The Salcombe Cannon Site
In April 1995 SWMAG did what most divers dream of – they found sunken treasure.
A dive planned in the Erme Estuary had been aborted due to the sea state and rather than abandon the weekend the team decided to measure the cannon on the Salcombe Cannon Site; little did anyone know what would be discovered on this dive or where it would lead.
On returning from his first dive Ron Howell told the guys in the boat “Get hold of my glove, I've got a flaming[sic] fortune in it!”; he had found 3 gold coins, a finger ingot and pieces of jewelry. The rest (excuse the pun) is history.
SWMAG dived in secret for the next 2 years during which time the site was surveyed, a full site plan drawn, and additional artefacts recovered. In 1997 SWMAG declared their find to the Receiver of Wreck and the now defunct Archaeological Diving Unit. What the team declared included the largest collection of Moroccan gold coins outside of Morocco itself – 447 of them – dating from the late 1500's to the mid 1630's. The assemblage also included gold finger ingots, gold jewelry, dutch pottery and coins, and a jar of beans from North Africa to name just a few of the other artefacts.
The site was protected by the Protection of Wrecks (Designation No. 4) Order 1997 and the British Museum acquired the assemblage where from time to time it is on display. Contrary to popular belief, members of SWMAG did not profit from the award made; the money going back into the continuing work on the site.
Expanding the Site
In early 2002 two members of the team found a pot handle, an adze and a steel yard weight approximately 100 metres to the south-east of the known site. The area had been identified as potentially of interest following a magnetometer survey the previous year.
In September the same year Icon films visited the site to collect footage for the BB2 Timewatch program “White Slaves, Pirate Gold” (this was the opening program of the 2003 Timewatch series). Also present on site were the ADU who conducted a multibeam sonar and caesium magnetometer survey of the site. The multibeam sonar provided a 3D image of the site and effectively provided an underwater map. This made identifying areas of work and locations of artefacts much easier and has increased the productivity of time spent on site immeasurably.
How Old?
In 2004 the team decided to concentrate on the SE area and a palstave axe head was located in September that year. No longer was the team looking for 17C artefacts, but Bronze Age. It turned out that the pot handle and adze located in 2002 are also from the Bronze Age, and following a reassesment of the original assemblage at the British Musem some of the original artefacts recovered were also identified as Bronze Age.
Since 2004 SWMAG has located and recovered a significant number of Bronze Age artefacts that date to the Penard period and are believed to originate predominantly from France. This makes them contemporary to the artefacts from Moor Sand found by Phillip Baker in 1977 and Keith Muckelroy et al during subsequent surveys of the site; given the closeness of the two sites (the designated areas overlap) it seemed probable that there was some connection between the two. The Bronze Age site was named the Salcombe B Site to differentiate it from the original 17C site.
“Clearly SWMAG are archaeologists with a passion and dedication, and their high quality work is revealing new stories from our past as well as enabling better heritage use and protection.”
Ian Oxley
Head of Maritime Archaeology
English Heritage
One artefact in particular has proved to be of extreme archaeological interest. A Strumento con Immanicatura a Cannone (lit. “having a cannon shaped handle” – it's purpose is unknown), the artefact originated in Sicily and is the first of these items to be found in a secure context in north-west Europe. As such it represents the first conclusive evidence of trade routes that extended from the Mediterranean to the UK during the Bronze Age.
Other artefacts are yet to be identified by experts as they are the first of their kind to be recovered from anywhere in the world.
In 2005 Wessex Archaeology, as the diving contractor for English Heritage, conducted a thorough magnetometer survey over the site and surrounding area, and identified a number of anomalies that were thought to be of archaeological significance. SWMAG is using these to instigate searches as and when new areas are surveyed.
But Is It the Right Place?
It had been thought that Henley BS-AC dicovered the Salcombe Cannon Site in 1994 when they found 3 cannon on a dive. In 2007 Duncan Grey of Henley Branch kindly showed SWMAG his log book from the dives of 1994 (SWMAG is very grateful to Duncan for sharing this information); the entries for the dives only served to deepen the mystery. The marks taken at the time are approximately 200 metres south of the A Gully of the Salcombe Cannon Site and that contains four cannons. Additionally the log book entry states that the divers found bricks “a couple of gullies over” from the cannon they saw. The nearest bricks of any quantity are over 100 metres from the cannon in the A Gully and the source of the bricks – The Lord Napier – is also some 200 metres south of the A Gully. It is therefore probable that the cannon seen by Henley Branch were not those on the main Salcombe Cannon Site and remain to be re-located.
In late 2007 SWMAG dived close to the Henley coordinates targeting a cluster of magnetic anomalies identified in Wessex Archaeology's survey. This led to the discovery of the Lord Napier — a ketch that sank on 25th April 1911 while carrying bricks from Exmouth and is the source of bricks that can be found in many areas of the site.
Coming Together
Work during 2008 led SWMAG ever closer to Moor Sand as the team followed the trail of Bronze Age artefacts. In 2009 Moor Sand and the Salcombe Cannon Site were brought together under a single project plan and work that year recovered the largest single collection of Bronze Age copper ingots in the UK – land or maritime – and probably Europe, and prompted Ben Roberts, Curator of the European Bronze Age at the British Museum, to state that “Salcombe is now one of the most important Bronze Age sites currently being investigated in Britain.”
The Work Continues
The Salcombe Cannon Site and Moor Sand continue to provide clues about our ancestors and their seafaring throughout the ages - SWMAG will continue their work to uncover them.