> [banner] [Image][IBM]
> [toolbar]
>
> March 4, 1997
>
> Hulk of Blackbeard's Flagship Believed to Have
> Been Found
>
> By WILLIAM J. BROAD
>
> [H] e was an ogre, tall, bloodthirsty, strong,
> with a booming voice, a savage appetite and a
> bushy black beard that hung down to his belly.
> Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, was one of
> history's most famous and cruel pirates, a man who
> apparently loved torturing his victims as much as
> he loved a drunken orgy.
>
> Sailing from a base in North Carolina, he sacked
> and pillaged the Carolinas and the Caribbean
> during the golden age of piracy, directing a large
> fleet as well as his own flagship, a captured
> French merchantman that he packed with 40 guns.
> His bloody rampage was interrupted temporarily
> when his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, sank in
> June 1718 off the coast of Beaufort, N.C.,
> seemingly lost to history with whatever cannons,
> cutlasses and plunder it may have carried.
> Blackbeard and his men escaped.
>
> Now, a team of marine archaeologists from a
> private company and the state of North Carolina
> have found what they believe to be the shattered
> hulk of Blackbeard's flagship lying off Beaufort
> in a watery graveyard strewn with hundreds of lost
> ships. On Monday in Raleigh they announced the
> discovery, which was made in November after a
> decade-long search.
>
> The archaeologists said the wreck had already
> yielded a foot-tall bronze bell, the brass barrel
> of a blunderbuss, a cannonball and a lead sounding
> weight. They said the big anchors and large number
> of cannons at the site strongly suggested that the
> ship is in fact the Queen Anne's Revenge, though
> positive identification has yet to be made.
>
> "I'm 90 percent convinced this is the ship," Dr.
> Richard Lawrence, the underwater archaeologist for
> the state of North Carolina, said in an interview.
> "It all just falls into place -- the date on the
> bell, the blunderbuss, the cannon that we've
> observed, the lack of any other candidate in this
> area. The ship is right where it should be."
>
> Proving its identity might take four or five
> years, Lawrence said. No matter what, the experts
> plan to excavate the ship as an archaeological
> monument, putting its artifacts in a museum rather
> than selling them.
>
> "It's a significant discovery," said Dr. Jeffrey
> Crow, director of the Division of Archives and
> History in the North Carolina Department of
> Cultural Resources, which oversees the underwater
> archaeology work. "Everything points to it being
> associated with Blackbeard."
>
> But, he said, no matter what its identity, the
> ship is old enough and well enough preserved to
> make it "the most important underwater archaeology
> discovery since the U.S.S. Monitor," a Union
> ironclad that fought a famous Civil War battle in
> 1862 and was found in 1973.
>
> Although lost treasure figures prominently in the
> Blackbeard legend, the experts said no booty was
> likely to be found if the ship proves to be
> Blackbeard's. Historical records suggest he took
> any treasure with him before the ship sank.
>
> Still, they said the find was historically
> exciting because only one other pirate ship had
> ever come to light: the Whydah, the ship of Samuel
> (Black Sam) Bellamy, which sank off Cape Cod,
> Mass., in 1717. The new discovery is thus seen as
> likely to shed light on an era whose history is
> riddled with myths and distortions.
>
> The sunken ship believed to be Blackbeard's lies
> less than two miles off the North Carolina coast
> in 20 feet of water. The area off North Carolina
> is often referred to as the Graveyard of the
> Atlantic because the sea bed there is littered
> with hundreds of vessels lost over the centuries.
>
> The state is keeping the exact site of the wreck a
> secret because of the risk of plunder by modern
> pirates.
>
> "It's in surprisingly good shape," Lawrence said
> of the sunken ship. "We saw some evidence of
> wooden hull structure, and hopefully there's a
> good deal of that remaining.
>
> "To us, that's as important as the artifacts. The
> hull might shed light on the historical accounts
> of this ship and teach us things about
> shipbuilding in the early 18th century that aren't
> recorded anywhere else."
>
> In the last decade or two, technological advances
> have opened much of the secretive sea to divers
> and robots, resulting numerous discoveries. The
> wreck believed to be the Queen Anne's Revenge was
> found after a hunt begun in 1986 by Philip
> Masters, who now heads Intersal, a company in Boca
> Raton, Fla., that searches for historic
> shipwrecks.
>
> "It's taken a lot of hard work," Masters said of
> the discovery in an interview. "We spent hundreds
> of thousands of dollars over the decade, and we
> finally got lucky."
>
> Blackbeard unleashed his reign of terror from 1716
> to 1718 in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic
> coast of North America. Apparently he turned to
> piracy after a career as a privateer working for
> Britain during the War of the Spanish Succession,
> which lasted from 1701 to 1713.
>
> Sailing from North Carolina (with whose governor
> he quietly shared his booty), Blackbeard attacked
> the coastal settlements of Virginia and the
> Carolinas. An 18th-century writer called him a
> "meteor" that "frightened America more than any
> comet." He also ventured throughout the Caribbean,
> capturing many ships and building a large fleet.
>
> "Many who knew him thought him insane," Frank
> Sherry said in "Raiders and Rebels," a 1986 book
> about pirates. Sherry said Blackbeard was happy to
> cow his victims with acts of outrageous terror. It
> is said that on one occasion he forced a captive
> to eat his own ears.
>
> In May 1718 Blackbeard blockaded the harbor at
> Charleston, S.C., for a week, with Queen Anne's
> Revenge in the lead. In June, while coming up the
> coast after the action, the flagship ran aground
> on a sandbar as it tried to enter Beaufort Inlet.
> Eventually it sank, although Blackbeard is thought
> to have taken whatever booty was on the ship with
> him.
>
> After a spell of drunken debauchery and feasting
> on Ocracoke Island off the tip of Cape Hatteras,
> Blackbeard was set upon by a force of British
> troops sent from Virginia, who killed him on Nov.
> 22, 1718, during a bloody engagement. The famous
> pirate was beheaded, and the victors hung his head
> from the bowsprit of a conquering ship.
>
> Masters began his hunt for the lost flagship in
> 1986, and early in 1987, in the rare-book room of
> the New York Public Library, he found what he
> characterized as the key to the wreck's location.
> In an appendix to a 1719 book about a pirate
> trial, he found details of the sinking of Queen
> Anne's Revenge.
>
> Through eight square miles of seawater off
> Beaufort, the searchers towed an underwater device
> meant to detect large concentrations of metal --
> in this case, the old cannons. Nothing looked
> right until last November. Indications of heavy
> metallic objects were confirmed by scuba divers on
> Nov. 21, and state archaeologists came out to the
> site the next day to inspect the sprawling wreck.
>
> The bronze bell that was hauled up to the surface
> is inscribed with the date 1709, which
> archaeologists feel is consistent with the known
> history of the Queen Anne's Revenge.
>
> The finders have set up the Maritime Research
> Institute, a private, nonprofit corporation based
> in North Carolina that is to lead the recovery
> work. Surveying of the site might begin this
> spring or summer, they said, adding that in theory
> the whole ship might eventually be recovered from
> the sea bed.
>
> "It's feasible," said Lawrence, the underwater
> archaeologist for the state. "But it's going to
> take not only a lot of work but a lot of money."
>
> Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help
>
> Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> [IBM]
http://verify.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/pirate-ship-sci.html
|
