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Bits of military hardware dating back to the American Revolution have been dredged from the bottom of the Delaware River near Philadelphia.
Karl Van Florcke told The Philadelphia Inquirer he spotted the first one, a 24-pound cannonball, last month in the grate of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredge McFarland.
"I was talking to my wife on a cell phone and told her, 'I think that's a cannonball,' " Van Florcke said.
He found two more metal objects lodged on the grate, both of them parts of an array of cheval-de-frise, stakes hidden in the river to trap unwary British warships that might try to attack Philadelphia. One was the pointed iron tip fastened to a stake and the other a staple used to hold the array in place.
Van Florcke took the staple and iron tip to Fort Mifflin on the Pennsylvania side of the river Nov. 14, the 232nd anniversary of the fort's evacuation by the revolutionary army in 1777. Lee Anderson, the executive director, identified them. All three items have now been donated to the fort.
Anderson said the river was booby-trapped between Fort Mifflin and Fort Mercer in National Park, N.J., as part of Philadelphia's defenses.
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