Workers Dredging the Savannah River Stumbled Upon 19 Cannons That Had Been Underwater Since the Revolutionary War

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor Add as preferred source Workers recovered this cannon from the Savannah River in 2022. Savannah District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via Flickr under CC BY 2.0 As crews worked to deepen a section of the Savannah River, they used a clamshell dredger to scoop up mud. One day, when the machine rose from the water, it was dragging a centuries-old cannon covered in rust. Two more cannons emerged from the riverbed soon after. By the following year, workers had recovered 19 of the weapons. Each weighed more than 1,000 pounds. At first, archaeologists traced them to a Civil War-era ship that had sunk nearby. But they quickly realized the artifacts were even older. The guns date to the Revolutionary War, and they’d been underwater for more than two centuries. Since then, experts from Texas A&M University have been carefully restoring 17 of the cannons. On July 2, they’ll make their public debut at the Savannah History Museum. “Our great team has been prepping for months—building mounts and planning how we can safely display these very large, very special artifacts,” Samantha Moss, the museum’s curator, tells the Associated Press’ Russ Bynum. Workers stumbled upon the first cannons in 2021, when they were working on a $973 million project to deepen a 40-mile section of the Savannah River. Officials decided to halt the dredging, shifting their focus to recovering more artifacts from the riverbed. Divers surveyed the area, though visibility was poor. Experts ultimately used sonar technology to identify a dozen more cannons. Several additional cannons were found after dredging resumed in 2022, according to the New York Times’ Amanda Holpuch. Some of the cannons were still loaded, suggesting that they’d been aboard a ship that sank quickly. Perhaps, historians theorized, this vessel was the HMS Rose, a British ship that was scuttled in 1779. But they quickly realized that the Rose had gone down farther upstream, and the artillery hadn’t been on board. They then determined that the cannons may have come from the HMS Savannah, another British ship that sank around the same time. “I’d like to assume they’re all from the Savannah, but we don’t know for a fact,” Stephen James, maritime director of the Commonwealth Heritage Group, which helped with the search, told the Savannah Morning News’ Jessica Leigh Lebos in 2022. “There’s no evidence of [the rest of] the vessel down there.” The British occupation of Savannah began in late 1778. The following fall, the patriots—with the help of the French—plotted to regain control. When the British saw French troops approaching off the coast of Georgia, they scuttled several of their own ships to block their path, including the HMS Savannah. According to historical accounts, “the British could see the French fleet coming from the mouth of the Savannah River down by Tybee Island,” Andrea Farmer, an archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, tells WJCL’s Brooke Butler. “They wanted to create some underwater obstructions by scuttling or sinking these vessels.” The battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the Revolutionary War. American and French troops assembled amid the confusion of a heavy fog. When the fog dissipated, the troops stood exposed before the British. Hundreds of American and French soldiers were killed or wounded. Quick facts: The British occupation of Savannah The scuttled ships decayed many years ago, leaving a small collection of artifacts behind. In addition to the cannons, archaeologists recovered fragments from anchors and pieces of a vessel’s bronze bell. None featured markings identifying specific ships. Two of the cannons, still covered in rust and sediment, went on display at the Savannah History Museum in 2021. After specialists determined that the loaded weapons weren’t a safety hazard, the other 17 were sent to a conservation lab at Texas A&M. Experts conducted radiocarbon testing on the cannons’ wooden stoppers, confirming that they dated to the late 1700s. The federal government and the British government both expressed interest in the cannons, but officials ultimately agreed to allow them to remain in Savannah, where artifacts that predate the Civil War are rare. “There is so little left to show what happened here,” Christopher Hendricks, a historian at Georgia Southern University, told the Savannah Morning News. “There’s a lot left of this story to tell.” The 17 restored cannons will be part of “Loyalists & Liberty,” an exhibition examining Georgia’s role in the American Revolution. They’ll be displayed alongside the two that are still encrusted in sediment, allowing visitors to appreciate the scope of the restoration process. “Loyalists & Liberty” will be on view at the Savannah History Museum beginning July 2, 2026. Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine. Email Powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Privacy Notice / T

Workers Dredging the Savannah River Stumbled Upon 19 Cannons That Had Been Underwater Since the Revolutionary War

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