The Plank
Day 1: Caribbean
Day 2: Charleston
Day 3: Carolina Coast
Day 4: Beaufort
Day 5: Bath
Day 6: Ocracoke

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The loss — and rediscovery — of the Queen Anne's Revenge

By KELLY SIMMONS, Staff Writer

JUNE 1718, BEAUFORT INLET

The tide was high as the Queen Anne's Revenge neared Beaufort.

The outer bar should be just within reach, Blackbeard told himself. I can beach her there at low tide.

But to his lieutenants he said: "Go before me to Bath and meet with the governor. Ask his pardon. I'll meet you there once the hulls of the ships have been scraped and cleaned."

With many of his men now gone -- and with low tide near -- Blackbeard ordered his remaining crew to haul the cargo and treasure off the Queen Anne's Revenge and onto a nearby sloop. With that transfer completed, Blackbeard hoisted the anchor of the Queen Anne's Revenge and he leaped from his huge flagship onto a smaller sloop.

The Queen Anne's Revenge was but a ghost ship now as the winds pushed her toward shore. In the distance, Blackbeard and his crew could hear the huge ship's hull scraping rock as she drifted into shallow waters. They watched the ship jolt, and knew that her hull had been torn and was filling with water. Blackbeard watched his old ship tip on her side and begin sinking.

The heavy cannons aboard shifted, rolled to one side and begin sliding to the sandy bottom, piling atop each other one by one.

* * *

BEAUFORT, JULY 1997

"Once I spotted that ball of cannons, I knew we were on to something," said Mike Daniel, the diver who located the Queen Anne's Revenge here.

For nearly 300 years, those cannons have remained a massive concretion encrusted in sand, covered with coral. Fishing line and shrimp nets are caught on jagged edges.

"In my opinion this may be the most important underwater archaeological site ever found in the new world," says Intersal president Phil Masters, who conducted the research that pinpointed the location of the ship.

The wreck could prove to be the oldest sailing vessel ever recovered off North Carolina's coast. From it, historians might learn much about early ship construction, early navigational tools, life aboard ship.

"If it turns out not to be Blackbeard's ship, it's still tremendously important," said Steve Claggett, a state archaeologist with the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. "Being able to investigate and closely study things like that would be a rare opportunity."

Much of the ancient ship is gone, disintegrated, washed away by years of tropical storms, hurricanes, changing currents and shifting sands. But there in the murky water, just a mile offshore and only 20 feet below the surface lies ship remains that have snagged the hooks, lines, nets -- and curses -- of countless fisherman through the years.

© Ray Giroux A solid brass bell dated 1709 and believed to be from the Queen Anne's Revenge. The bell, shown here before cleaning, was recovered by Eugene Brunelle, chief engineer and dive coordinator aboard the Pelican III.

To date, divers have made only one trip to retrieve parts on the wreckage. On Nov. 22, 1996, they brought up a brass bell, a blunderbuss barrel, a sounding weight, and several cannon balls. The brass bell is dated 1709 -- and was likely stolen from a Spanish merchant ship. That places the wreck in the right time period to be Blackbeard's ship.

More convincing is the large number of cannon that rests on the bottom. And from the wreckage, divers are studying a 24-pound cannon ball. Its size and weight are consistent with the kind of large, powerful cannons that Blackbeard mounted aboard his Queen Anne's Revenge.

* * *

In the coming months, divers will return to the wreck site, recover more artifacts and search for anything that may positively identify the ship as Blackbeard's.

© Ray Giroux Brunelle holds part of a blunderbuss, a gun from Blackbeard's era resembling a sawed-off shotgun.

It's unlikely any documentation -- maps, the ship's log -- could have survived 278 years underwater, Daniel says. But there still could be some cargo aboard -- items that might shed some light on the mystery that still swirls around Blackbeard.

For instance, the medicine bottles that Blackbeard demanded in Charleston a week before the ship sank, Daniel said, could still be on board.

"We're hoping the shipwreck will turn up bottles and possibly residue in them so we can see what the diseases were on board and hopefully find out what he was going after," Daniel said. "That's the sort of things the shipwreck should help us determine."

There might also be silver coins and gold dust on board as well, but Masters doubts it will be a significant amount.

