cannons were acquired as scrap to support the British war effort between 1939 and 1941, when old iron was needed to make aircraft, ships and weapons.

Their hypothesis is based on known evidence that Crimean War trophies were popular salvage items, on the discovery of Russian cannons in the Bahamas – including a broken trunnion – and on the observation of broken barrels among the remaining cannons.

After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War, Britain and France captured thousands of cannons from the Siege of Sevastopol as spoils of war. In France, many of these were melted down, but in Britain they were often displayed as monuments. By the outbreak of World War II, the need for scrap iron for the war effort was increasing.

However, Britain scrapped far more metal during the war than was needed or could be processed, says Michael Pateman, another author of the report and director of the Bahamas Maritime Museum, where AllenX’s underwater collections are housed.

“What exactly happened to these mountains of metal has remained an epic mystery for Britain in World War II ever since,” Pateman said in the press release.

The discovery of at least two Crimean War cannons used as trophies could shed light on the fate of some of this recovered scrap iron, says the AllenX team.

After the end of the Second World War, the British government did not want the public to know that so much valuable iron had been scrapped for nothing. So the unused scrap had to disappear – and some was secretly shipped to the other side of the world.

All signs indicate that the rare Crimean War cannons found in the Bahamas were prepared for scrapping in Britain during World War II, but the guns apparently never made it into the furnaces, according to Sean Kingsley, editor-in-chief of Wreck clock Magazine and another author to the report.

“We suspect that a cargo of weapons – including Crimean War antiques – was sold in the port of London to an English captain bound for America. Had the voyage been successful, the weapons would eventually have been melted down and their history lost,” Kingsley said. Newsweek.

“It is almost impossible to find any documentation of this crossing and the ship’s name because there was a secret communications blackout during the war.”

However, the AllenX team still has more work to do. They are trying to determine whether all 24 cannons come from the same wreck site or from different ones – and whether the other cannons are also trophies from the Crimea.

“If we are right, the World War II ship that carried the captured Crimean cannons must be out there somewhere,” James Sinclair, director of marine archaeology at AllenX and another author of the report, said in the press release.

The cannon collection site also contains a mix of artifacts from different periods – including coins dating to 1687, musket balls and cannonballs – suggesting that the remains may have come from at least two different wrecks.

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