Coast Guard Closes Canal, Ferry Forced to Return to Delaware
HIGBEE BEACH – A resident of Cold Spring, Lower Township, was walking on the beach, Monday afternoon, looking for fossils and shells, when he noticed what seemed to be an artillery shell.
“I wasn’t looking for that kind of shell,” Jim Silvestri told the Herald.
Silvestri said he often strolls around Higbee Beach, just south of the Cape May Canal, where he will look for interesting items on the beach, followed by taking a seat on the jetty and lighting up a cigar. Silvestri said he was doing his usual thing on the beach at around 3 p.m., April 28, when he spotted the shell on the edge of the canal.
“It wasn’t in the canal, or it would have been 20 or 30 feet under the water,” he said.
The ordnance, which Silvestri recognized as being a 3-inch shell, or about 75mm, had washed up near the beach at the edge of the canal. Silvestri put his cigar on hold for a moment and called the Lower Township Police Department. While he was waiting for the police to show up, he was contemplating what the shell could have been. A Naval History aficionado, Silvestri said the U.S. Navy had destroyers based out of Philadelphia that would have had 4-inch guns as well as some 3-inch guns. He said the Coast Guard Base-Cape May was a Naval base during World War II and they had vessels referred to as submarine chasers. The vessels ranged in length from 110 feet to 173 feet long, and the primary weapons were depth charges. According to Silvestri, the submarine chasers also had a forward 3-inch gun.
An officer from the LTPD returned Silvestri’s call and said he would show up with his sergeant. He said about 40 to 45 minutes later the two officers arrived and pulled the shell out of the water.
“At that point I was 90 percent sure it was artillery,” Silvestri said.
He said the officer told him the item, although it was discolored and showed the effects of being in the water for a long time, was definitely not something made of plastic or glass. It also looked, he said, like the entire shell, not a casing from a fired shell.
“It looked like it had corroded and the firing pin was exposed,” he said.
Silvestri said he went back to the jetty, sat on the rocks and finished smoking his cigar. As he was leaving the police told him they were calling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Later, he received a phone call from two U.S. Coast Guard petty officers who asked him to describe what he had seen. He had taken a picture of the shell, and they asked him to submit it to the national registry for unexploded ordnance, or UXO, which is kept by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Posted guidelines for anyone finding UXO are urged to follow these steps:
- Stop and do not move closer.
- Isolate and clearly mark the area.
- Deny entry to others.
- Never transmit radio frequencies near UXO.
- Never remove anything near UXO.
- Never touch, move, or disturb UXO.
- Keep a minimum of 1000 feet away from areas on fire that contain suspected UXO.
- Report discovery of UXO to your immediate supervisor and/or dispatch.
“I told the officers what I thought the shell was and encouraged them to stay away from it,” Silvestri said.
He believed that, if it was an unexploded shell, it was likely unstable after staying in brackish water for perhaps 80 years. He said there are various theories on what caused the explosion that sunk the U.S.S. Maine on Feb. 15, 1898, at the beginning of the Spanish-American War. One theory was that the ammunition onboard was old and unstable, leading to an explosion aboard ship.
Silvestri left the area before the Atlantic City Bomb Squad arrived on the scene. He said he later thought the ordnance should only have been approached by a bomb squad or a robot. He said, had the shell gone off, the officers’ bulletproof vests wouldn’t have mattered. He said the 3-inch or 75mm rounds would take out a tank or seriously damage a naval vessel.
By the same token, he said, “Closing the ferry terminal was an overreaction.”
On Monday, the Coast Guard closed the canal and the ferry, MV Delaware, was forced to return to Lewes, Delaware.
According to information provided by James Salmon, a spokesman with the Delaware river and Bay Authority, the U.S. Coast Guard shut down the canal after the ordinance was spotted at low tide. The closure forced the Cape May-Lewes Ferry to return to the Lewes, Delaware, terminal with its 70 passengers. Salmon said the DRBA reserved hotel rooms for the passengers who wished to spend the night. Others deboarded and drove to their destination.
As in the past, local officials reached out to the Atlantic City Bomb Squad, which neutralized the ordnance. The bomb squad has made a number of appearances at Cape May County over the years to remove or detonate World War II munitions that appeared on the beaches.
Salmon said the ferry was given the green light to resume operations with the 10:30 a.m. departure on Tuesday, April 29.
Cape May County Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Christopher Leusner said OEM was made aware of the matter but was not involved. He said finding ordinance sometimes happens, including finding it in loads of seashells being used for residential purposes.
The Lower Township Police Department was not immediately available for comment.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or call 609-886-8600 x-128.
