A scrap dealer in central Vietnam’s Nghe An Province was rewarded last week for handing two centuries-old cannons to the provincial museum two years back.

According to Nguyen Duc Kiem, vice director of the Nghe An Museum, his museum presented Nguyen Van Binh with a reward from the provincial People’s Committee on Saturday.

In August 2012, Binh who trades in scrap metal hurried to the Lam River in Vinh City – the province’s capital – after some fishermen said they had spotted a heavy “iron bar” there.

He then had his people scoop up the object from the river.    

After some six hours, the object was brought onshore and turned out to be an old cannon.

Then Binh learned that some other fishermen had also fetched a similar cannon in a nearby area and sold it to other scrap dealers. He managed to purchase it from them right away.

Instead of reselling them, the scrap dealer donated the cannons to the Nghe An Museum shortly afterward.

The two cannons are both coated with rust and moss after staying submerged for a long time.

The first cannon weighs over two metric tons and measures 3.7m in length and 18cm in width. The top-end of its barrel is 21cm in diameter.

The second one weighs almost 500kg and is 1.38m long.

Both the guns are cylindrical and have distinct parts.

According to experts from the Vietnam Institute of Archeology, the two cannons date back to the late 17th and early 19th centuries.

In August 2013, a team of aquatic archeologists from Australia surveyed the site where the guns were discovered.

They said that the cannons were likely to be transported on a battleship during the Southeast Asian country’s civil unrest caused by the Trinh and Nguyen Lords between 1627 and 1673, or on Japanese merchants’ ships during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The ships might have been wrecked in the Lam River on their way, the experts surmised.

Kiem, vice director of the Nghe An Museum, added that one of the two cannons is currently the largest among the seven preserved at his museum and another in neighboring Ha Tinh Province.