Irish officials made extensive efforts to convince UK authorities to return extremely rare bronze cannons after claiming they were “illegally smuggled” from a Waterford shipwreck and sold to the Tower of London, records show. A decades-long dispute over the ownership of the cannons raised concerns that they could be targeted by the Provisional IRA.
The cannons, each measuring nine-foot-by-six-foot, were allegedly removed in the early 1970s from a shipwreck off the south east coast of Ireland, near the Metal Man at Tramore Bay, according to newly released papers from the Irish National Archives in Dublin.
They were then displayed as a tourist attraction at the Royal Armouries and Tower of London with no reference to Ireland. The cannons, known as “sakers”, bore the Tudor rose and were made for King Henry VIII in the 1540s by the Owen Brothers and are two of only 10 examples of these types of cannon known to have survived the centuries – with a price tag in the early 1990s of at least £30,000 each.
Irish authorities began investigating the case after reports in the Sunday Press and Times of London alleged the cannons 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.
