Lets say I find a cannonball in a field. A round, metal, historic-artifact-looking cannonball, half buried.
The cannonball is in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., up on a bluff. The city of Washington was burned by His Majesty King George’s (III or IV, but that’s a separate thread) army in 1814. Washington was also on the border during the U.S. Civil War, but as far as I know, where I am (east of the Anacostia River, sort of the sticks of D.C., relatively far away from Virginia) never came under fire.
If I find this thing, how likely am I to blow myself up pulling it out of the ground? What are the odds that it is just a big, solid ball of old iron? What are the odds that it is a hollow shell full of elderly but wildly unstable explosives?
Hmm, I always understood they don’t explode. That there would be a different name for that type of shot.
(I own a very old shot put. A solid iron ball which I use as a doorstop. When people ask what it is I sometimes tell them it’s a cannon ball, just for giggles! Some refuse to then believe the truth when I reveal it!)
You are unlikely to blow yourself up because cannonballs of that age were lit by a fuse. They exploded when the fuse burned down rather than on impact. Despite this, it is never safe to mess with UXO under any circumstance and I would prefer to call an expert.
(Although solid balls were quite common in that age, I have no idea how you would tell the difference without digging it up and examing it)
How big is the cannon ball? That will help on the size of the gun, then we can get range to see where it might have come from, and then maybe if it was from land or marine. Also, what direction do you think it came from? I know it’s son a bluff easy of the Anacostia, so I assume it came from a westerly direction, but, think you can norriw it down a bit? Might find an old fort somewhere. Might also want to check any civil war records as there may have been an encampment there.
Also, can I come with? I’m in Alexandria and who knows what else is there.
One of my elementary school classmates really did find a cannonball while digging around in his yard. It had to have been from the Civil War because it fit the style and there were some skirmishes in that immediate area. He did what any kid in that situation would do. He brought it to school for Show-and-Tell. Unlike today, nobody blinked an eye let alone put the place on lockdown. We just looked at it and passed it around while talking about how cool it was. I am certain it was solid shot because it was very heavy and didn’t have any fuse holes in it. It seemed really big at the time but we were young so it may have been just a matter of relative perception.
I am still friends with him on Facebook. I wonder if he still has it? I will ask him the next time I talk to him.
Well, technically, semantically and pedantically speaking, if you find an old cannonball then it can’t possibly explode. The exploding kind were called shells, you see :D. On account of being, well, hollow iron shells filled with some kind of blow-uppy substance. As **Chihuahua **says, they did look very much like Bugs Bunny cartoon bombs, long fizzing fuse and all.
There were impact detonators even as far back as the War of Independence, primitive ones, but those were exclusively used in bullet-shaped shells. This to ensure the percussive detonator ends up, errr, *percussing *its target. Which is impossible to do with a spherical projectile.
I’d be moderately careful around one still. I’m not sure what kind of explosives they put inside shells, but I do know that old dynamite is ridiculously unstable and blows up from even moderate shocks & disruptions. On the plus side, even if it is a shell rather than the much more common round (i.e. solid) shot, the fuse touchhole must have let in rainwater and soil which should muck up any intended chemical reaction.
Size would be an indication, though. If it’s 10 or 12 inches across that’s not from a cannon, it’s a mortar round. Filled with boom to be sure. 6-7 inches could go either way. 5 inches is most probably shot statistically speaking, although they did use howitzers that small during the Civil War. 4 inches and below is horse artillery, exclusively shot AFAIK.
Oh, yes, if it’s gunpowder (I figured as much, but wasn’t 100% sure and didn’t want **kdeus **gibs on my conscience :o) then it’s inert to begin with, no risk whatsoever - as long as you don’t smoke or play with matches around it ! That stuff doesn’t really decay, so even if very very old it *should *still burn if dry and not too contaminated with dirt/bug eggs/what have you.
But it won’t explode on its own or if you drop it.
Apparentlyold gunpowder makes good fertilizer, though. I’d totally do that. S’not everybody who can boast he grew spuds with 18th century cannon shells :).
I keep forgetting that Leslie Nielsen was in cop shows other than Due South (yes yes, I know, and I also forget that Frank Sinatra was also a singer, I’m terrible with my reference pools)