Nineteen cannons recovered from the bottom of the Savannah River after nearly 240 years underwater went on permanent display Thursday at the Savannah History Museum, part of a new exhibit timed to national America 250 commemorations. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stumbled on the cache in 2021 while dredging the river to accommodate larger cargo ships. Coastal Heritage Society CEO Nora Fleming Lee described the haul as the largest single-event discovery of 18th-century Revolutionary War artillery on record.
Discovery and Recovery
Workers pulled up 19 cannon alongside roughly a dozen smaller artifacts. Several cannon were found still loaded — cannonballs and gunpowder charges intact after more than two centuries on the riverbed. Marine concretion, oyster shells, and assorted sea life had bonded to the iron over that span.
Most of the cannon left Georgia for preservation treatment at a Texas A&M University laboratory, where technicians ran electrical currents through water baths to draw out accumulated salt and stabilize the iron for land conditions. A final round of acid application and waxing completed conservation. Of the 19 recovered, 17 were fully restored. The remaining two were intentionally left unrestored, placed alongside their treated counterparts to give visitors a direct before-and-after comparison.
The 1779 Context: Scuttled Ships, Siege of Savannah
Historians place the sinking shortly before the siege of Savannah in 1779, when the city was under British occupation. Fleming Lee said the leading interpretation holds that the cannon went down with ships deliberately scuttled at the river's narrowest point — a blockade intended to prevent the French fleet from sailing upriver and recapturing the city for the American side.
The maneuver preceded one of the war's deadliest engagements. The Battle of Savannah produced more than 800 casualties in under an hour and was fought on the same ground the museum now occupies.
"Loyalists & Liberty" Exhibit
All 19 cannon are permanently installed as the centerpiece of "Loyalists & Liberty: Savannah in the American Revolution." The exhibit structures Georgia's Revolutionary history around five distinct historical figures — among them indigenous people, free and enslaved individuals, and women and children — perspectives Fleming Lee said receive insufficient attention in standard accounts of the period.
The Savannah History Museum sits on the site of the battle the cannon were meant to prevent.