HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — Historic artifacts brought up from the bottom of Savannah Harbor are now under lock and key in Henry County.
They were part of a pivotal battle in Georgia during the American Revolution.
Rachel Black keeps a scrapbook containing two very special scraps.
She’s the state archaeologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Parks and Historic Sites division in Henry County.
And after one of the latest discoveries, she now has the paper from a powder cartridge that was packed inside a cannon during the Revolutionary War.
“I can’t believe this is so intact. I can’t believe this is so well preserved. Because there aren’t many of these around,” Black told Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen. “It is made out of a really heavy paper, and it would have been folded into kind of a rectangular cylinder. Like a little lunch bag.”
Inside the Savannah History Museum, curator Samantha Moss showed Channel 2 Action News their collection of cannons from the American Revolution.
“This was a historic discovery,” Moss said.
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The cannons date back to the Siege of Savannah, which took place from Sept. 16 to Oct. 20, 1779, during which the Royal Navy sunk a few of its own ships to prevent the French fleet from attacking the city.
“Apparently they were more useful as an underwater obstruction,” said Andrea Farmer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “These guns went down on a vessel very, very quickly. They were ready to be fired.”
Some 242 years after the British boats were scuttled, the Army Corps was dredging and deepening Savannah Harbor, where they found the cannons buried in the Georgia mud.
Inside some of those cannons were cannonballs, balls of rope to hold the ammo in place, and powder cartridges.
Gunpowder was packed in the little paper bags, then dried, cleaned, and preserved by experts at Texas A&M University, and then sent to the Georgia DNR’s Parks and Historic Sites Division, where Black keeps a scrapbook containing two very special scraps.
“This is a once-in-a-career find. I’m so grateful that I’m in this role when these were discovered,” Black said.
The artifacts will be on public display for the first time in October. You can see them at the Fort Morris State Historic Site and Museum in Liberty County, about 40 miles south of Savannah.