MOSCOW, July 6. At the bottom of the sea off the coast of the Bahamas rest Russian cannons from the Crimean War, which became a trophy of the British army, said members of the Allen Exploration underwater expedition in the Allen Exploration Ocean Dispatches magazine.
«Allen Exploration discovered a group of 24 cast iron cannons, including rare guns from the Crimean War. <…> The Russians fired these guns at the Turks, the British and the French during the defense of Sevastopol,” the researchers reported.
Karl Allen's team also discovered the trunnion of one of the cannons, with details of its manufacture. The gun was cast at the Aleksandrovsky plant in Petrozavodsk under the direction of Scottish craftsman Adam Armstrong and has serial number 13798. According to researchers, the gun could have taken part in the wars with Napoleon and was already outdated by the time of the defense of Sevastopol.
The authors suggested that the guns could have become a trophy of the British army and were scrapped during the iron shortage in 1941. The antique cannons may have been the cargo of a ship sailing from Britain to America during World War II.
«The fate of these Russian cannons is a forgotten memory of two wars: the Crimean and World War II. <…> A complex history makes a group of cannons that sank off the northern coast of the Bahamas is not only an important international find, but a unique example of the world’s underwater heritage,” concluded Allen Exploration.
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