Author Topic: Restored French Cannons  (Read 423 times)

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Offline Cannoneer

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Restored French Cannons
« on: April 06, 2009, 03:04:39 PM »
Cannonmn's video

http://www.continentalline.org/articles/article.php?date=0601&article=060106

This is a pathetic story; it's bad enough to be thieves in the first place, but then to compound this fact with being idiotic thieves, and then to add insult to injury they also had to be chicken _ _it thieves, this is without question one degrading tale of ineptitude, and very destructive ineptitude at that.
RIP John. While on vacation July 4th 2013 in northern Wisconsin, he was ATVing with family and pulled ahead of everyone and took off at break-neck speed without a helmet. He lost control.....hit a tree....and the tree won.  He died instantly.

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Offline cannonmn

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Restored French Cannons
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2009, 10:21:57 PM »
Quote
This is a pathetic story

Did you catch the bottom line of my video, that the recreated dolphins have been made, what looks to me, about 50% larger than the originals?  I wrote this up and posted it on the CMH site.  If I were in the "Continental Line" and paying over $30K for the restoration, I'd make sure the dolphins were the correct size.  But I'm not in that org. and beyond stating the problem in appropriate venues, which I have done, I have no desire to get directly involved in such a transaction.

I'd take issue with at least one thing in the article you linked.  It states that most of the surviving French guns that came to the US for use in the Revolution are now owned by the National Park Service.  That's not true at all, in my calculation over 90% of them are owned by the US Army

The Army thoughtfully leaves most of them outside to corrode in the acid rain which falls just about everywhere in the eastern part of the US.  Whether these priceless relics are destroyed by dramatic vandalism as with the pair in Rhode Island, or by negligence as in the case of the US Army, the end result is the same.

Offline cannonmn

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Restored French Cannons
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2009, 03:40:45 AM »
One small thing I'll post here in case anyone is still looking for the person who destroyed the two guns in RI.  The dolphins have never been found according to the linked webpage.  An Ebay discussion board poster (Historical Memorobilia board) posted information about some bronze dolphins he found or bought somewhere, maybe six months ago or more.  The lead may be worth checking.  The poster's screen name is "dove3ducks" and he's from Canada.  I'm in no way suggesting that this poster had anything to do with the crime, but if the dolphins are real French cannon dolphins, it is certainly possible they are those from the RI pieces, and it is quite possible someone could work back from where he got them to the perpetrator of the original crime.