Pepsi 2

Another Pepsi bottle from Port Mahon. Don't worry...no tall tales with this one!

Coked up

This Coke bottle comes with a remarkable story, which is why it is prominently displayed in the window. This is another beach find, but one with a strange story. When I found this, the top was sealed with cork and melted wax, with something inside. It was hard to tell what, though, since the cork seal had leaked and allowed salt water in. Anyway, I took it home and removed the seals, then shook out what looked like a plastic bag (it was covered with green, slimy algae). When I opened this bag, there was a wad of sodden paper. I dried the paper by placing in on the back grate of an operating box fan (I learned this from years on the water...when your cash gets wet, dry it on the fan). When it was dry, I was able to carefully unfold it, and written on it was a message in rather flowing script. It appeared to be a note from the captain of a sailboat who was soloing across the Atlantic in the Fall of 1970. The note said that the boat's name was the "Connie Mae" and that it had been de-masted in a storm. I'll spare you some of the details, but the skipper indicated that he thought his chances of rescue/survival were low, and then he revealed (in the note) a secret.

Evidently, the guy had been an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant in Vietnam, off of his second tour of active duty. The note said that during "unofficial" operations in Laos, he had acquired a number of gold artifacts, as well as a substantial amount of heroin, which he planned to sell. Under imminent threat of death on his sinking sailboat, he revealed the hiding place of both the gold and the heroin in what I assume is his last note. He said that the loot was buried in the corner of an old tobacco drying barn in North Carolina, and provided details on how to find it.

Well, a year or two after finding this note, I happened to be within about 30 miles of this location while on Spring Break, and a few of us decided to see it the note was for real. Under cover of darkness (on a rainy night), we located the barn and snuck in. Using an old G.I. trenching tool, we dug in the corner of the barn where the note said the stuff would be. After only about three inches, we hit something hard. After taking away a bit more dirt, we found three large ammo cans buried in the corner of that barn.

As for thier contents...well, let's just say that my student loans are paid in full, and also that it happens to be april fool's day.

Bottle from the Bay

Here's another soda bottle found in the Delaware Bay. This one was rolling in the surf at Woodland Beach. See the barnacle scar near the bottom?

Pepsi

Another Pepsi bottle from Port Mahon, Delaware. I managed to flip this photo, so it's right side up!

Voodoo Jar #2

The top of this bottle was originally "Mr. Nut" - a hollowed nut I found floating in the bay while trawling. I added the stick, drilled the eye holes, and put on the copper wire arms all while at the helm of a boat repeatedly going 3 mph over (more or less) the same bottom - in January.

The other embellishments include assorted odds and ends in the jar (beach glass, buttons, etc.), a copper bell, a bone fish, skull and crossbones ribbon, and a cork studded with rusty pins and nails...

Authentically vodou? Hardly. Cool looking approximation of the trope? Absolutely.

isded

I can't get this image of an old "isded" bottle flipped around, so you'll just have to deal with it. Another Port Mahon find...

Voodoo Jar #1

I'm fascinated by vodou culture and art. To this end, I've been making "voodoo jars" - they aren't not so much authentic to that tradition, but they borrow heavily from vodou concepts. This one if filled with spiky belemnites (Delaware's state fossil), with various spiky embelishments and a medallion with the French word for spine ('epine') painted on it...

Here's an odd thing

Despite its phallic appearance in this image, this is a hand carved wooden bottle. The top "bottle" part is hollow, and the base is either a burl or else roots. I can't tell the wood type, but I wonder is it's cypress?

More stuff I pulled out of the water #11

Another find from Port Mahon, DE. This is an old Royal Crown ("RC") cola bottle (not to be confused with "Crown Royal"). This is from around 1936, and is pretty good shape for living in the Delaware Bay for more than a few years. As you can see from the back label, it was bottled nearby in Dover, DE. The silk-screened graphics are wonderful, even after a long period at sea.

More stuff (someone) pulled out the water #10

This is a garden variety Bromo-seltzer bottle that my old buddy Kirk found on Indian Island, in Great South Bay, Long Island, NY. Nice cobalt blue, huh?

More stuff I pulled from the water #9

This is a bottle from Sun Spot soda that I found on the beach of Port Mahon, Delaware many years ago. The other side claims that this soda is "The food you drink". Makes you wonder if it tasted like meatloaf or something...

More stuff I pulled from the water #5

This old bottle also came up in an oyster dredge. I'm not sure it's all that old, but you gotta admit the barnacle bases add a certain nautical touch. Looks like it spent some time on the Flying Dutchman.

More stuff I pulled out of the water #2

I know I've been getting away from the weapon/weapon-related item theme lately, but I wanted to share some of the many things I've "rescued" from various regional waterways. Since I also collect old bottles, I'm throwing in the ones I've found at sea. We'll circle back to the weapon related stuff later, including some I've pulled from the water (or beach). As you'll eventually see, Flintlock's Arsenal is more than a collection of arcane weapons - it represents my own personal Wunderkammer.

Anyway, I found this bottle in an oyster dredge on one of Delaware's leased oyster grounds during a spat survey about 15 years ago. The side is embossed with "MAR-MAT Brand BEVERAGES" and "Millville, NJ" along the bottom. The image shows a waiter or bus-boy in traditional garb, and his features may be those of an African American youth (it's hard to tell due to surface erosion). I'm not sure of the date on this one, but it is probably pre-1950's at least.

More stuff I pulled out of the water #1

This is an old soda bottle, intact, from the former 1800's resort of Collins Beach, on the upper Delaware Bay. The hotel and resort were lost in the October 1878 hurricane, the effects of which being well documented here. The bottle is embossed with "J.E. EDWARDS" and "CHESTER, PA" on one side and a giant "JE" on the other, and obviously predates 1878.

This was taken from the beach at the site of the old hotel last year; there are a bunch of glass and pottery shards in the peat - a ton of artifacts (intact) would probably be found with a little digging. As a known site with surface artifacts, I was loth to take this bottle (as opposed to the "at large" things I find on the beach or bay), but it was literally rolling on the surface and would probably have been lost to the Bay at the next high tide. This site would probably benefit from the attentions of serious archeologists to document life on the Delaware Bay at that time.

A buddy of mine found a well-preserved brass gas lap fixture at the same spot, which he kept. I'm not sure I would have, but who knows?

You would need a canoe or kayak to get to this spot, and if you go, I encourage you to disturb as little as possible.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of....

..rum.



OK, OK. I know this isn't a weapon, unless you want to kill someone slowly through their liver. Regardless, this is a rum bottle from the 1750's. I found this, in its present state, in a bottom trawl off of Reedy Island Delaware, in the Delaware River. My crew at the time was ready to chuck it back overboard thinking it just an ordinary liquor bottle. I recognized the shape as "old" right away and rescued it from nautical re-internment.

I base the date on bottle shape, a nice exposition of which is presented in the plates between pages 108 and 109 in Robert F. Marx's Shipwrecks in the Americas (I've excerpted a page here without permission from the publisher - I claim "fair use" for the purposes of academic study, but I will gladly take down the image if anyone takes exception) and other sources.


It's not clear if this came from a shipwreck or from some other source, but if it is from a wreck, the above reference offers the Pusey, Captain Good, arriving from Jamaica to Philadelphia and sunk in 1757 off of Reedy Island as a distinct possibility, although there may be dozens of others recorded or non-recorded.

Now here's the really cool bit: the original cork is still down inside the bottle! Maybe pressure pushed it in, or maybe some precolonial boozehound didn't have a corkscrew. Regardless, this is one real piece of history that the Delaware has given up.