Swivel gun…from the…

OUR FIRST PURCHASED ARTIFACT

Thanks to the generous support of the Friends, the Museum was able to acquire a rare wrought-iron swivel gun tube which was "dug up" on Ocracoke in the early 1960s.

The barrel is 27 inches long and the socket at the breech is eight inches long giving an overall length of 35 inches. The barrel is 2 ¼ inches in diameter and the bore is a little over an inch.

The trunnion ring in the middle is rare and the lugs which hold the ring in position on the barrel are extremely unusual. The fact it is made of wrought (as opposed to cast) iron and its similarity to pieces in collections in the Czech Republic, Geneva, and Basel, strongly suggest a European origin and a date of around the late 15^th or early 16^th century.  It was relatively common to convert a socketed handgun to a small ordnance piece during this period and the use-life could well have extended into the early 18^th century.  In the opinions of Mr. Earl O’Neal and Mr. Chester Lynn, both of Ocracoke, the most logical Ocracoke provenance for the gun tube would have been Springers Point.  We will continue to research the piece and encourage our readers to provide any information they may have.

Re: OUR FIRST PURCHASED ARTIFACT

I don’t directly have any info per request, but thought to state that a reputed brass one was once on display at the small lab and museum "New York Unearthed" a once small archaeology museum at 17 State St. in NYC, part of the "South Street Seaport Museum". Nearby to it Herman Melville had lived and worked as a US Customs agent, and perhaps wrote.

Across the harbor on the Buttermilk Channel, that between Brooklyn and Governors Island, there what appeared as a molded partial replica of one is at the south end of Governors Island, on-top of a stone monument commemorating the landfall of John Peter Zenger from the German Palatine at the age of 10. He later would help establish "freedom of the press" at a trial in New York city, incarcerated for an opinion published in New York’s second printing press, which he owned, the first more for "official" use. I was working in geoarchaeology for four days over there in the interim, before the National Parks Service and after the US Coast Guard, and regrettably can’t recall the other stone monument it stood next to. Perhaps it’s where there was a print shop or island newspaper.

I admire your work and have had the pleasure to work for Gordon Watts, PhD who discovered the "USS Monitor" on a North Carolina state survey, I think while at East Carolina University. My grandfather’s brother, Leman C. Urquhart was a Master Mariner and a Savannah, Georgia harbor pilot, and captain of the "SS City of Atlanta" when it left New York City in January of 1942, torpedoed and sunk by U-123, not far from Cape Hatteras.

BRITISH WAR GRAVE CEREMONIES May 12, 13 2011

Elizabeth Edwards Funeral To Be Picketed By Westboro Baptist Church

There should be a law against it. Though certain rights are allowed under the US Constituti­on and the Bill of Rights, in my opinion, these assemblies at funerals should be regulated under a guarantee of the separation of “church and state” that is church matters not mixed into an affair of “state” and a funeral’s members have a reasonable expectatio­n of privacy.

Unfortunat­ely, when I check my AP and UPI handbook on libel, there is no law against saying anything libelous after a person is deceased, they state. Libel laws apply while a person is alive apparently­. After the Peter Zenger trial, it was found that the owner of the printing press cannot be held for what is printed by a press. Interestin­gly Peter Zenger arrived from the German Palatine to Governors Island, in the NYC harbor at the age of ten. A monument to him on Governors Island, is in the form of a molded “swivel gun” on a stone monument. A federal national monument to the “freedom of the press” is at St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site, Mount Vernon, NY, where a contested election on the green was held that led to Zenger’s incarcerat­ion and trial, personal freedom and “free press” precedent. The bell there was cast in the same foundry as the Liberty Bell. I’d hate to see this religious hate result in gunfire. Libel laws could be revised, but privacy should be enforced.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Troops’ gravestones have Pentagon slogans

AP – ARLINGTON, Virginia – Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.” Link

Dee Dee’s Mom was named Arlington (wouldn’t be her Dad would it?)