We Found A Mine....Maybe?

[LittleMissMagic]

For any of you that don't know, I am a commercial diver. I just came off of a job where we were doing a site clearance on a GOM oilfield block and we thought we had found an old mooring ball on a dive about two months ago. We went back to remove this yesterday and it was not a mooring ball... It was riveted construction with what looked to be a spherical shape at one time. Now only one hemisphere is intact, and there is a bulkhead where the "equator" would be with a flange in place held on by square head bolts. We halted removal ops until an archeologist can look at it. It is about seven feet in diameter and on the top(or bottom?) of the intact hemisphere there is a padeye that was worn in two. The missing hemispere is only a ring of mangled metal with some timber embedded in a couple of places.

Anyway I have searched the web to the best of my abilites and not found anything like it. Perhaps there is some history or naval archeology buff on the sailnet that can help me figure out if this thing is a mine, or what. I know you folks have a diverse background. Thanks!

[erps]

Up here in the PNW, there are a few big steel mooring balls here and there that tugs use to wait out high winds and currents. The sound similar to what you described.

[LittleMissMagic]

This is riveted construction, which means pre welding, in an area that is roughly twelve miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in eighty feet of water. I don't believe this is a mooring ball. A Marine Archeologist told me once that rivets mean pre WWII. There was no oilfield operations going on in the area in that time period so no reason for a mooring.

[sailaway21]

Welding was a relatively new field in the maritime industry with WWII. Rivetting was still a common practise until some time after the war, although I'd probably agree with the Arch's sentiment that it probably dates from that or an earlier era. I, like you, am thinking something naval related-perhaps related to either gunnery exercises (floats) and, for my scientific wild ass guess of the night, it might have been a buoy used for supporting a submarine net at the entrance to a harbor. (not that I have any knowledge that submarine nets were used in the US as they were in Europe!)

[erps]

Maybe part of a boiler or something like that too?

[djodenda]

Yeah... Yeah.. But a mine!

That would be COOL!

Let's think positively people.

David

[poopdeckpappy]

Doing my best impression of Monk

It was riveted construction with what looked to be a spherical shape at one time. Now only one hemisphere is intact, and there is a bulkhead where the "equator" would be with a flange in place held on by square head bolts.

It is about seven feet in diameter and on the top(or bottom?) of the intact hemisphere there is a padeye that was worn in two. The missing hemispere is only a ring of mangled metal with some timber embedded in a couple of places.

in an area that is roughly twelve miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in eighty feet of water

My wild guess for the night............late 1800's contact mine, maybe from the Spanish/American War. Top half would be the only area to have the Heniz pins or horns and would expain why it's all mangled

Or, like sway said, it could be what's left of a target bouy

But, I'm gonna hang with ya and say, it's a piece of mid American history, cuz that sound better than a target

[LittleMissMagic]

One of my crew got some pictures, I'll try to get them and post them, but it may not be til next week.

[sailaway21]

Thanks, Jon. You've got our attention! A good mystery to contemplate.

[djodenda]

Please, God, let it be a mine or something equally cool!