Raising Blackbeard's "Queen Anne's Revenge"

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                                                         APPENDIX C


                                              Declaration of Protected Area






     



http://www.qaronline.org/rcorner/manplanintro.htm

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                                          R E C E N T   N E W S   A R T I C L E S








                                            Little object, big find from shipwreck






October 28, 2008 -
By Jannette Pippin
Freedom ENC

One of the smallest artifacts recovered during the latest dive expedition at the shipwreck presumed
to be Queen Anne's Revenge is getting big attention.

The circular, dime-sized piece has been resting on the ocean floor for 300 years, but early examination indicates it may be the first coin to come from the site believed to be the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard.

"Just looking at it you can't see what it is, but from an X-ray of it you can see a little image and what looks like a head (of a coin)," QAR Conservation Field Supervisor Wendy Welsh said of the silver piece.

Welsh said a coin weight with a bust of Queen Anne was recovered from the site during a 2006 dive
but no actual coins.

Shanna Daniel, assistant conservator at the QAR lab in Greenville, said it will likely be one of the first items from the 2008 dive reviewed at the lab because it could reveal important markings used in confirming important information, such as the time period of the shipwreck.

"I think this is going to be one of our top priorities; it could have a date or something on it," she said.

But the coin wasn't the only artifact of interest.

Also among this year's finds are a guard for a dagger or small sword, pieces of pewter plates, shards
of ceramic, grinding stone fragments, cannon ball and hundreds of concretions containing artifacts yet to be uncovered.

Some of the artifacts recovered from this year's dive, which ends Friday, will be available for the public to view Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. The museum is the repository for the conserved artifacts from the QAR site and currently has three cannons as well as other already conserved items on display.

Inclement weather has cut this year's dive expedition back to six weeks rather than eight, and plans to raise a 12th cannon from the shipwreck site on Tuesday were hampered by weather conditions as well.

The QAR team hopes to bring the cannon up later in the week but it wasn't possible in time for today's public viewing of the artifacts.

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Archaeologists know the vessel was well-armed. A total of 25 cannon have been identified and
11 recovered to date.

What Chris Southerly, archaeological field supervisor for the QAR project, finds interesting is what
they don't normally see: the personal affects and arms the crew would likely have taken with them when they abandoned the ship.

The dagger guard, he said, is one of those items that give a little more insight into the people who
may have been onboard.

"Artifacts as they exist by themselves are interesting to look at and study, but it's what they tell you, either directly or indirectly, about people that gives you a snapshot of the past; what was maybe on the mind of an 18th century (person) when they ran aground out here," Southerly said.

The QAR project has gained national and international attention since its beginning, and Jeffrey Crow, deputy secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resource's Office of Archives and History, called it "the most important shipwreck that has ever been found in North Carolina waters."

Crow said the project has been a stimulus for heritage tourism and noted the strong attendance at the N.C. Maritime Museum, which is the repository for QAR artifacts and has featured Blackbeard and pirate exhibits.

"Just since August, when the museum opened its new exhibit, Knights of the Black Flag, more than 50,000 people have come through the museum and total visitation is now at least 250,000," Crow said. "Those are great indicators of the importance of the museum and our underwater archaeology folks."

Following Crow's comments, an unusual artifact from the QAR project was transferred to the museum
for its use. The lead object was apparently flattened after the shipwreck but was once a tubular piece of a toilet and ran from the "seat of ease" and out of the ship to the water.

The artifact was recovered from the shipwreck in 2005 and has now been fully conserved and can be displayed.

This is the third season of full excavation at the QAR sites. With the conclusion of the 2008 field dive, about 50 percent of the shipwreck's footprint will be completed.

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                                       Cannon recovered from presumed Blackbeard ship






Associated Press
Published: Thursday,
October 30, 2008 at 8:30 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, October 30, 2008

ATLANTIC BEACH, N.C. – Researchers have recovered one of the big cannons from the wreck of
the vessel presumed to be Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

 



Cindy Burnham,
Lucky Shot Productions

Raising a cannon Thursday from the presumed ship of Blackbeard are
Capt. Tom Piner, captain,
N.C. Marine Fisheries Shell Point;
Jerry Spencer, crew, Shell Point (hidden);
David Moore, Queen Anne's Revenge archaeologist; and
Wendy Welsh, QAR field conservation supervisor, foreground.

Rough seas delayed the retrieval earlier this week, but the 2,000 pound, eight-foot cannon was
brought to the surface near Beaufort Thursday morning.

It had rested on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean for nearly 300 years.



A news release from the state Department of Cultural Resources said the cannon will spend the next five years
at the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab at East Carolina University in Greenville,
being prepared for museum exhibit.

This is the 12th cannon to be recovered from the shipwreck site.

Experts think Blackbeard’s crew abandoned the ship after it ran aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.

The wreck was discovered in 1996.

