Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Dirt yields rusty gem: a Civil War cannonball

From its discovery during a roadside cleanup project, the historic artifact has made its way to a Brooksville museum.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published April 4, 2005

HERNANDO BEACH - Roadside litter apparently isn't a recent phenomenon. It dates at least to around 1864, according to a recent find by Gary Delicato during a cleanup along Shoal Line Boulevard.

Delicato was with members of the Adopt-A-Road committee for Hernando Beach South, a community service and oversight group, who were scavenging for litter as they do monthly.

Near the intersection of Jewfish Drive with Shoal Line, Delicato went to the aid of two women in the group, who had pulled a couple of discarded tires from the roadside and were lugging two big bags of trash.

"So, we were going to help them pick that stuff up and then I saw that ball," said Delicato, 58. The ball was partially buried.

"Really, I thought it was a boccie ball," he said, recalling the set of lawn bowling balls his grandfather brought to the New World when he emigrated from Italy.

"The color of it, just glancing at it, the (dark) color just reminded me of (old) boccie balls."

After Delicato dug the specimen out of the earth, he delivered it to group leader, Jim Sneed.

"He held out his hand and I dropped it in his hand, and his hand sort of went down," Delicato recalled. The iron ball weighed 8 pounds.

Sneed suggested it might be a cannonball from the Civil War.

"I thought he was full of bologna," Delicato said, admitting he is not a Civil War buff.

Sneed contacted the May-Stringer Heritage Museum in Brooksville, seeking confirmation of his opinion.

"What I would have done was something like hit it with a sledgehammer," said Delicato. "I had no idea until Jim Sneed went ahead and called the museum."

Museum curator Diana Johnston labeled the find a cannonball from the Civil War skirmish waged at Bayport in the summer of 1864. It was found about a mile east of Gulf of Mexico waters.

Museum executive director Virginia Jackson said Union ships landed in 1864 at Bayport, in part to install a blockade against Confederate ships seeking supplies, and to ultimately burn farms within a 40-mile radius of Brooksville to destroy food supplies destined for Southern troops.

The Union ships and Confederate soldiers traded fire.

"The Union had two cannons, the Confederacy had three cannons at Bayport," Jackson said. The numbers have been documented by state archaeologists, she noted.

But the cannonball could have ended up at that spot via a different route, museum officials said.

During the Civil War, troops were rushing to our area from Tampa and that the cannonball may have fallen off a horse-drawn carriage, museum officials said. Another possibility could be that the object may have been part of the cannon-fire barrage, aimed at the ships in the gulf.

Delicato figured the cannonball surfaced after a county work crew last year leveled a dip in Shoal Line Boulevard and laid fresh roadside turf.

"When they went through with that big blade, it probably dug (the cannonball) up," he said.

As Delicato and Sneed got confirmation at the museum that the sphere was a cannonball, curator Johnston suggested Delicato put it up for sale on eBay.

Instead he donated it to the museum.

"It's not mine to sell," he said.

Museum officials say it is the best preserved of three cannonballs from the Civil War found in Hernando and given to the museum.

"It's the largest cannonball we have," said curator Johnston. "It has some rust over a third of it, but it's not deep-pitted rust."

The artifact bears no discernible inscriptions that might mark it as Union or Confederate.

If it originally bore inscriptions denoting its origin, they could well have been eroded over the years, said Jackson.

"We'll have to get in touch with the Museum of the Confederacy at Richmond, Va., or maybe some (Civil War) re-enactors, even archaeologists from USF might know something," Jackson added. "We will be finding out more about it."

Anyone wishing to view the cannonball and other historical objects from the area can visit the museum off Broad Street two blocks north of the city center, open to the public noon to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday. Group tours can be scheduled by calling 799-0129.

--Beth Gray may be contacted at graybethn@earthlink.net

[Last modified April 4, 2005, 01:26:10]