In 1994 while vacationing in St. John I made an interesting discovery. I was staying at the Odessa House in Hart Bay. My sister, Jan Kinder, lived on St. John for over 20 years and was a teacher on island and provided self help services at Caneel Bay as well. A friend of hers was on island at the time of my visit as well a gentleman by the name of Richard. I was down for a week waiting for my girlfriend to arrive a week later and he and I hung out one day to do some snorkeling.
We started and spent the morning at Jumby Beach. After lunch we went back to where I was staying (The Odessa House) which had direct beach access to Hart Bay Beach by a very long set of deck stairs. Odessa House also has a long stone set of stairs up to where you park you car so from car to beach was over 80 steps. Needless to say just getting up and down from the car to the house area gave you quite a workout. Having visited St. John many times before in addition to being an avid scuba diver, I felt I had snorkeled every snorkel-able bay on the island. Hart Bay is not a calm bay by St. John standards, and has crashing waves as well, and has only a thin channel to swim out through not lined with coral as to get past the breakers to even attempt snorkeling as the rest of the bay. The beach there is flat coral right up to the edge of the surf with holes filled with urchins everywhere making it quite hazardous and quite impractical for swimming which is why you don’t see people walking into the surf or swimming there.
We headed out past the large rock island in the middle of the bay approximately 200 yards from shore and found the visibility not as clear as the north shore but clear enough to see the bottom which I estimate was about 20 feet deep.
I then looked down and saw what I knew immediately was a cannon! A coral thinly encrusted Cannon, its distinct shape clearly visible on the sand below.
I immediately yelled to Richard, “Richard there is a canon underneath you!” He was like “yeah ok hahaha” to which I replied “I’m serious, look down.”
He did and said “that’s some coral” I replied “ I’ve been in the saltwater aquarium field and hobby for a very long time and I know the difference between coral and something man-made encrusted with coral and the hell it isn’t!” I worked for a salt water aquarium marine fish and coral importer during my college years (we were what used to be called “reef raiders so I had some knowledge. I need to add that I’m a conservationist now.)
Then decided to free, dive down to take a closer look, I held my breath, arched my body, and down I went. I grabbed it and it was clearly what I thought and there was still a hole in front and you could see the outline quite clearly as it was only lightly covered in coral. As I grabbed it and tried to give it a bit of a tug, it was quite obvious it was made out of solid iron or brass and indeed a canon and a very old one at that.
Returning to the surface, I let Richard know my findings . At that moment, what was going through my mind was somehow, since it wasn’t on or very close to the little reef there but 20 yards or so away from it that perhaps it washed in during Hurricane Hugo or some other storm like that from further out to sea.
I dove down again to test an idea I had. I wanted to see if I could raise it on its end and topple it over with the intention, if successful to take my time, and slowly topple it end over end back to shore one flip at a time. At four-to-five feet in length.
I was able to lift it and topple it toward shore towards the my house visible from the water. I Decided to do the shortest distance between two points is a straight line concept back toward my houses deck stairs even though that meant traversing through a coral reef.
With excitement, I came back to the surface and told Richard, “I’m not leaving this place without this cannon.”
I quick did some math of how long it took to move it a few feet and if Richard and I took turns, diving down lifting and toppling how long would it take to get it to the shore. I guesstimated three to maybe five hours. (This was between my second find in the islands as I also once found a three-piece 18th century beer bottle while scuba diving off St. Thomas which Is still displayed at my home.) Anyway back to the story,
Richard said he was game so we took turns, sometimes not being able to move it all rushing back to the surface for air, but our determination was unshakable.
After the first 10 to 20 yards we then had to negotiate around coral heads and patches which was quite a task but it was as we got to shallower and shallower water we were dealing with the crashing waves hitting us and the coral and urchins under our feet. I had a thin wetsuit on so I didn’t get to scratched up however Richard unfortunately had nothing but a pair of shorts and his fins and got pretty scraped and bruised up. As we got closer every time, we flipped the canon so you could actually see it protruding from the top of the water with each end over end flip. During this entire episode, it was as we got closer to shore that we noticed the only other person on the beach that afternoon a man walking his dog observing us. I could be wrong, because I haven’t been back in years but it seemed like the only access to Hart Bay Beach would be if you were staying at one of the handful of homes that line it so we assumed it was a local neighbor. Needless to say after several hours we got the cannon to the beach. The man that was observing us, came back without his dog and offered to help us carry the cannon. He mentioned once we started getting closer sure he knew exactly what we had found. I looked up at the countless stairs up to the house with trepidation to say the least.
My buddy Richard (who has since passed) away was a very strong, Hollywood stuntman and martial arts expert. I myself at the time a music, producer, ice hockey coach, and former touring heavy metal drummer in very good shape in my early 30’s and our volunteer helper maybe a few years older but in good shape as well. It took all of our combined strength to lift the artillery piece. As we approached the foot of the wooden deck stairs and started climbing up. I was truly concerned with the excessive weight that the wooden stairs might crack and collapse.
We slowly and methodically continued our climb all the way up past the house to the parking area.
At that time since camera phones were still a thing of the future I desperately wanted to take a photograph of our accomplishment and find.
Richard agreed to run back to his place and grab his camera.
I allowed him to take my rented Jeep and off he went.
