Betty Poore: What's New on the Charleston Coast Blog: Cannoball!

Well, to many of us, a cannonball is used to make a big splash when you jump off the dock or diving board...Mark is the best in our family. But, THIS cannonball is a horse of another color. Read on.

Surprise! Cannonball hits beach a bit too late for war

ISLE OF PALMS — Workers heard what sounded like a large bowling ball clanging through a 3-foot-wide pipe sucking sand from the ocean.

Along with dredge spoil being used to rebuild the Isle of Palms oceanfront, the pipe spit out a historic, 128-pound cannonball. Round-the-clock crews working on the renourishment project made the discovery in the gated Wild Dunes community on Thursday morning.

"They could hear it bouncing in," Isle of Palms police Lt. Ray Wright said. "They heard it clanking through the piping around 3 a.m."

Workers used a bulldozer to move the ball to a safe spot and called police later that morning, Wright said.

Charleston County and state explosives teams examined the sphere and deemed it safe.

It turns out there wasn't much bang left; the cannonball was solid cast iron, likely fired from a 10-inch Columbiad cannon during the Civil War, said Richard W. Hatcher III, a National Park Service historian at the Fort Sumter National Monument.

Columbiads were one of the Confederates' weapons of choice when it came to large guns, Hatcher said. Possibly thousands of cannonballs like the one recovered on Thursday were fired during the conflict, particularly during the 600-day Siege of Charleston in the first half of the war, he said.

There were 15 Columbiads on Sullivan's Island at the end of the war. The cannons could hurl the 128-pound projectiles a maximum of 5,654 yards using a 20-pound charge of black powder.

Hatcher will turn the artifact over to state archaeologists.

Wright said the cannonball had traveled almost 3 miles to shore; the dredge pipe extended more than 2 1/2 miles into the ocean, and about another half mile on the beach. It wound up near the Ocean Club Villas at the far end of the island.

The beach replenishment is part of a $10 million project that extends from 53rd Avenue to Dewees Inlet. It began three weeks ago and must be finished by the end of July, a condition of state and federal permits, in part to protect the endangered loggerhead turtle.

Munitions from past conflicts turn up with regularity in the Lowcountry. In November, workers installing a heating and air-conditioning system near Market and Logan streets downtown found about a dozen softball-size cannonballs from the Civil War.

Labels: beach, cannonball, Charleston Coast, ocean, turtles, water