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                      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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Blackbeard's striking appearance and character has inspired many subsequent depictions of pirates, most recently in Pirates of the Caribbean, the Hollywood trilogy starring Johnny Depp. He is said to have had 14 wives and would tie burning fuses into his long beard during battle, to give himself a demonic appearance.

On one occasion, while playing cards with a member of his crew, he is said to have shot him in the kneecaps under the table.

After the loss of the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard sought and was granted a pardon. But he continued to seize ships, and the Royal Navy were sent to track him down. He was killed in a battle with the Royal Navy in November 1718.

Blackbeard's head was cut off and his body tossed overboard. According to legend, his headless body swam around his ship five times before he finally died. His head was attached to the bowsprit of a Navy ship and his skull was later used as a punch bowl.

The wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge lies in about 23 feet (seven metres) of water. It was first discovered in 1996 but the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources is now funding a project to excavate and recover items from the ship, as it is feared they could be lost as sand around the wreck is eroded away.

Previous expeditions have recovered items from the stern section and the current project, which started last month and is expected to continue until November, is examining the mid section, where the ballast pile is located.

The team have so far recovered 9,000 flecks of gold, which add up to just a quarter of an ounce (seven grams), suggesting that Blackbeard was able to get the treasure off the ship.

Mark Wilde-Ramsing, project leader, added: "The crew don't seem to have been in survival mode. They were able to get most things they wanted off."

Items recovered so far include navigational instruments, carpentry tools and bells.

The new findings have provoked controversy among experts. Angus Konstam, author of Piracy: The Complete History, welcomed the research but said the discoveries could still be consistent with Blackbeard having deliberately run the ship aground.

"Blackbeard would have had to try to dupe his crew," he said. "When the ship went aground, it was in his interest to make it look as if it was an accident, to avoid getting lynched by his own crew. But the great thing about archaeology is that it can come up with new ways to stand theories on their head."

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                          THE SPOT WHERE SHE SANK




VIDEO AND MORE HERE:


http://www.blackbeardlives.com/day4/qar.shtml

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Chuck Beckley
/ Jacksonville Daily News

A cannon breaks the surface at Beaufort Inlet as it is recovered off the coast of Atlantic Beach, N.C., on Tuesday. The cannon was raised from what is believed to be the sunken wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. 









             More clues point to Blackbeard’s last ship - Cannon raised from wreckage off Carolina coast



          ‘Everybody’s got an emotional attachment to Blackbeard. He is a very colorful part of our heritage.’






— Bradley Rodgers
East Carolina University
By Tom Foreman Jr.
May. 24, 2005
OFF THE COAST OF
ATLANTIC BEACH, N.C.

- Researchers Tuesday raised another cannon from an underwater site 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) offshore, and hope it will help prove the sunken wreckage was once the flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

“We knew it the first day and we still have absolutely no doubt that she’s the Queen Anne’s Revenge,” said Phil Masters, whose Florida-based research firm located the wreckage in 1996. “There is no other ship lost at Beaufort Inlet with anything more than 10 cannon, nor more than 110 tons that we know of.”

The team has recovered more than 20 cannons from the site so far; since its discovery, more than 16,000 artifacts have been retrieved from the wreck.

Working Tuesday morning near the mouth of Beaufort Inlet, the researchers hauled the smaller of the two cannons — a 6-foot-long, 1,000-pound gun (2 meters long, 454 kilograms) — from the wreck. An effort to lift a second cannon, about 8 feet (2.4 meters) long, failed. The team will try again Wednesday.

The expedition is the first for the researchers since a pair of professors published an article in a scholarly journal last month casting doubt about the find, saying it looks more like a mid-18th century merchant ship.

“Everybody’s got an emotional attachment to Blackbeard,” said Bradley Rodgers, an East Carolina University archaeologist and co-author of the article. “He is a very colorful part of our heritage. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people are jumping on the bandwagon.”

Project director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said his team has found strong clues the Queen Anne’s Revenge sank at the site in 1718 — though the team hasn’t been able to confirm it.

“Until such time as we find that absolute one artifact that has initials in it, we’ll continue to keep the door open, but I can tell you that door’s just about closed,” Wilde-Ramsing said.

Blackbeard, whose real name was believed to be Edward Teach or Thatch, led a band of sea robbers who plagued the shipping lanes off North America and the Caribbean in the early 18th century.

Historians believe the Queen Anne’s Revenge was the French slave ship La Concorde, seized by Blackbeard and his men near the island of Martinique in 1717.

The story goes that Blackbeard ran aground with Queen Anne’s Revenge and its sister sloop Adventure near what is now Beaufort Inlet. After abandoning the ships, Blackbeard was eventually tracked down at Ocracoke Inlet by volunteers from the Royal Navy and killed in a battle Nov. 22, 1718.

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The bell, cannon balls, and other items recovered from the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge on display

in the the North Carolina Maritime Museum.

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Media Credit:

Courtesy of N.C.
Department of Cultural Resources


A researcher examines an anchor at the wreck of the presumed Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's flagship,
near Beaufort.

