By John J. Galluzzo 

The sea around Hull continues to give up its secrets. 

“I run a fishing summer camp, a day camp in the mornings,” said Graham Whelan. “We were fishing on the beach behind the seawall at the Gut.” The fish weren’t biting much, as, Whelan said, things slow down when the temperature gets too high. “It was a slow week. Too hot.” 

It was a valuable lesson for the kids. Fishing is about much more than tying into the big one. There’s patience. There’s communing with nature, learning to work with it. You don’t have to catch fish to go fishing. 

At one point while out on the beach Whelan found something that looked suspiciously like a cannonball. Some of the kids, who had taken to exploring the beach during slow moments, casually mentioned that they had already seen it a few days earlier.  

“What? And you didn’t tell me about it?” Whelan said. 

“I did some research on my own,” he said. “I started calling all around Boston. I finally got referred to the National Guard Museum.” 

They had answers. 

The report came back in an efficient, almost military style. “Your description of this cannonball indicates it is a 12-pound solid shot, used by the M1857 Napoleon, 12-Pound Field Gun. The Napoleon fired a 12 lb. 5 oz., 4.62-inch diameter shot, very much like yours, so this places the age of the shot in the Civil War era.” This was the most common solid shot projectile of any caliber used during the Civil War by either the U.S. or Confederates. 

Was it fired from Hull? Probably not during the war, but maybe after. The Fort Revere area was only used for signal and communications purposes during the Civil War. No artillery. The most prominent military activity in Hull that could explain the presence of field guns and projectiles was the August 1868 and August 1869 Hull encampments of the First Brigade, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. First Brigade included the First and Second Light Artillery Batteries, which were equipped with 12-pound smoothbore cannons. 

Was it fired from Fort Warren, on Georges Island? One of Hull’s treasured Civil War tales is of the Ladies Aid Society knitting socks in the Village for Hull’s soldiers so vigorously that the sounds of their clicking needles drowned out the sounds of the shots being fired during drills at Fort Warren. But Fort Warren had a notoriously difficult time finding armament. At one point, the Secretary of the Treasury declared that a single ironclad ship sent by the Confederacy could take out the fort. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells refused to divert a Union ironclad to the north to protect the fort. Eventually, Massachusetts Governor John Andrew had to purchase guns overseas, fitting out a fort designed for 300 guns with just 97 in 1864. More came in 1865, but so, too, did the end of the Civil War. 

“As to why the shot would have been left in the place you found, it is impossible to know,” continued the report. “Depending on where the guns were emplaced and the direction of their fire, it could have been a short round due to wet powder or mishandling. But this seems unlikely, since they wouldn’t have been firing in the direction of Fort Warren. My best guess would be that it was discarded. It was likely in a fixed ammunition configuration, connected to a sabot [a device which ensures the correct positioning of a bullet or shell in the barrel of a gun, attached either to the projectile or inside the barrel and falling away as it leaves the muzzle] with metal strapping. If any part of that were damaged or loose, it would have been tempting to just throw it away.” 

Maybe it was thrown away then. Maybe it was shot from a cannon and has rolled around the sea floor for 160 years. Most likely, we’ll never really know its history. 

For Whelan, it was the find of a lifetime, so far. Beachcombers find all manner of things on Hull shore’s. Whelan noted bits of ceramics, like old saltshakers. 

“This is by far the biggest thing I’ve ever come across,” he said.