11/18/19 Report - Some Miscellaneous Finds and Some Info on Musket Balls and Related Things. Treasure Coast Surf Peaked Out.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Clump With Wood and Extricated Spike

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This is a clump that I found yesterday.  I removed some of the junk and got the spike uncovered and cleaned off.  Don't know what else  might be in there, but it looks like there is at least part of a bigger spike.

Below is an odd find that is now falling apart.  Anybody have any ideas of what it might be?  

Unidentified Iron Object.

It is long (about ten and a half inches) very thin most of the way.   What I would think is the top is bulbous.

Here is a closer look at the top.

Closer View of Bulbous End.

Any and all thoughts will be appreciated.

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Yesterday instead of giving my answer to DJ's question about why some of his musket balls were cut in sections, I asked what you thought.   It was good that I asked for other opinions before giving my answer because the readers of this blog provided some very interesting answers.

Here what Glen S. said.

Musket balls were sometimes scored partially through so that when they were fired they would come apart and have a sort of "shot" effect. They were called "dum dums". Split shot was also made by casting two separate halves of the ball with a wire connecting them together and these would have a bola effect. There is a great book detailing all the weapons used by the Spanish called Small Arms of the Treasure Fleets which is a great resource for those wishing to identify their finds.

And William K. said,

Here is some info on the "musket balls" that were found. My guess would be that they are part of a packet of canister shot commonly used at the time. I'm pretty sure that they would prefer more rounded balls for muskets but irregular shot like those shown would work just fine in a cannon. 

William provided this Wikipedia link.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapeshot

And in a similar vein, Brian B. gave me a link to a YouTube video made at a Civil War relic show.  Near the end of the video a hollow cannon ball was shown and it was explained how smaller lead shot would be put into the cannon ball.

Here is that link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmx1YIBuPbY

Thanks for the responses Brian, Glen and William.

Concerning those little thin flat pieces of lead that I found a few days ago, the first thing I thought of was how lead was sometimes used to make a sleave or holder to hold a musket flint.  But I doubt that is what these ones were.  Then I thought of many other uses for lead.  Being so malleable it had a lot of uses in the days when you couldn't run out to a hardware store and pick up whatever you might want.

My pieces appeared to be hammered thin, but they were so beat up and irregular that I can't say anything specific about them with any degree of confidence.   It could be they were just left over odd bits.

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Looks like the surf will be decreasing later today and for the rest of the week.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net