It was a bad day for the USS Shark on September 10th, 1846, when she tried to cross a shoal to leave the Columbia River in Oregon. The Shark was a 12 gun schooner built in the Washington (DC) Navy Yard in 1821 for the US Navy, and was originally captained by Matthew Perry. The ship was built with a shallower draft than existent Navy ships for anti-piracy and anti-slavery work, which took her to the West Indies and the west coast of Africa. She spent five years in the Mediterranean protecting American interests there.
She was armed with 10 18 pounder carronades and 2 other 9 pound guns. When she later washed up on the beach, 3 of her carronades were exposed, one of which was dragged up on the beach. It is now in a museum on Cannon Beach, named for the recovered cannon. The other two were found in 2008 and recovered by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and sent to Texas A&M University for conservation.
The Conservation Research Laboratory primarily does recovered maritime and ship conservation projects, and have several on their plate, They are also currently working on the artifacts recovered from the sunken city of Port Royal, Jamaica, a haven for pirates in the 17th Century, and the French ship, the Belle, lost near Texas.
Pictures from Texas A&M University's Conservation Research Laboratory website
