Finds

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Finds and History from a 1690 Colonial American Shipwreck

The attack on Quebec was a failure. They encountered bad weather, which delayed their arrival until mid-October. By this time, None of the forces ever came within a kilometer of the city walls. Several of the ships were damaged by cannon fire from the city. They Count Frontenac, the Governor General of New France, had assembled around 2,700 defenders. The fleet suffered brutal cold weather and smallpox had broken out. Accomplishing nothing, they gave up and headed home, up the St. Lawrence and out to sea. But their misfortunes continued. They encountered storms, separating the fleet and blowing some off-course as far as the West Indies. Four of the ships were wrecked, with two companies of men completely lost.

Spontoon Style Pipe Tomahawks in Colonial America

“Spontoon” style pipe tomahawks are perhaps the earliest style of pipe tomahawk, which itself is a truly North American invention arising from the clash of cultures and power converging in 18th century colonial America. Early europeans arriving in the new world commonly carried pole-arms with them, which were relics-themselves from European battlefields and the old manners of waging war.

A Possibly-Spanish Plug Bayonet

Believed to have borrowed the name of the French city of Bayonne, the bayonet rose to prominence as a vital military weapon during the last half of the 17th c. Arriving in Virginia in the 1670s, the first of the type are referred to as “plug” bayonets, being little more than daggers with tapered handles which were “plugged” into the muzzles of the muskets. Earlier iron-mounted examples were quickly replaced by cast-brass hilted bayonets by the late 1680s, and all were obsolete shortly thereafter.

Primitive Artistic Bird Decoy

This is an interesting old wood-carved bird decoy. I’m not sure if it was artwork or a functional decoy. It has sort of a cartoonish look to it, but on close inspection, has some well-executed artistic features. Some of the attachments indicate that perhaps it was functional. That’s about all I know about it. I can’t seem to find others that closely resemble it.

A New Frontier: Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878

A newer addition to the Scavengeology Museum History Bunker, a Model 1878 Sharps-Borchardt Rifle. It was cutting-edge technology for the time, being a hammerless single-shot rifle with an internal firing pin. The sleek, modern rifle was designed by Hugo Borchardt, who would later become famous for the design of the early semi-automatic “Borchardt Pistol,” the predecessor to the German Lugar – much later popularized in the Red Dead Redemption video game series.