Rare cannon allegedly smuggled out of Irish waters by a gang of British treasure hunters and acquired for a knockdown price by a Tower of London official were at the centre of a decades-long dispute between British and Irish officials, according to newly released records.
Irish officials made extensive efforts to convince UK authorities to return the bronze cannon after claiming they were “illegally smuggled” from a Waterford shipwreck and sold to the Tower of London.
The cannon, each measuring 2.75 x 1.8 metres, were allegedly removed in the early 1970s from a shipwreck off the south-east coast of Ireland, near the Metal Man navigation beacon at Tramore Bay, according to papers from the Irish national archives in Dublin, reported by PA Media.
They were then displayed as a tourist attraction at the Royal Armouries and Tower of London, with no reference to Ireland.
The newly released documents show that Irish officials from the National Museum of Ireland and department of foreign affairs, and the chief state solicitor, repeatedly sought their return.
Documents also show that the Royal Armouries said it “wished to resolve the controversy”, partly over concerns that the cannon could be targeted by the Provisional IRA, and expressed fear that further publicity would again “target the Tower, or its officials”.
Irish authorities reportedly began investigating the provenance of the cannon – said to be worth at least £30,000 each in the 1990s – after reports in the Irish newspaper the Sunday Press, now defunct, and the Times. The publications alleged the cannon had been smuggled out of Irish waters by a “gang of British treasure hunters” before being sold in an Essex scrap garage at the “knock-down price” of £3,250 to a senior Tower official who did not ask where they came from.
The Maritime Institute of Ireland told the Tower that “both Irish and English law had been broken [during the acquisition of the items] by the failure to report the cannon to the Receiver of Wreck”, an official body that records details of important items.
A 1993 report from Eamon P Kelly, the acting keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, stated that Tower officials had become “defensive” in 1974, claiming there was “no evidence” the cannon had been “removed recently from the sea bed” and “that the original story of Irish provenance was spread as a cover”.
