I had a couple cool acquisitions from Brandon that were from some friends who knew what I collected and brought them to me. These never made it into the show but were arranged in advance. Always good to have good friends! For reference the cannon ball in the images below is a 10-inch ball from Spanish Fort. Looks better than a milk crate!
The first is a heavy chain reportedly from an ironclad ship sunk north of Vicksburg in the Yazoo River. It does seem period and has a good word of mouth trail but nothing concrete. But I got it at a fair price and didn't pay a big provenance uplift so all is good. They called it an anchor chain but I suspect there were a few uses of big chain on an iron clad so hard to tell for sure that is what it is. It is about 10 feet long when laid out straight:
The second item is the steel track that was laid in a wood gun emplacement deck that the back of a barbette carriage rolled on. It is roughly 12 feet long. The front of the carriage rotated on a pin and the back end moved on wheels left and right as necessary to aim the gun right and left. This track gave the wheels a smooth low friction surface for the gunners to more easily aim the gun. This particular one sat in a lady's front yard in the original emplacement overlooking the Yazoo river at Snyder's Bluff until just a handful of years back. Somehow someone talked her into letting it go. Notice it still has 4 of the spikes/screws that attached it to the wood platform long since rotted away.
These are now some of my favorite and heaviest relics. I just have to figure out how to display them!
Forumite Trader Sean was with me and got to enjoy the fun of strapping down all this iron on a trailer in 100% humidity on a hot 93 degree Mississippi day. I think by the time we got it and all our show items loaded we had sweated off about 5 pounds each. I love this hobby!
