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BLACKBEARD - Recovering "Queen Anne's Revenge"

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Bianca
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« Reply #45 on: December 08, 2008, 05:04:50 pm »








                      Shipwreck clues could clear Blackbeard of sinking his ship to swindle his crew


                        He was history's most feared pirate, striking terror into seafarers as he cut


                                a bloodthirsty swath through the Caribbean and North Atlantic.
 





By Jasper Copping
Last Updated: 06 Dec 2008
Telegraph.co.uk




Blackbear may be innocent of some of the charges against him

Photo:
HULTON ARCHIVE


But new research has found that Blackbeard may be innocent of one of the most notorious charges against him.

For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered.

But marine archaeologists, who are conducting a diving expedition on the vessel's presumed wreck, now believe it may have run aground by accident. They have even found evidence suggesting that Blackbeard made repeated attempts to rescue the stricken craft.

They have discovered a large pile of ballast, including anchors and several cannon, in the middle section of the ship. They believe Blackbeard ordered the crew to move the heavy items from their original positions, near the bow of the vessel, back towards the stern in an effort to lift the vessel's bows from the submerged sandbank onto which it had run.

It follows the discovery of an anchor on the sea bed, 450ft (137m) away from the ship, which experts believe would have been used to try to winch the boat free.

Chris Southerly, chief archaeologist for the project, said: "If Blackbeard had intended to sink the ship on purpose, this seems an awful lot of labour and effort to make it look good to the crew, to allay their fears that he was abandoning them.

"The main ballast pile, which has two large anchors and at least six cannon and a huge pile of ballast stones, is just about amidships, roughly where the upper aft deck would have started.

"It would have been very hard to move things further aft than that, because the deck is on a different level and there is a wall in the way. They may have moved things as far aft as could easily be done, to try to save the ship and then abandoned the effort, realising it still wouldn't save the ship. The impression, from what I have seen, is that it was an accident."

The ship ran aground on a sandbank about a mile from shore on June 10 1718, as Blackbeard's flotilla of four vessels was heading for Beaufort Inlet, in the British colony of North Carolina.

Days earlier, Blackbeard had blockaded the major port of Charleston, South Carolina, and knew that the Royal Navy would be closing the net around him. Historians have long believed that he deliberately grounded his largest vessel so that he could split up his followers in the ensuing chaos, thus "downsizing" his crew and ensuring the loot was transferred to another vessel.

In the event, that is precisely what he did, escaping with the treasure and stranding 30 men on a nearby island.

But Mr Southerly added: "I think he probably just made the most of a bad situation."

Blackbeard is believed to have been born Edward Teach, or Edward Thatch, in Bristol, in 1680. He fought as a privateer for the British, attacking Spanish and French ships in the War of the Spanish Succession before turning to piracy. His troop captured a French slave ship called La Concorde near the Caribbean island of St Vincent in November 1717 and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge.

It became his flagship, sailing alongside three smaller sloops. His flotilla is said to have taken 45 ships.
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