Chatham man finds what might be a cannonball

A Chatham, Ont., resident has found what he thinks is a cannonball that could date back to the War of 1812. 

Neil Pothier was walking his dog near the 3rd Street Bridge over the Thames river, when he noticed something strange. 

"I was trying to get him to go on a tree, and I looked down on the tree and saw a shiny spot" he said. "It seemed out of the ordinary to see rocks that size so close to the river where it had just flooded."

Pothier quickly realized that what he was looking at was a strange metal object.  

"It rolled over and the dog got really excited thinking I'd found a ball for him ... I picked it up and it was a little rusty, it sort of looked like a miniature cannonball." 

Weapons of the past

Back then, cannons were a regular weapon on the battlefield. Lisa Gilbert, president of the Kent Historical Society, said it's entirely possible that Pothier's find is from that period of history. During the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813,  British troops lost control of Southwestern Ontario near what is now known as Chatham. 

There's always people magnet fishing in the river trying to pull up some little bits of history- Neil Pothier

"They did scuttle some boats [but] it was not an organized retreat," Gilbert said. "There are some boats at the bottom of the Thames, but they are further upriver." 

"I would guess given its size that it might have been like grapeshot ... That's a pretty small cannonball. There was all kinds of munitions on these boats." 

Grapeshot consists of smaller munitions — with a similar effect to modern day shrapnel. 

An uncommon discovery

Finding historical objects is not unheard of in Chatham, but it is rare. Gilbert said that, despite her decades-long expertise on the War of 1812, not many objects have been recovered. 

"My husband and I have been studying local history with an emphasis on 1812 for probably 40 or 50 years," she said. "In that time I really have heard about it 10 [to] 15 times at the most." 

It might be a rare find that Pothier has stumbled upon, but he's not necessarily willing to keep it for himself. 

"If the museum or somebody like that wants it then I'd be happy to give it to them," he said. "There's always people magnet fishing in the river trying to pull up some little bits of history, and it always just seems to be old bikes and scrap metal." 

"It's interesting that it wasn't in the water, it might have washed up from the recent flood ... but I found it wedged in the roots of a tree."