Finders Keepers with a Captured Cannon for the Past 125 Years

First captured by American forces back in 1898, this historic old gun wasn't left behind when the U.S. Navy pulled out of the Philippines a century later.

This week marks the 125th anniversary of the cease-fire in the 10-week-long Spanish-American War, which saw the U.S. and the Empire of Spain square off in a series of sharp engagements spanning across the Caribbean and Western Pacific. As part of the conflict, a squadron of warships under Commodore George Dewey crushed the Spanish fleet in the waters west of the city of Manila in the Philippines, then later landed a force to capture the colony – leading to the final shots of the campaign, the "mock battle" against Fort San Antonio Abad on Aug. 13, 1898.

Among the items captured by Dewey's forces were dozens of intact cannons ranging from antiques that had been in the islands for 300 years to modern German Krupp-made steel-constructed coastal artillery guns. These were typically dismantled and left where they lay, with follow-on correspondents from stateside newspapers dutifully snapping photos of these trophies to send back home.

The Library of Congress is full of such period images.

Captured Spanish guns in Manila Philippines 1898 — (Photo: Library of Congress)

The U.S. Navy eventually put some on display at the budding naval base and magazine at Cavite, outside of Manila.

U.S. Naval Magazine, Cavite, Philippines, November 1918. Note the two repurposed Spanish artillery pieces. (Photo: National Archives, American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs)

Then came the Japanese invasion in 1941 during World War II, in which American and Filipino troops tried in vain to stem the onslaught that, in the end, led to more than three years of Japanese occupation of the islands.

With the post-war rebuilding of the U.S. Naval Magazine at the giant Subic Bay Naval Station, an old Spanish piece was again installed at the gate. This gun, designed by Col. Francisco Elorza, director of the Royal Trubia Arsenal, was an M1860 "Muzzle Loading Rifled" model cannon with a 6.3-inch bore.

1862 Trubia gun at the US Navy Magazine Subic Bay — The Trubia 6.3-inch gun, captured during the Spanish American War in 1898, at the Naval Magazine gate at Subic Bay sometime before 1992.

When the U.S. turned the Subic Bay installation over to the government of the Philippines in the 1990s, Navy Seabees unmounted the Trubia cannon and brought it home to their base at Gulfport, Mississippi. Because "finders keepers" with war trophies, right?

Eventually, the cannon was passed on to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby where it is now on display.

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