Blackbeard & Queen Anne’s Revenge

(+4)

Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), Blackbeard’s flagship, ran aground in North Carolina’s Beaufort Inlet and was abandoned by the pirate in May 1718. Its location is one of America’s longest standing unsolved mysteries.

On November 21, 1996 – almost exactly 278 years after the pirate’s death in a raging sea battle off North Carolina’s coast – Florida-based research, survey and recovery firm, Intersal, found what may prove to be the waterlogged remains of QAR.

Since the 1996 discovery, a team from Intersal, the NC Department of Cultural Resources and the NC Maritime Museum has mounted several diving expeditions, gathering evidence like a prosecutor preparing for trial. Although mostly circumstantial, the facts are adding up.

More than 2,000 artifacts already have been recovered, but it was one of the first finds, a bronze bell, that helped researchers date the wreck to the proper era.

The heavily encrusted bell raised some interesting questions once it was cleaned. Chemical treatment revealed crudely cast one-inch high letters embossed around its waist that read “IHS (Iesu Hominorum Salvator) Maria” and “ano de 1709.”

The crudeness of its casting and the lettering suggests it was made in a Spanish or Portuguese New World colony. The bell is believed to be too small to have been the QAR’s. A possible explanation of its presence in the wreck is that while operating as the French slaving ship Concord, the ship participated in the 1711 pillaging of Rio de Janeiro.

The large number of cannons found near the wreckage is yet another piece of circumstantial evidence added to the scales. In Blackbeard’s day the QAR had at least 40 cannons aboard, and to date 22 cannons have been discovered.

Researchers are using electrolysis treatments on three cannons to remove the hundreds of years of crust. This process could take as long as four years to complete. Cannonballs and cannon shot also have been uncovered.

A pewter platter, a syringe, a blunderbuss and wine bottles, all from the appropriate time period, also have been found. Scientists are testing wood from the ship’s hull to determine when the trees were cut down and what type they were, and they are analyzing ballast stones found in the wreckage, too.

Those involved with the project say its success will be better measured in years. Researchers believe it will take more than five field seasons of three to five months duration each to excavate the site completely. Every month in the field typically results in another 10 to 12 months of conservation and laboratory work.

You can see some of the recovered artifacts in a new exhibit at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina.