| In
November of 1996, ten years after historic shipwreck
explorer Phil Masters began searching for the wreck
of Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s
Revenge in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, he hired
shipwreck researcher Mike Daniel to direct field
operations.
Daniel selected a survey area that he felt encompassed
the inlet’s early-eighteenth century channel
and bar. And it wasn’t long after Daniel’s
new nautical readings were observed that the crew
recovered several artifacts including a brass
blunderbuss barrel and a bronze bell with a date
of 1705. Since then, over 2000 artifacts have
been recovered and conserved.
I was fortunate to dive on the Queen Anne’s
Revenge on May, 2005 at the invitation of Phil
Masters and Dr. David Nateman, who is the Director
of the North Carolina Maritime Museum where the
QAR artifacts are on display (besides the rare
items on loan to Pirate Soul Museum).
My most vivid memory of the dive was when North
Carolina Maritime Museum archaeologist David Moore
and I were observing a photographer from National
Geographic take pictures of a crab walking in
and out of the bore of a cannon on the ocean’s
floor. The visibility was extremely poor due to
the shifting sands and thick silt. You couldn’t
see more than three feet in front of your face.
As I am lying prone along the length of the cannon
with my face close to the cannon’s bore
focusing on the photography, the silt and debris
began to settle. And then all of a sudden I look
around. As far as I can see are cannons! Cannons
everywhere!
It was an awesome sight to behold. But I don’t
think as nearly as overwhelming as those sailors
who saw the 40 cannons protruding from the gunwales
of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge.
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