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Page 6
The Battalion
Friday, October 13,
San Antonio River may hide Alamo treasures
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JLn the heart of San Antonio’s fa
mous downtown Riverwalk, an un
likely group of adventurers hopes to dis
cover precious treasures of Texas’ past —
actual cannons used by Texas defenders
153 years ago during the 13-day Mexican
siege of the Alamo.
Basing their theories on preliminary tests
and the little-known eyewitness account of a
Texas army officer that the researchers "lit
erally stumbled across," the group is con
vinced that many of the Alamo fighters’ big
guns are buried in the bed of the San Anto
nio River, just outside the back door of the
Hyatt Regency Hotel.
Of course, neither the hotel nor the Riv
erwalk existed in May 1836 when Mexican
Gen. Juan Jose Andrade began a hasty re
treat out of Texas after receiving word that
Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna had been captured at San Jacinto.
. “But we know the course of the river has
not changed. We’ve checked it out. . . .
We’ve overlaid maps from just about every
decade . . .on top of one another,” said for
mer Fort Worth resident Wayne Gronquist,
part of the team that has been working qui
etly on the project since 1986.
“No one has ever searched the river for
them,” said Gronquist, who has been a his
tory nut since attending old Birdville High
School three decades ago.
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Nothing is certain. But come next Jan
uary, when the river level is lowered during
its annual maintenance draining, Gronquist
and his cohorts hope to bring in heavy
equipment and dig out the cannons they be
lieve have gradually sunk into the riverbed
since they were dumped there by fleeing
Mexican troops.
T wenty months ago, during an earlier
draining of the river, the search team
used a sensitive metal-detecting device
called a magnetometer and determined
de
how deep they will have to dig to find them.
“All we can do is keep going until we hit
bedrock,” said Briggs, who says the $18,000
project will be fun and worthwhile for its
near-certain finds — even if none of the
Alamo artillery is among the items recov
ered.
Although there are six cannons on dis
play at the Alamo, historians say there is
little, if any, hard evidence that any of them
ever saw action in the famous 13-day battle.
“Some of them came from private
sources elsewhere, with stories about where
will have more historic validity than the
ones the Alamo now has on display.
logic.
“It’s a matter of just pure logic. If you
find some, it is just a simple assumption that
they were the ones,” Bell said.
“That’s probably true. The reason that
the Texans didn’t ever move the cannons
themselves is that they didn’t have trans
port . . . and there is no reason to believe
that the Mexicans would have had trans
port for them either,” says Bob Boyd, au
thor of The Texas Revolution: A Dt
Day Account.
)ay by
the 1 1 lost ships of the Texas Nan
former Gov. Mark White gave Cusslti
ceremonial title of admiral in the ft
which was disbanded long ago. Thatp:
has been admittedly disappointing
adventurers thus far, although the
already has extracted a few artifactsft
one Texas Navy vessel and Gronquist
there are promising clues or encouta
research regarding the whereaboutsof
others.
there are, indeed, elongated metal objects
deep in the riverbed.
But whether the device was picking up
signals from old artillery or pieces of steel
left during the construction of the River-
walk, nearby bridges or debris from any
number of buildings erected over the years
is anybody’s guess, Alton Briggs, an Austin
archaeologist involved in the project said.
During that January 1988 effort, Gron-
uist, Briggs and their friends used hand
shovels and sifters in calf-deep water, but
could only explore about 18 inches into the
mud.
This time, the crew is hoping San Anto
nio and the Texas Antiquities Committee,
the obscure state agency that oversees ar
chaeological projects on most public lands
and waters, will give them permission to dig
much deeper. Briggs won’t venture a guess
as to how many cannons might be found, or
a
All the artillery and
ammunition that could not be
carried off were thrown in the
river.”
"Just getting them to the San Antonio
River would not have been that long a
haul.”
Representatives of the curator’s office at
the Alamo did not return repeated tele
phone calls by the Star-Telegram.
— J.H. Bernard,
Former Texas officer
they were found, but no real documenta
tion,” Tony Bell, an amateur Texas histo
rian and artillery collector said.
But because of diary entries by a Texas
army officer who reported he saw Mexican
troops dumping artillery and ammunition
into the river, historians say any cannons
the search team finds in January arguably
T he unusual urban expedition to find
the real Alamo cannons is being spon
sored by the National Underwater and Ma
rine Agency, which despite its official
sounding name is a private, fun-loving,
non-profit group headed by author and
shipwreck expert Clive Cussler. The orga
nization’s name comes from a fictional spy
agency in Cussler’s adventure novels.
Gronquist, an Austin attorney, is secre
tary of the organization, which claims it has
discovered or surveyed 55 lost shipwrecks
worldwide since it formed in 1978.
The group undertook the task of finding
B ut it was while searchine forclwul)
the Texas Navy vessels that restt
ers ran across the succinct, clearly writ
diary of J.H. Bernard, a surgeon ir
James W. Fannin’s command who haft
vived the Goliad massacre. On officialli
in San Antonio two months later,Bent
spent several days observing theactivitie
the Alamo’s Mexican conquerers.
In a May 24, 1836, entry, Bernard
that as the Mexicans were tearing ft:
walls and burning the famous fonts
pickets while preparing to get out of to:
“All the artillery and ammunition
could not be carried off were thrown in
w
river.
For years, there have been rumors
some of the Alamo’s cannons hadt
dumped into the river. But searchers
gambling that the diary of Bernard,ans
cated man who wrote in precise terms
pretty good clue that some are reallythti
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