Crate of Lee Enfield's drug up off the coast of Nova Scotia!!!!!

grelmar said:
Most of the locations are known, and have already been salvaged.

Can't remember the name of the outfit, but there was a company that did cargo salvage of WWII vessels on an industrial scale all through the 50's and 60's, and into the early 70's. It was a commercial and incredibly non-sentimental affair.

They'd send salvage divers down, rig up explosives, and blow off the sides of the hulls and collapse the entire ship, spilling the contents onto the sea floor. Then drop a massive clam-shell scoop onto the wreck, and haul up the spoils by the ton. It was all funded by the insurance companies that had underwritten the cargoes - they were trying to recoup as much of their losses as economically feasible.

If someone can remember the name of the company that was the single big player, it would be interesting. There was a whole documentary about the operation made back in the 90's (IIRC, might have been the 80's) about the operation.
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IIRC Beasley Salvage, there was a TV show Sea Hunters did a show about this.
 
Lobster_pot said:
Just saw this posted from last night. Appears to be a crate of Lee Enfield's. Found while fish dragging off the coast of Nova Scotia. Must have been a ship wreck. Honestly I don't really know milsurps all that well so might be something else. Would make an awesome piece for a gun room!


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They look like either Enfield muskets or Snider Enfields to me, not Lee Enfields. They have escutcheons for lock plate side nails and have long-tang wide buttplates.
 
green said:
Possibly cargo from a sunken blockade runner from War of Northern Aggression 1861-65. Halifax was a major port for blockade runners.
Curious that only some are missing the brass butt plates and the stocks are not eaten by teredo worms.
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I suspect the missing buttplates are due to the screws being eaten away like all the rest of the iron parts. The stocks were likely greased in cosmolene and soaked in linseed oil. That's probably what saved the wood.
 
green said:
IIRC Beasley Salvage, there was a TV show Sea Hunters did a show about this.
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Bingo!

Risdon Beazley - Forgotten hero of WWII and beyond.

He actually began salvage operations before WWII, and continued throughout the war, reclaiming shipments of raw metals for the war effort.

At it's height, Beazley Salvage was operating 61 vessels, employed full time salvaging to depths of up to 300 meters. (All other salvers on the admiralty register, combined, operated 20 vessels.)

I need to look up that "Sea Hunters" episode again. Beazley was quite the character. Much of modern diving, salvage, and construction, owes him a debt of gratitude. They invented gear non-stop throughout their operating years to facilitate the work.
 
green said:
Possibly cargo from a sunken blockade runner from War of Northern Aggression 1861-65. Halifax was a major port for blockade runners.
Curious that only some are missing the brass butt plates and the stocks are not eaten by teredo worms.
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More than likely. Halifax was not only a "major port for blockade runners", Halifax (and other NS shipyards) built several blockade runners for the CSA, and the Maritimes supplied hundreds of seamen to the CSA naval forces and private blockade runners.
 
If the "old ammo dump" is the region of the ocean floor I think it is, that would be where the Canadian government dumped barges full of obsolete weapons and equipment to get it out of storage and out of the way. Bannerman's could only buy so much and during the Great Depression of the thirties the stuff wasn't even worth scrap metal prices. It was cheaper to dump it than sell it.
 
They literally fell out of my canoe just before the LG registry......

ha

Cool find! next trip out east, that museum is on my list of places to visit, ran out of tourist time on my last visit.
 
Mil Specs said:
Dang they went from unfired almost new in box to museum pieces and totally bypassed the EE . There are lots of spoil grounds marked on marine charts time to start dragging I guess.
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I can see the EE ad now.... "Unfired, never used, just pulled from long term storage, still in the cosmoline. I don't know much about these. Can't seem to post pics."
 
bearhunter said:
If the "old ammo dump" is the region of the ocean floor I think it is, that would be where the Canadian government dumped barges full of obsolete weapons and equipment to get it out of storage and out of the way. Bannerman's could only buy so much and during the Great Depression of the thirties the stuff wasn't even worth scrap metal prices. It was cheaper to dump it than sell it.
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Freshwater Bay, just outside St John's harbour was also a very common dumping site right up to the 80's at least. At one point, I was on a boat to witness the dumping of a huge amount of crates of surplus 303 ammo into that bay back in the late 70's.

There's probably enough guns, ammo, and other war material down there to equip a good sized army.
 
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