It was a good article, certainly. Seven of the guns were sent in 2017 to Texas A&M University where they were cleaned, had rust removed, debris was taken out of the barrels, and in the case of two of them, the "dry ball" cannon balls and touch-hole spikes rendering them inoperable were removed. The cannon were effectively "blued" with tannic acid, which turned them black, and covered with a protective coating. They are now on temporary display at the Alamo within the arcade, muzzle down, and out of the weather and direct sun. Eventually they'll be housed within the museum. Many of them were quite old; some fully a century old at the time of the battle.
There is a thread here about the building of the cureña or field carriage for display of the 16-pounder, which apparently started out as a 9-pounder or 12-pounder but was progressively bored out to a 16-pounder. It was apparently retrieved from an 1817 shipwreck in Matagorda Bay. Elated and excited by the news elicited from this recent thread, I rushed down to the Alamo the other day and talked to some people there who told me that the 4-pounder that is situated out in the Alamo Plaza is likely to replaced at some point by a 6-pounder. Should be pretty cool! There were over 800 firelocks of various kinds at the Alamo and 24 cannon, of which only 21 were mounted. The latter ranged from the 18-pounder, which went missing in 1917 prompting some to assume that it was used in some kind of scrap drive, and which was at the southwestern bastion--all the way to "esmerils" or swivel guns. There were thought to be three 9-pounders and a 6-pounder on the north wall, which was anchored on the northwest corner by the 16-pounder.
Thank you for remembering the Alamo!
