Only a few surgical items remained. Some may have been carried off the sinking vessel and others may have been lost in salvage. Among those that remained were silver ear syringes, buckles for tourniquets, a metal bedpan, and rubberbands for suturing arteries. These bands still retained their elasticity after 100 years of submersion! Students of ordnance and weapons had a field day with the _Cairo’s_ contents. Apparently the vessel carried no cutlasses, for none was found. Instead there were Army foot artillery swords of the “Roman” model of 1832 with their handsome cast-brass hilts reflecting the cultural interest in classical objects that had been so popular when they were adopted. Perhaps the use of Army swords instead of Navy patterns reflected the conflict over control of the river gunboats, or perhaps it meant that weapons were scarce just then and any usable type was welcome. The latter is the more probable explanation, for the muskets found on board were smoothbore model 1842’s instead of the rifled models of 1855 and 1861. [Illustration: _The _Cairo’s_ “Southern Belle” cooking range is brought ashore. In the background are the ironclad’s boilers._ Courtesy, Vicksburg Post] [Illustration: _The _Cairo’s_ bell._ Courtesy, Vicksburg Post] But the discoveries related to the cannon told much, much more. All the guns had been ready for action when the ironclad went down. They came up the same way—fully loaded, sights in place, and percussion locks mounted for firing. Here military historians noted the first significant new information. Each cannon had a white sighting line painted down the top of its barrel. No surviving ordnance manual or document mentions this practice. Yet it was an obviously sensible thing to do. It gave the gunner a quick visual line that he could pick up easily in the dark casemate. It would have been just as helpful in the enclosed gundecks of traditional warships, so now scholars wonder how long it had been done. All guns boasted two sets of sights: the new adjustable and precise brass patterns and the older strap-on tubes for quick point-blank firing. Further discoveries showed that the Civil War ordnance men had anticipated at least one modern efficiency technique. They had color-coded the wooden boxes that held the artillery projectiles—red for explosive shells, white for solid shot—so that the proper round could be identified quickly and easily.