Restoration of cannons found on Arch Cape beach reveal surprising history

It's not exactly a process that goes off with a bang.

More than three years after a Portland-area girl and her dad found a pair old cannons on the beach in Arch Cape, restoration on one of the cannons is finally finished and work has begun on the other. It's slow-going for sure, but patience has paid off in a number of clues to the first gun's origins.

Tualatin beachcombers Miranda Petrone and her father, Michael Petrone, found the cannons in February 2008. Oregon Parks and Recreation took possession of the old guns, storing them in water tanks, then driving them to the Center for Marine Archeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

They've been there since, undergoing reconditioning to remove all the years of encrusted sediment.

Brennan Bajdek, a third-year Texas A&M student studying nautical archeology, got involved in the restoration two years ago and found himself so intrigued, he's made it his thesis project.

"It's exciting for me because I like to play the detective," Bajdek said. "It's one part detective and one part reverse engineer. You're taking apart this weapon that was not meant to be taken apart. You have to use your ingenuity to not damage the artifact. You get to use a lot of skills, finding the bits and pieces to help identify the artifact, then using that information to figure out where and when it was made."

Bajdek and other students worked with chisels and ball-peen hammers to break away the concretion -- sand and rock that had bonded to the cannon through iron leaching from the gun. He describes it as similar to cracking open a nut.

After that, the gun went into an electronic reduction vat for nine months to pull out the chlorides that leached into the metal from the salt. That was followed by a good boiling to remove the chemicals used to clean it up.

Here's what they found:

"On top of the barrel of the gun right in front of the sight, you have an English broad arrow," Bajdek said. "That tells you that it went into service for the Royal British Navy. Then toward the rear of the gun you have the weight 10-0-4. That roughly equates to 1,124 pounds. That's how heavy the gun is.

"When we flipped the gun over, we found the maker's mark, W&G. Wiggin & Graham -- they were a small London- based company that were dealers in iron. With that you have the caliber, 18P -- 18 pounder.

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