Archaeologist takes second look at cannon

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Many historians believe a faction of the Roanoke colonists fled the island, possibly to the Chesapeake Bay or other nearby areas.

While Mather doesn't necessarily favor the Lost Colony theory, he hopes to find evidence of a shipwreck.

He is aided in his search by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Thomas Jefferson, based in Norfolk. The ship's advanced side-scan sonar capabilities and other devices help him map the ocean bottom to find any irregularities that might indicate other artifacts or ballast stones from a ship.

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The NOAA's Office for Ocean Exploration funds Mather's work, which is in its early stages.

He has yet to find anything that demonstrably appears to be a shipwreck, but Mather is undeterred. Still, he has his doubters.

Ivor Noel Hume, former chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg and noted author on America's early English settlements, doesn't believe the Lost Colony possibility.

"There is nothing to be said about it," Noel Hume said. "It's a loose cannon. It really is."

Noel Hume said the cannon more likely was jettisoned during a storm, possibly after it had been in use for decades, off any of a number of ships sailing up and down the coast after the 1607 founding of Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in North America.

"A lot of ships went up and down the East Coast. A lot of ships sunk that we don't know about," he said.

"A pirate would take on cannon and put it on another ship. They would keep on using them. You could argue that gun was still on a ship in the 1620s."

He also said he doesn't agree with the cannon's 1580 dating: "You can't date it that closely, I think."

Mather and his colleagues face months of work to analyze the data collected for his July trip to the site, which will determine if he returns to the site.

"We have different sensors that we're using that are starting to point to specific areas," he said. "There's some cause for optimism."

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