I went hunting after work this weekend at Chaplin Bay in Bermuda, it wasn't my first choice of beaches but it was on my way home from work and it was low tide. Chaplin Bay is at the base of a steep hill which the Bermuda Regiment Base sits atop. So I got into my wetsuit and started hunting and didn't find much because the sand is in thick with the spring tides. There were quite a few local families and tourists on the beach as the sun was shining and the water was already starting to get up into the high 60's. I was working one corner of the beach about waist deep when I got a strange tone in the headset of my Excal 1000. It sounded like gold being masked by iron so I started digging, at a little over a foot down I hit something hard which I assumed was the iron doing the masking of what I figured was gold. Well I figured I better get the iron out of the way so I could get to the gold so I start prying on something fairly sizeable by the amount of resistance I was getting. I gave a good yank on my beach scoop and out pops a sand encrusted tube about 9 inches long and 2 inches in diameter with metal fins on the back like the fletching on an arrow. Now just before I gave that big tug on my scoop the oddest thought crossed my mind 'I wonder if this is an old artillery shell from the base??? NAAHH! What are the odds of that?'. Apparently the odds of that were extremely good because I was now looking at a WWII British Mortar Round balanced on the end of my scoop.
Damn! I thought (I actually thought a lot worse expletive deletives but kids could be reading this) 'What the heck do I do now?'. There were some kids just down the beach from me making a sandcastle and a guy out in the water snorkelling, plus a bunch of sun whorshippers enjoying the warm spring sun so tossing it back in the ocean would be unconscienable. You can't just dump a bomb in the trash barrel at the beach so that was out of the question, so I picked it up carefully (very carefully) and carried it back to my car where I carefully laided it in a towel and drove it home. The military base was closed by this time so no luck in taking it back to them (the military in Bermuda is more like a militia with compulsory service and not anything like the American or Canadian military).
I stashed the object in a bucket of water at the far end of the property; I say object because I had halfway convinced myself on the drive home that it was maybe just a flare and nothing to really worry about. Who wants to think that they are driving around with an unexploded mortar shell in the backseat which is probably highly unstable after all those years in the water. I did a bit of research on the internet and on this forum and sure enough it was an old WWII mortar round, double damn!
How do I get rid of this thing as soon as possible?? If I called the Bermuda cops I knew they wouldn't be able to handle it and might decide to blow it up in my backyard for safety's sake, (theirs not mine) ditto for the military but they were closed for the weekend. If you ever want to invade Bermuda, make sure you do it on a weekend, zero resistance guaranteed! Anyways, I decided the best course of action was to wait until Monday and drop it off on the way to work at the Bermuda Regiment as they would know what to do with the mortar or at the very least take it off of my hands. So that's what I did this Monday morning on my coffee break but that's another story.
Cheers,
BDA
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[attachment 55598 P4280006.JPG][attachment 55599 P4280007.JPG]
Damn! I thought (I actually thought a lot worse expletive deletives but kids could be reading this) 'What the heck do I do now?'. There were some kids just down the beach from me making a sandcastle and a guy out in the water snorkelling, plus a bunch of sun whorshippers enjoying the warm spring sun so tossing it back in the ocean would be unconscienable. You can't just dump a bomb in the trash barrel at the beach so that was out of the question, so I picked it up carefully (very carefully) and carried it back to my car where I carefully laided it in a towel and drove it home. The military base was closed by this time so no luck in taking it back to them (the military in Bermuda is more like a militia with compulsory service and not anything like the American or Canadian military).
I stashed the object in a bucket of water at the far end of the property; I say object because I had halfway convinced myself on the drive home that it was maybe just a flare and nothing to really worry about. Who wants to think that they are driving around with an unexploded mortar shell in the backseat which is probably highly unstable after all those years in the water. I did a bit of research on the internet and on this forum and sure enough it was an old WWII mortar round, double damn!
How do I get rid of this thing as soon as possible?? If I called the Bermuda cops I knew they wouldn't be able to handle it and might decide to blow it up in my backyard for safety's sake, (theirs not mine) ditto for the military but they were closed for the weekend. If you ever want to invade Bermuda, make sure you do it on a weekend, zero resistance guaranteed! Anyways, I decided the best course of action was to wait until Monday and drop it off on the way to work at the Bermuda Regiment as they would know what to do with the mortar or at the very least take it off of my hands. So that's what I did this Monday morning on my coffee break but that's another story.
Cheers,
BDA
[attachment 55597 P4280004.JPG]
[attachment 55598 P4280006.JPG][attachment 55599 P4280007.JPG]
Very interesting