The city's tourism witnessed an upward surge because of the discovery of the find.

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SOME OF THE RECOVERED ITEMS FROM 'QUEEN ANNE'S REVENGE'

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                             PBS Announces SECRETS OF THE DEAD "Blackbeard's Lost Ship"


                                            - Premieres Wednesday, April 22, 2009 -






Apr 14, 2009
PBS

Archaeological Discoveries From Queen Anne's Revenge,
Legendary Flagship of Infamous Pirate Blackbeard,
Rewrite History

Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard, was the most notorious pirate of his day. At the height of his regin,
he commanded a fleet of four ships and a crew of 400 men. They were ruthless seafaring raiders who terrorized vessels in American waters. In 1717, Blackbeard even blockaded the city of Charleston, crippling its economy. Eventually he was caught and beheaded by a posse from the Royal Navy. Now, 300 years later, a marine archaeology team believes it has found Blackbeard's sunken flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, off the North Carolina coast. The remains of the shipwreck are helping to solve the most enduring mystery surrounding the infamous pirate captain - did he accidentally run his ship aground or was it a deliberate plot to betray his crew and cheat them out of their share of the plunder?         

SECRETS OF THE DEAD "Blackbeard's Lost Ship" airs Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET on PBS. Narrated by actor Liev Schreiber ("CSI," Manchurian Candidate), the documentary takes viewers
on an underwater archaeological adventure. The discoveries from the ongoing research are rewriting
the final chapter of Blackbeard's wild life. 

Featured experts include Lisa Briggs, marine archaeologist; Angus Konstam, author of Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious Pirate; and David Moore, curator of nautical archaeology, North Carolina Maritime Museum.

"It's amazing how history comes full circle," says Jared Lipworth, executive producer of SECRETS OF
THE DEAD. "Three hundred years ago the colonists were faced with a pirate who instilled fear into the hearts of all who crossed his path, and today we're seeing a troubling resurgence of deadly piracy off the coast of Somalia. While we recognize today's pirates as the terrorists they are, we often have a tendency to romanticize the swashbuckling villains of the past. This program aims to set the record straight." 

"Blackbeard's Lost Ship" captures the rigorous and painstaking efforts to salvage the fragile wreckage. Among the many challenges facing the archaeological team are risky dive conditions and artifacts made fragile by centuries in salt water. Much like evidence from a crime scene, each item must be tagged and catalogued before it can even be picked up off the seabed. From tiny game pieces to guns encased in sediment to cannons weighing more than a ton, every artifact reveals more detail about life aboard an active pirate ship. The team even found gold dust - a staple of every pirate legend!

The team was able to identify the ship as the Queen Anne's Revenge by carbon-dating wood from the hull, x-raying concreted artifacts and retracing makers' marks and dates on the weapons. But that was only the beginning. Analyzing the position of an anchor and a pile of cannons leads one expert to posit that the ship had clearly run aground by accident. But when the testimonies of Blackbeard's crew are taken into account and the cannons are examined more closely, it seems more likely that the grounding was carefully orchestrated by a pirate captain who was trying to get rid of his crew. After beaching the ship, Blackbeard transferred all the valuables onto a smaller vessel, left the majority of his men stranded on a nearby island and then sailed off into the sunset.

The archaeological treasure trove found on the Queen Anne's Revenge provides a unique opportunity to reexamine Blackbeard's legacy. Three hundred years after his death, experts can piece together an archaeological puzzle that separates fact from fiction and reveals the true story of the infamous pirate.

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                                    Blackbeard's Legend, Legacy Live on in North Carolina 






Blackbeard and his crew as depicted in the National Geographic Channel docudrama,



                                                       Blackbeard: Terror at Sea.



Photograph
© Dangerous Films,

courtesy
National Geographic Channel



Willie Drye
for National Geographic News
March 7, 2006

In 1718 the pirate Blackbeard met North Carolina Governor Charles Eden in the colonial capital of Bath and promised to help the local economy in whatever way he could.

Nearly three centuries later, Blackbeard is still making a financial contribution to Bath. Visitors are drawn to the quiet, picturesque town to learn about the days when Blackbeard and his lawless crew ruled the seas.

"He's one of our biggest draws," said Bea Latham of the Historic Bath Visitor Center.

"Most people who come in do ask about Blackbeard's time here."

Blackbeard's brief but memorable residency in North Carolina is part of the story depicted in the new television feature Blackbeard: Terror at Sea. The docudrama will air March 12 on the National Geographic Channel.

(National Geographic News is a division of the National Geographic Society, which is part owner of the National Geographic Channel.)

The film is based on research by London author Dan Parry and David Moore, a curator with the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. They uncovered the story of a man who seemed determined to be remembered long after his death.

Bath residents know that their town's most famous citizen is one of history's most notorious criminals. But they're still fond of him.

"We like to think that maybe he was a little bit different when he was here in town," Latham said.