The cannon will be restored at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, after which it will become part of an exhibit there.
The retrieval of the bronze cannon, crusty with mud and shellfish and stones after spending more than three centuries on the sea floor, capped a search that began by state archaeologists in 1978.
Authorities who pulled the cannon from about 12 feet of water offshore, where the bay becomes the Gulf of Mexico, carefully washed away some of the debris with a water hose, exposing the shiny bronze exterior featuring a king's crest and two dolphins that decorate its top.
"We never expected a find of this magnitude," said Brett Phaneuf, 26, a Texas A&M University graduate student and an assistant state archaeologist who was among the divers to pull up the cannon.
"It's exceptionally exciting. It's a very rare find. There were only about 1,100 of these made before 1750."
The cannon is about 6 feet long and weighs some 1,500 pounds and is believed to have been on La Salle's personal ship, l'Belle, which sank after it was blown adrift during a storm in 1686. The ship was a gift of King Louis XIV of France.
"This is tremendously exciting," said Barto Arnold, state marine archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing for an archaeologist to locate a site of this historical importance, this cultural importance. It's every archaeologist's dream to find a highly decorated bronze gun like this. It's just a tremendous thrill."
The wreck is believed to be the second oldest discovered in Texas waters, preceded only by a 1554 wreck discovered off Padre Island.
The cannon, lifted by a crane from a barge to a trailer draped with a Texas flag, will arrive in Corpus Christi at 10:30 a.m. today and will be kept in a vat inside the museum for electrolysis restoration, said Rick Stryker, director of the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History.
He said he did not know how long the process would take, but restoring the bronze cannon probably would not be as time consuming as restoring iron artifacts, such as anchors. That can take about a year, he said.
"It's a tremendous thing for the state of Texas to find evidence of one of the key early explorers, particularly one that didn't make it back," Stryker said.
The find is exciting for Corpus Christi in particular, he said. "We're in an area on the Texas coast that the Spanish government was interested in gaining control of and the French were interested in gaining control of," he said. "We've got a lot to represent the Spanish interest in this area, but this is the first thing that we'll have in this museum that represents the French. . . . This is our heritage."
Stryker said he did not know how long the cannon would be in town or whether it would be a permanent fixture in the museum.
The cannon Thursday was kept in a secret area. It will be protected under high-security conditions until it reaches the museum, Stryker said. "There's only one La Salle, he only lost one ship, he only died on one expedition," he said. "We're not going to find another bronze cannon from l'Belle. This is it."
Thursday's discovery is from one of more than 2,000 shipwrecks along the Texas coast, including hundreds in Matagorda Bay. The bay was once a center of commerce.
Under state law, the Texas Historical Commission and the Texas Antiquities Committee have jurisdiction over recovery and preservation of Texas antiquities.
Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle became renowned as the first European to track the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. With his expedition in 1682, he claimed all the land drained by the river and its tributaries for France and called it Louisiana after King Louis XIV.
Before that, he had traveled through North America in Canada and as far west as present-day Ohio. He subsequently explored the Great Lakes region and established the first European settlement in Illinois on the Illinois River near what is now Peoria.
In 1684, he sailed from France with four ships and more than 300 colonists to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.
He missed the river by mistake and in 1685 set up a colony near Matagorda Bay about 80 miles northeast of what now is Corpus Christi.
Disease ravaged the settlement and the colonists were threatened by Indians. By 1687, La Salle marched inland in hopes of finding the Mississippi River and he was murdered in Texas by some of his own men.
A pink granite statue commemorating La Salle's Texas expedition stands today near Indianola, a 19th century port that was devastated by hurricanes in 1875 and again in 1886. The community never was rebuilt. The 12-foot-high statue, which weighs tons, gained notoriety of sorts when it was moved by the 175 mph winds of Hurricane Carla, which struck the area in 1961. The storm, causing damage put at $300 million, is the largest hurricane on record.
Staff writer Karen Brooks contributed to this report.
By Associated Press