A team of US Navy divers recovered five crates of live munitions from the bottom of Lake George, NY, in about 60′ of water. The munitions were found by recreational divers over the Labor Day weekend. The Navy divers are reported to have recovered 37mm shells, believed to be from an 1870s Hotchkiss gun, as well as German WWII anti-aircraft rounds. How and why the live munitions ended up at the bottom of Lake George remains a mystery.

The munitions apparently have whatsoever nothing to do with the history of the lake. Nevertheless, whoever dumped them happened to pick a location on the lake that has a legacy of bloody warfare. Today, Lake George is a tourist destination and many of the islands in the lake are popular sites for campers. The lake was not always so peaceful.

The munitions were reported to have been found north of the Mother Bunch Islands, not far from the chapel of St. Mary’s on the Lake on Heckler Island in the Harbor Islands. The secluded islands are used as a retreat by the Paulist fathers. The Paulist retreat, however, is built on what was once bloody ground.

On July 25, 1757, the islands were the site of a massacre of three to four hundred British and American troops by Indians allied with the French. Only twelve of the British and American force is believed to have escaped alive. It is said that when French General Montcalm and his army passed by six days later, they saw mutilated bodies floating in the lake near the islands.  The French were on their way to attack and burn Fort William Henry, at the other end of the lake. Their attack also ended in a massacre of prisoners, made famous by James Fenimore Cooper’s historical novel, The Last of the Mohicans.

Also not far from where the munitions were dumped, at the other other end of the Mother Bunch Island group, is an island named Floating Battery. The island gets its name after a floating battery or radeau was abandoned at the south end of the island around 1759. The floating battery was a flat bottomed barge-like vessel capable of carrying seven heavy guns. At least two floating batteries were built for General Abercrombie’s failed attack on the French Fort Carillon at the north end of the lake. Fort Carillon was renamed Ticonderoga by the British.

While the floating battery that gives the island its name has long rotted away, in 1990 an intact floating battery was found in just over 100′ feet of water a few miles further south in the lake.  The floating battery named the Land Tortoise was sunk by the British along with an entire fleet of smaller rowing barges to protect them from the French following the disastrous British losses of 1758.  The Land Tortoise slipped into deep water and was never recovered.  The cold fresh water preserved the vessel, which is considered to be the oldest intact warship in North America, and is the only surviving ship of its type.

So while the munitions found dumped in the lake are artifacts of more recent warfare, their location does recall a dark history of past bloodshed.  Thanks to Stephen Phelps for passing the news of the munitions along.