From seeds to anchors: Divers hope to recover largest, smallest from Blackbeard shipwreck

The Republic: From seeds to anchors: Divers hope to recover largest, smallest from Blackbeard shipwreck
RALEIGH, N.C. — The work to retrieve an anchor from the wreck of what is believed to be the pirate Blackbeard's flagship will begin Thursday off the North Carolina coast, but what's underneath that artifact is just as interesting to researchers.

The anchor is the second-largest item on the site of what's believed to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, outsized only by another anchor, project director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said Wednesday. It's about 13 feet long with arms that are 8 feet across. The other anchor is about 7 inches longer.

"It's a big, cumbersome, flat piece that's going to require some good logistics and some good weather," he said in a telephone interview after a news conference at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The recovery effort will begin in the Atlantic waters near Beaufort, where the shipwreck is about 20 feet underwater. The actual dive will begin Monday and continue through June 3, with only two days off.

The anchor is located in the central part of the shipwreck, and it's on top of other items that the team hopes to recover. At the bottom of the pile is the wooden hull structure, the ribs and the plank — the only parts of the ship that survived the test of time, saltwater, currents and tides, Wilde-Ramsing said. Those parts of the ship survived because ballast was stored there to keep the ship upright and other items, including six cannons and four anchors are also in the pile.

But Wilde-Ramsing and his team hope other, smaller items are trapped inside, things that will tell the tale of how the men lived on the Queens Anne's Revenge and the waters it traversed.

"We hope little things got stuck in there, which would tell us what the pirates were eating ... micro botanical stuff so we'll be able to tell where the ship traveled," he said. "Most of the little things are gone, except for this one place, where hopefully they've been entombed. "

The shipwreck was located in 1996, and Wilde-Ramsing says the team hopes to recover all the artifacts by the end of 2013.

The largest exhibit of the shipwreck's artifacts will be shown starting June 11 at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

In 1717, Blackbeard captured a French slave ship and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge. Blackbeard, whose real name was widely believed to be Edward Teach or Thatch, settled in Bath and received a governor's pardon. Some experts believe he grew bored with land life and returned to piracy.

He was killed by volunteers from the Royal Navy in November 1718 — five months after the ship thought to be Queen Anne's Revenge sank.

The Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck site, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites, has already yielded more than 250,000 artifacts.