Related story: Who gets the booty from Blackbeard's ship?

"We don't expect the QAR to be a major treasure wreck," he says. "All indications are pirates got most if not all of their booty off before they abandoned her."

* * *

The shifting sands of the outer bar -- just beyond the mouth of the harbor -- made the inlet difficult to navigate in the early days. Sea captains knew that if they did not follow a specific line into the inlet, they'd beach their ships.

What was called the White House then -- today it is the Hammock House -- was their focal point. By setting their compasses on that house, which sat above a knoll near the Beaufort shore, the captains could sail into the inlet and harbor without harm.

"The trick was to know where the highest points of water were at any given moment," Masters said. "There are at least 30 different shipwrecks in this area, most of them at the outer bar."

* * *

It could be years before the wreck site yields all of its relics and artifacts, Masters said.

Intersal already has invested $400,000 in the project, which began in 1986. At that time, Masters already had shipwreck salvage experience. He had helped locate ships sunk off Florida and Nova Scotia. Fascinated with Blackbeard, he decided to search for the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Both in the U.S. and in England, Masters tracked transcripts of pirate trials and pirate depositions. In a deposition by pirate David Herriott, Masters found the information he sought: a precise location of where the Queen Anne's Revenge was last seen sinking.

From there, Masters began hunting navigational maps from 1718 to determine where the outer bar was located at that time. Once he had that, he began to gather people and equipment to mount a search. Among those he enlisted was Mike Daniel.

In November, on the last day of their two week search, Daniel and Masters thought they had found something. Out on the water, something big was registering on their magnotometer. Diver and photographer Ray Giroux dove down to investigate.

"It might be a cannon," Giroux told Daniel when he surfaced. "You'd better come in and take a look."

© Ray Giroux Phil Masters, president of Intersal, holds a sounding lead recovered by Daniels. The sounding lead, marked XXI and weighing 21 pounds, was used for testing water depth.

Both Daniel and Masters dove into the muddy water.

"I saw things lying all over the place," Masters said. "Bits and pieces of things -- you don't know what they are."

But Daniel recognized a muzzle projecting from the side of a mound of stone.

He could see cannon balls on the ground nearby.

What appeared to be anchors, encrusted in sand, lay atop the wreckage.

He marvels at how close to shore the mighty flagship has rested: "If you could have only seen through that murky water, it would have been right there."

* * *

From the east side of the top of Fort Macon, it's possible to see the actual shipwreck site -- if only you knew where to look just to the south.

Nothing marks the spot. Commercial shrimp boats pass over the the spot daily, as do smaller fishing boats. From that spot, Blackbeard would have commanded a clear view of the Beaufort shoreline, visible between the banks of Shackelford Banks and the land that would later be developed as Fort Macon.

In the years since 1718, shifting sands and mighty storms have constantly changed the inlet. Still, the outer bar has remained just beyond the mouth of the harbor, sometimes making the water as shallow as 12 feet in spots.

* * *

As high tide reached its peak, the swirling murky waters of the inlet covered the monstrous hull of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

That should provide my cover for a day -- a week if that crew remains in Bath, Blackbeard told himself. Once they see the wreckage though, they'll be on to my game.

I must dispense with the rest of this crew, Blackbeard told himself, but I'll keep a few learned hands with me.

"Off!" he barked to the malcontents, forcing them to swim to a nearby uninhabited island. They'd spend a day, maybe two, before some passing merchant ship would pick them up, Blackbeard knew.

Blackbeard's scheme had worked: He had divided his crew and now the treasure and cargo he carried aboard his small sloop could be split 40 ways -- not 400 ways.

It was a pity, Blackbeard told himself, to sink that fine vessel but she was too big and too heavy to safely navigate the shallow waters of nearby rivers and inlets.

The Queen Anne's Revenge -- like many who had sailed her but were now marooned -- had served her purpose.

The fat cargo and other valuables now loaded aboard his sloop, Blackbeard told himself, would serve a much greater purpose.

© Ray Giroux From left: Eugene Brunelle holding a 24-lb. cannon ball; Mike Daniels, president of Maritime Research Institute, holding the bell; Walter Matheson, captain of the Pelican III, holding a sounding lead.