General
General
A bronze muzzle loading cannon from the shipwreck of the vessel Speaker which wrecked on the East coast of Mauritius in January 1702.
Dimensions of the cannon are length 1410mm, diameter muzzle 140mm, diameter breech 190mm, width trunnion to trunnion 208mm and weight 136Kg
(The vessel the Speaker was a pirate vessel captained first by British pirate George Booth upon its seizure in 1699. After the death of George Booth in 1700, the captaincy of the vessel was taken over by John Bowen until its wrecked in 1702. The crew of 170 purportedly all survived the wrecking.)
This canon was found in the late 70’ on the shipwreck Speaker (1702) in Mauritius by a local fisherman who sold it to Gavin Clackworthy in 1984 for a sum of MUR1000. It was then imported to South Africa in 1984 and declared to customs. Duty for the cannon and other scrap metal was paid on the metal price. It was cleaned of concretion and restored for about one year before being declared, in 1986, to the Shipwreck Artefact Register that was authorized by the National Monuments Council and the Department of Customs. Gavin Clackworthy sold the canon to a winery in Stellenbosch that eventually went bankrupt and bought it back on an auction before selling it again in Mai 2019 to the Mauritius Marine Conservation Society represented by Yann von Arnim.
Description
Description
Bronze Cannon with crowned monogram of Christian IV, King of Denmark(see images)
History
History
The cannon originates from the wreck of the "Speaker" which wrecked in 1702. The cannon being manufactured prior to this date.
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Declaration
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 South Africa License.