[masraum]

Originally Posted by johnco

you guys don't seem to realize there is NO industry around this area except fishing. no plants, no manufacturing, no oil wells near.. never was, never will be. it's a ridge of high ground surrounded by swamp where they dredged the river to have enough dry ground to build a subdivision. if not for the levee built many years ago, it would be underwater. it still goes underwater at times. not that many decades ago people were hunting and trapping here.

The one other hypothesis that seemed remotely possible to me is the ball mill hypothesis. I broke one of the small black balls, and it looks and acts like the black tar that I remember being on wooden telephone/power poles when I was younger. I could also see the balls being used in a ball mill.

Looking at a map, I agree, I can't imagine any industry around there, but some of my reading has indicated that it is/was an important port, so I could imagine something being lost overboard.

I washed one of the balls. It seems like a natural stone. It's not 100% regular or homogeneous throughout although it is almost completely white. There are spots of what looks like crystaline structures in the balls. I wouldn't expect the media for ball mills to be natural stone, but then I don't know much about them.

I measured the 4 balls that I have and they are all around 18 mm across (+ .03mm).

I don't know a lot about caliber, so I did some research and found this.
"while the larger .75 caliber British “Brown Bess” would have fired a .69 cal. ball." Apparently the difference in size between the ball and barrel bore is called "windage". So it seems that if these were bullets (which is what I hope) that they were designed for a .75 caliber gun.

I can't really find anything about any material other than lead ever being used for bullets, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.