美国国家公共电台 NPR In Charleston, Cannonball Discoveries Are Constant Reminders Of Past Wars

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

So in Charleston, S.C., people are being reminded of wars that were fought long before they were born. Cannonballs from the Civil War, even the Revolutionary War are washing up on beaches or being unearthed² during construction projects. And some of these pieces can still be dangerous, as South Carolina Public Radio's Alexandra Olgin reports.

ALEXANDRA OLGIN, BYLINE³: Hunkered down in a building topped with sandbags, military bomb experts are getting ready to detonate a rusted⁴ cannonball from the 1800s.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Fire in the hole.

OLGIN: The munition⁵ is wrapped in C-4 and buried underground in an empty field near Charleston.

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OLGIN: This nine-inch cannonball had black powder in it and needed to be exploded. Others are found during construction, in the ocean after hurricanes or just below ground in people's backyards. Detective Carl Makins is with the Charleston County Bomb Squad⁶.

CARL MAKINS: A lot of people don't understand how dangerous cannonballs are. Somebody hit them with a hammer thinking it's kind of cool because of the sound they make and not understanding that, hey, that's a potential time bomb.

OLGIN: Makins gets several calls a year that an old relic⁷ has been found. So does Grahame Long, the curator at the Charleston Museum. He has more than 200 cannonballs and can't display them all. The rest are in storage.

GRAHAME LONG: We've had a few Revolutionary War pieces come in fairly recently, these little six-pound avocado-looking iron balls that are your quite stereotypical-looking cannonballs, which you'd expect from that time period.

OLGIN: They also find Civil War-era cannon¹ balls because the Union siege⁸ of Charleston lasted more than 500 days. And Long says at the time, the city was constantly bombarded.

LONG: On any given day, there are several if not dozens of shells coming into town. Some are going off, some aren't. And these are heavy, heavy pieces going far distances, hitting the ground hard and getting buried.

OLGIN: Long believes only a fraction of the cannonballs have been unearthed and expects they'll be found here for years to come. For NPR News, I'm Alexandra Olgin in Charleston.