Clay Hammer poses with the refurbished cannon newly on display at Wrangell Museum, after helping get it set up on Monday. In storage for the past 16 years, an anonymous craftsman did restorative work on it for the museum, and Hammer helped arrange its transportation.
The Wrangell Museum added a new piece to its public gallery, an antique cannon.
Not that the piece itself is new, thought to be close to two centuries old. Nor is it newly acquired, donated in 2002 to the museum by nonagenarian Bruce Johnston, a former resident then living in Ketchikan. Handed over before the museum's transition over to the Nolan Center, during the shift the cannon wound up in one of the many scattered caches of items kept around town.
By now settled, museum staff have over the past few years started to catalogue its collection with the aid of some grants, whittling down superfluous, degraded or less interesting pieces and better preserving the rest for posterity. It was during this process that the cannon came up.
"We knew we had a cannon somewhere, but we had no idea where it was," said Terri Henson, director at the Nolan Center.
Last spring she and archivist Cindy Kilpatrick began checking the different storage locations, finding what they were searching for in the line building next to Rayme's Bar. They were surprised to find it at some point had been painted bright red, and was somewhat worse for wear.
Both museum workers also discovered they couldn't lift the thing. It was small, only about four feet long, but quite solidly built. Henson called Clay Hammer, superintendent at Wrangell Municipal Light and Power, for help.
"The line department has always been one of those departments we can call," Henson said. "They've always come and given us a hand."
"What it needed was a good sandblasting and a paint job," he thought after looking it over.
Hammer knew someone with the right skillset who might be able to refurbish the piece. The person agreed, but wanted his contribution to remain anonymous. When he could find time over the past year the paint was painstakingly removed, with a protective coat added in its stead.
Finished last weekend, on Monday Hammer conveyed it back to the museum. He said he was helped by a group of Stikine Sportsmen Association members, who were at the time breaking down displays from their annual dinner at the Nolan Center on Saturday.
Together they helped shift the artillery piece inside, placing it on a wheeled cart the museum already had that had been built to support it. Henson did not think it had been the artillery piece's original cart, but seemed to fit for display purposes. The cannon now resides in the Fort Wrangell and Redoubt St. Dionysus section of the collection, viewable by the public.
Not a lot is otherwise known about the cannon's origins, though some theories and conjectures surround it. The casting marks identifying the foundry it came from have since been weathered away, but Kilpatrick said the donor Johnston had suspected it was a Russian piece.
Hammer said the anonymous restorer had an interest in cannonry, and had noted its design to be unique from typical American or British models. At around 3.5 inches, he thought that the caliber of the weapon was distinctive.
He also had suspected it to be a Russian artifact, dating from that country's time in the region. Colonial Wrangell had its start as a Russian strategic outpost in 1834, commanded by Dionysius Zarembo. The Russian presence was not long-lived, leasing the fort to the British Hudson Bay Company in 1840. The place finally transferred to American control with the purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867.
"It's a really cool little piece of Wrangell history," Hammer concluded.
Henson suggested a cannonball found by a resident on their Panhandle Avenue property some years ago could be similarly sized to the cannon. However, further examination of the relic by an expert would be needed before jumping to any conclusions.
In the meantime, she was very grateful for the assistance given the museum.
"They did a wonderful job," she said.
The cannon, along with a piece of Tlingit totem, will be a new addition to museum visitors this year. Still on its winter weekend schedule, Wrangell Museum will shift to its extended summertime hours starting April 2.
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