CANNONS WEREN’T TO PROTECT BUT RATHER TO ADORN
Relations between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach are not always easy.
Last year when West Palm pushed to build an office tower next to the bridge Palm Beachers rely upon to get to and from the island, verbal salvos were exchanged across city commission chamber lines.
But many years ago there was a time when the town aimed actual artillery at the city.
Part of that history turned up recently during a dock repair near Palm Beach’s Lake Trail, in the form of a rusty cannon.
Was it a relic from the Seminole Wars? Was it used in the defense of ancient Palm Beach from marauding hordes of grapefruit gatherers?
Neh-eh, says Nick Golubov of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County. “Those are decorative pieces.”
A faded photo of Palm Beach’s Lake Trail from 1897 shows rows of cannons pointed out across the lagoon. “There was a series of them along the waterfront. It had a Pirates of the Caribbean feel to it.”
The uncovered cannon likely predates the Civil War, but that’s about as much as you can tell about it without submerging it in an electrolysis bath for a year or more, he said. Bear in mind that in the 1850s, plenty of 100-year-old ships plied the seas and some had cannons that had been transferred from one ship to another. So it’s almost impossible to tell anything beyond maybe a country or century of origin, he said.
“Hose this thing and wipe it off with a brush and maybe you’d find something to guess at its origin,” Golubov said. There were plenty of them in the waters off the barrier island, and they’re not valuable, he added.
“The way they typically ended up there as displays is, somebody found them in 5 feet of water off the beach.”
What we can say with near certainty is, they didn’t come from an ocean-going vessel that foundered in Lake Worth. Because back then, Lake Worth was, well, a lake.