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The With the discovery of a 300-year-old ship off the coast of North Carolina, state researchers are speculating that it may be the flagship of the legendary Blackbeard. This pirate sailed the Queen Anne's Revenge and looted ships along the North Carolina coast during the 1700s. I.Q. follows researchers underwater to document and discover the secrets of this priceless piece of North Carolina history.
Blackbeard spent his days plundering ships along our coast until the Queen Anne's Revenge and another ship, the Adventurer, ran aground in June of 1718. Blackbeard survived the wreck but perished in a battle at Ocracoke in November of that same year. His adventures had faded into legend until now.
In November 1996, scientists discovered the remains of the shipwreck about 1.5 miles off the coast of Fort Macon in 20 feet of water. Since then, divers have visited the ship numerous times to excavate items that survived the wreck.
"That was one of the most thrilling points of my life, to go down on the ship and see these large anchors looming out of the darkness down there," says Richard Lawrence, unit director for the Underwater Archaeology Unit at Fort Fischer.
"When you conduct archaeology, you are essentially tearing that site apart," adds David Moore, an archaeologist and researcher for the Underwater Archaeology Unit. "So you have to record, in very minute detail, everything that you do. All of that provides us clues as to how the ship was constructed."
At the site, the divers are working in strong currents and very low visibility as sediment is swirled around them by the ocean tides. Often divers cannot see beyond the reach of their arms.
"It's like swimming in a washing machine right now," says Rick Allen, an underwater photographer working on the project.
No matter what the identity of the ship, the wreck is a tremendous historical find because there is much that historians do not know about colonial life. With further study of the objects, scientists hope to determine the exact identity of the ship, learning more about its history and the history of North Carolina in the process.
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