I then got a call from my sister that Richard had a car accident and totaled my rental vehicle! As we dealt with the logistics of the accident I also immediately got a ride back to Cruz Bay to secure another vehicle. Quite the stressful situation for have to go through while in vacation while also putting a damper on this incredible adventure, you were taking part in. Finally, by the end of the day, I had a new vehicle, and we lifted the cannon into the back of my Montego sport four-wheel drive SUV. I so regret that Hurricane Sandy destroyed photographs I had of my cannon. I took a picture of it with a pair of sunglasses next to it to give it some extra scale. So what was my intention? I was cognizant of the fact that I might not even be allowed to touch the piece however at the same time, I was not in the National Park area, and I was young, and perhaps a little headstrong then probably rationalize that I wasn’t doing anything wrong and trying to actually save a little piece of history. I was quite aware that I saw antique cannons rotting at the docks of Cruz Bay and Charlotte Amalie so my conscious wasn’t bothering me enough to halt my plans.
I’ve spoken to a friend who had a sailboat in Antigua who offered to helped me transport it back north so I could display it at our lake house when he sailed up that next year back to New York or would help me explore the site as he had also invested recently in treasure finding equipment. A lot of ideas swirling around to be sure. Obviously, I was at the disadvantage of not living on the island full-time which made it all even more complicated.
My intention was at first simply restore it and decide later what to ultimately do with my find.
From my research and past treasure hunting programs on television, I was aware that I needed to keep my canon submerged somehow. On some archaeological programs, I know sometimes they put them in water baths with electrodes and such. That wasn’t going to be an option for me, but keeping it submerged I knew I could do that and had a plan.
I had helped the my friend who was owner of the marine fish import company I mentioned earlier, build his entire central filtering system. It was then that I learned that you could make watertight vats with nothing more than plywood and fiberglass. So I decided to make a water tight coffin with hinged lid for my canon and store it somewhere on the island and have my sister keep adding water to it as it evaporated since again she lived on island.
The ultimate goal was either donate it to a local museum, display it in sisters back yard or as my friend with a sailboat in Antigua suggested wait for him on his next trip back up north and smuggle it off the island and put it in my backyard at my Lake House (haha). The Resident Doctor on St John was a Dr. James Clayton and friend of my sister who agreed to allow me to store the Canon underneath his deck stairs at his home overlooking Fish Bay and my sister agrees to periodically add water to the vat. I cannot against stress how laborious it was just moving this cannon just a few feet. Constructed. Cannon found its new home and I continued my vacation expecting to return in four months or so as I visited my sister about every four months or so to check how it was doing. I want to add I felt very guilty about what a several hundred pound canon rolling around in the back of an SUV for a week or so does to the floor of the trunk area. Needless to say it was quite concave. I come from a family of collectors, various types of antiques and art. I’m also a history buff, so when I returned home to New Jersey, I started researching my canon. I ultimately spoke to a curator at the armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. He informed me several very interesting facts.
First was according to its size I had found a Falconet cannon sometimes known as a rail gun.
Manufactured anywhere from the late 1400s to the late 1500s
However, they were still in use until the early 1800s as rail guns for merchant ships as canons could be functional for centuries.
Secondly he informed me my initial assumption that perhaps it washed in from out to sea during a hurricanes or over time was completely inaccurate.
He told me canons lie where they sunk and if a found a canon
I found a wreck. Especially in shallow water so close to shore because I’m extremely unlikely event, the canon and just fell overboard then a salvage recovery would’ve been initiated due to the value. No he assured me I had indeed found a wreck.
Perhaps due to the fact only one canon found we speculated that it might have been a smaller merchant vessel.
I dreamed about return someday to explore the reef more closely because the most interesting thing he said to me was the small reef I was traversing to get the canon back to shore was the wreck.
I’d like to add that after i got to shore with my find the man who helped us carry the canon up the stairs had mentioned that he had been snorkeling that Bay for years, and never saw it. I replied maybe you didn’t know what to look for. Later that evening, having a drink in town at mongoose Junction, we ran into him. he mentioned that he went back out to the reef later that day, and the water was murkier, and that he came across a tiger shark and swim back to shore. I raised one eyebrow an answered with a uh-huh? I whispered to my friend he doesn’t want us to go back out there (hahaha). I always wondered through the years whether he ever found anything else cause I’m quite confident he looked.
Over the next two years I made three trips back to St. John checking on how the canon was looking when on the the third trip in 1996 I went to Dr. Clayton’s home went under the stairs where our canon was being kept submerged in the coffin Vat of water we constructed and to my shock it was gone! Where did it go?!
My sister feigned Ignorance, was she tired of adding water to it every couple weeks? Did Dr. Clayton have it taken away? Was it stolen by workers who had been doing work on his house that year?? Did a bunch of idealistic young people hear about it and abscond it and return it to the sea?? (I heard one rumor there was a canon never seen before off of Cruz bay in the years that followed, but I never followed up with that rumor.)
Moving that cannon would’ve taken at least three extremely strong men to even move it. For anyone to take it, they would have to have been incredibly motivated. From what I was told by the museum curator it didn’t have any serious monetary value more historical than anything else, so I doubt anyone stole it but again who knows? It’s a mystery to this day and I just wanted to share that most likely the little reef in Hart Bay is an unknown centuries-old shipwreck.
I grew up watching Jack Cousteau and love the water. I mean how many people can say they found a Cannon and a probable wreck site while snorkeling on vacation in the Caribbean!
