Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1984 - 59

(Above) The Turkish cannon was raised
from the lagoon bed by lift bags filled
with air. It was then tied to a rubber boat
and pulled to shore. (Below) The pennant located on the forward part of the
Spanish mortar's barrel has been erased
with time. All that remains is the Latin
number "IV," which apparently refers to
King Charles IV of Spain.
vey in the vicinity of Tantura Lagoon.
Divers found a number of muskets that
were covered with heavy marine concretions, two swivel guns, a mortar, and
mortar balls. This ordnance was assumed
to have been part of the cargo of a ship
carrying a load of weapons which had
sunk nearby, although no remains of a
ship were actuálly found. After this initial survey, research on the site lay dormant for over a decade.
In 1976,as a result of growing interest
in sport and commercial diving in Israel,
the Department of Antiquities and Museums entered the realm of underwater
archaeology. Our sea base was established at Kibbutz Nahsholim which, as
luck would have it, is situated next to

Tintura Lagoon. We began diving in the
lagoon and in the large bay on the southern side of Tel Dor, intending to learn
sound underwater techniques by carrying out a survey of this area.
As time went on, we began to find
ordnance scattered about on the seabed.
Four flintlock muskets with heavy marine concretions, lead musket balls and
an iron cannon ball were removed for
identification. Along with the underwater survey we began research into the
history of Tel Dor/Tantura.
Among the sources we studied were
old maps. One particularly interesting
map was made by Jacotin, Napoleon's
cartographer during his Egyptian campaign. The map charts the Carmel coast
and includes the route the French army
took in their flight from Acco. A crossed
saber and musket indicate Napoleon's
camp on May 21, 1799, near where we
were finding the ordnance in the sea.
This discovery raised several pertinent
questions: Could the sunken ordnance
at Tantura be definitely linked with
Napoleon's visit there? Since the large
"24s" buried on the beach had such a
high sentimental and military value,
would it not seem likely that the French
had made a map of the burial site with
the intention of perhaps one day retrieving them?
Jeremy Schoenfield had tentatively
identified the muskets as being of French
manufacture. With the assistance of
British archaeologist Claudine Dauphin,
we got in touch with Colonel Paul Willing, head curator of the Hôtel National
des Invalides in Paris. Colonel Willing
identified the four flintlock muskets removed during our survey as French service muskets of the 1777 model; this
same model, with several modifications,
continued in service until 1840.
Another artifact provided an even
more exact date. An elongated concretion proved to have originally contained
the lower part of a sword and scabbard,
the only remains of which were some
wood fragments, a black bad-smelling
liquid and the scabbard's impression on
the concretion. Using the concretion as
a mold, we made a plastic cast of the
scabbard, which appears to have been
of wood covered with leather terminating
in a small circular projection. Colonel
Willing identified this as part of a French
infantry grenadier's saber scabbard of
the model in use from 1789 to 1800.
Unfortunately, no known map remains
of the burial spot of the "24s"; if such a
map ever existed, it must have been lost
along with the other records of the
French army before their evacuation
from Egypt. Our attempts to find the
cannon with a simple metal detector
resulted in the discovery only of rusted
sewage pipes, iron nails, aluminum foil
yogurt tops, and other assorted debris.
Despite this setback, the search continued for the cannon that the French

had jettisoned into the sea. The floor of
Tintura Lagoon is covered with a blanket of sand which is constantly shifted
by the sea. This shifting occasionally
reveals parts of the seabed, and each
time a new opening appeared we surveyed it. In March 1981 our search finally bore fruit- we found a 1.60-meter
bronze cannon lying on its back with all
its markings buried. With the enthusiastic assistance of members of Kibbutz
Nahsholim and the University of Haifa's
Sea Workshop, the cannon was raised
and removed from the sea.
The Turkish

cannon

Our jubilation rapidly dissipated,
however, as we cleaned the cannon's
markings. The cannon, far from being
French, was Turkish! If the Turkish
crescent-and-star symbol on the cannon's barrel was insufficient to make this
point, to add insult to injury it also bore
a tugra , or Tbrkish sultan's monogram,
near the priming hole. We were crestfallen. Was the cannon not related to
Napoleon's visit to Tantura after all?
Later the same day, the solution became evident. In reviewing the eyewitness reports, we found that we had
overlooked a very basic fact- at least
some, if not all, of the pieces jettisoned
into the sea at Tantura were Tbrkish
cannon which the French army had captured at Jaffa and brought before Acco.
As Louis- Alexander Berthier wrote:
"...[the French army] arrived at Tentoura, the port where the objects to be
forwarded to Damiette and to Jaffa had
been landed and where the siege artillery had been evacuated along with forty
Turkish campaign pieces, captured at
Jaffa, some of which had been brought
before Acre.
"There were not enough horses to draw
this quantity of T'irkish artillery. Bonaparte decided that all the means of transport would be preferably employed for
evacuating the sick and wounded. Consequently he kept only two howitzers
and a few small Turkish pieces, and he
had twenty- two thrown into the sea; the
caissons and the carriages were burnt at
the port of Tentoura."
In order to verify the cannon's date
further, we wrote to the Director of the
Archives of the TYirkishPrime Minister's
Office. Lieutenant-General (Ret.) Bahaddin Alpkan informed us that a cannon with similar markings in the Tbrkish
Military Museum dates to the reign of
Sultan Selim III (1789-1807). Independently, the tugra on the Tantura cannon
was tentatively identified by Myrian
Rosen-Ayalon and Amnon Cohen as that
of Selim III or one of his immediate
predecessors, Mustapha III (1757-1774).
There can be little doubt, therefore, that
the Tantura cannon found its way into
the sea at the hands of Bonaparte's solcontinued on page 76
October
1984
September/

Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1984

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