Tucker and Cannon on the Move
Each Wednesday morning, Tucker Wachsmuth takes an artifact from his extensive and eclectic collection to our Community Historian class at the Heritage Museum. Sometimes what he takes is directly related to the day’s main topic. Sometimes it’s obliquely related to Pacific County History and serves as a conversation starter. That was the case last Wednesday when he dragged in a small (but very heavy) cannon.
“This came from the Cavour,” he told us. “Built in 1881, she was a 1,354-ton square-rigged bark that stranded on the sands two miles south of Cape Disappointment Light on December 8 1093. She was the first Italian vessel to be wrecked on the Columbia River Bar.” Tucker went on to tell about its “recent” history, including stories of when it sat in his front yard when he was a boy in the fifties and how he and his brothers used it to shoot a tennis in the schoolyard two and a half blocks away.
Bette Lu Krause
“I’ve been told that it was a Lyle Gun,” he continued. “But I always thought they were used to shoot lines from shore to ship.” He turned to class member Bette Lu Krause (former merchant marine and tugboat captain) and asked if there were also Lyle Guns on ships. “Oh, yes, she assured him, but the ones I’ve used were hand-held and were meant for ship-to-ship use.”
(Note #1: Tucker first met Bette Lu back in 2017 when she gave one of the Oysterville Schoolhouse Lectures about her career as a mariner. “I ran off to sea at 24 to become a merchant marine,” she had said. “From 1976 until 1994 I worked on all kinds of ships – freighters, tankers, research vessels, and for several years I was a tugboat captain in Prudhoe Bay.”)
(Note #2: According to Merriam Webster, a Lyle Gun is a mounted gun that resembles a small brass cannon and is used to fire a projectile attached to a line of rope to an extreme range of about 700 yards in rescue operations at sea.)
H.M.S. Pinafore poster
In the next breath, Bette Lu said, “The Peninsula Players are just beginning rehearsals for H.M.S. Pinafore which will open March 29th and run through April 14th. Is there any chance you’d let us used your cannon as a set piece?” And the arrangement was made on the spot. After the class was over, Bette Lu led Tucker and the cannon next door to the Playhouse where stage manager/set designer Andy Tauber was hard at work but paused long enough to give the cannon a warm welcome, indeed!
Community networking at its finest, I say. Oysterville Lectures and Community Historians and Peninsula Players to say nothing of Gilbert and Sullivan and Wachsmuth and Krause! Wowie Zowie! This Peninsula is always alive with possibilities!
