Amity Carronade Move / 2011-10-16
Carronade Conservation
One of the long-term projects on which the NJHDA is working is the conservation of a carronade recovered form the wreck site of the ship AMITY that wrecked in 1824. The piece was recovered by Dave Haines, a charter dive boat captain who recently passed away. The video shows the carronade being moved from our artifact cleaning area to a building where we have a little more room to work on it.
Updates
We'll add updates on this page as we make our way through the conservation process. To this point, the piece was stored in water for many years and has undergone passive desalinization. It has been moved into a basic solution of lye. It will remain in this stage for several weeks. After that, we will pack it in mossy zinc for galvanic cleaning. This is a very old method for conserving iron, and it isn't practiced much any more. Most conservationists that we've consulted with discourage this process, opting to use electrolytic reduction instead. However, there are still a few who consider the method worth keeping in their "arsenal" of processes. We elected to use this method due to the good condition of the piece and the lack of electrical facility at our venue.
Afterwards
After we have finished cleaning the piece, we will make it available for viewing in our New Jersey Shipwreck Museum. The museum is located in The InfoAge Science History Learning Center and Museum in Wall.
