BLACKBEARD and QUEEN ANNE'S REVENGE A press conference was held in March 1997 to announce the discovery of what researchers believed to be Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge. From left to right: Mike Daniel and Phil Masters, of Intersal, Inc.; Richard Lawrence, Underwater Archaeology Unit; Steve Claggett, State Archaeologist; Wilson Angley and Jerry C. Cashion, Research Branch; and Jeffrey J. Crow, director, Archives and History. The ship is a model of what the QAR is thought to have looked like. A recovered blunderbuss barrel and a blunderbuss are visible on the table to the right.

Queen Anne's Revenge: The Wreck of Blackbeard's Flagship?

n June 1718 a large, heavily armed pirate ship ran aground in North Carolina waters off Topsail (now Beaufort) Inlet, setting the stage for one of history's enduring mysteries. The vessel was the Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR); its captain, the fearsome Blackbeard (Edward Thatch, or Teach), met a bloody end five months later at the hands of the Royal Navy. The QAR, once the flagship of a marauding pirate fleet, was left to break apart. As time passed, the facts of Blackbeard's life became the province of legend, and the wreck's location was lost to history.

In 1996, following a decade of research and unrewarding fieldwork near Beaufort Inlet, employees of Intersal, Inc., a professional maritime salvaging firm, honed in on a conglomeration of large cannons and anchors less than thirty feet below the surface. The location, position, and age of the wreckage, as well as the type of armament that accompanied it, suggested a single candidate. A press conference in Raleigh on March 3, 1997, announced the news with the cautionary note that definitive proof remained to be discovered. The site is now under the jurisdiction of the state of North Carolina, in partnership with Intersal. The site of the oldest known shipwreck in North Carolina waters through its presumed association with Blackbeard is one of the most important discoveries in the history of nautical archaeology. The debris field is protected by a strict security zone, monitored by electronic surveillance equipment linked via computer to local law enforcement officials. The Office of Archives and History presides over the excavation and preservation of the wreck through its Underwater Archaeology Unit at Kure Beach and the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort. In a cooperative venture, the remains have been under intensive investigation since 1996 with assistance from East Carolina University and other institutions.

Funding for the project has been a challenge from the outset. The General Assembly provided initial funds (supplemented by additional public and private donations), but by 2000 budget constraints threatened to curtail research efforts. In December 2001, the project received a welcome boost with a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. The "Save America's Treasures" funds are currrently being applied toward conservation and storage of approximately ten thousand artifacts recovered from the wreck. In the fall of 2001, educational outreach included the popular "QAR DiveLive," during which students were treated to live Internet broadcasts from the wreck site. Video feeds included underwater tours of the ship's remains, tours of the conservation lab, and interactive project updates. Public interest remains high as project officials share their findings.

Is this really Blackbeard's flagship? Will a definitive discovery emerge to erase all doubt? Perhaps not, but the evidence speaks volumes. What archaeologists presume to be the QAR offers tantalizing clues to eighteenth-century maritime activity in the Americas. With each new discovery, scientists and historians gain valuable insight in areas such as naval armament, ship construction, colonial provisioning, and seafaring life. The shipwreck, lost for nearly three centuries, offers a tangible link to the Golden Age of Piracy—a romanticized era long obscured by myth and legend.

Mark Anderson Moore
Research Branch

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