A 250-year old Swivel Gun. - FactzPedia

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A 250-year old Swivel Gun.

 

A 250-year old Swivel Gun.


During an unusually low tide in 2010 at Dundee Beach, southwest of Darwin in Australia, teenager Christopher Doukas noticed a strange object poking out of the sands.

Christopher and his dad went to investigate the alien object and found it to be a 250-year old Swivel Gun.

This was a pretty big find, given that there had been no documented foreign contact with Australia until Captain Cook landed in 1770, meaning the ancient artillery pre-dated that oh-so historic encounter.

The aged canon, made of bronze, is believed to be of Indonesian origin and was lost to the seas, maybe along with its ship, where it stayed buried underneath the sands for centuries.

La Belle was well equipped with weaponry to support the 1684-85 American expedition of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Besides the swivel gun, the ship carried deck cannons and smaller swivel guns to defend the ship and attack the Spanish, bronze and iron cannons that would have been used to guard the colony on land, and small arms for hunting.



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