Queen Anne’s Revenge

In two short years from 1716 to 1718, Edward Teach quickly made a name for himself and became one of the most infamous real-life pirates of all time. An Englishman, Teach sailed along the western African coast, the North American Atlantic coast, and the Caribbean, raiding cargo ships and coastal settlements and going by the nickname of Blackbeard. His flagship was a captured British-made French slave ship that the pirate renamed the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Blackbeard ran the Queen Anne’s Revenge aground near Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in June of 1718. He then turned himself in and (thanks to some bribery) accepted a pardon from the British colonial governor of North Carolina. However, the governor of the neighboring colony of Virginia didn’t believe Blackbeard had stopped pirating. Virginia’s governor sent members of the British Navy to capture Blackbeard. The pirate was eventually cornered and killed off the coast of North Carolina in November of 1718.

In 1996, researchers found a shipwreck in the shallow waters near Fort Macon State Park at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. They believed it to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge and began to slowly and carefully recover artifacts from the underwater site. For years, archeologists argued over whether or not the ship was really the Queen Anne’s ReveQueen Anne’s Revengenge. But these days many historians and archeologists are in agreement that the wreck is Blackbeard’s ship. One clue was the large number of cannons found in the wreckage.

After 10 years of excavation, there’s still a lot of work to be done on the site, and archeologists say it will probably take about three more years to complete the task. Studying the thousands of artifacts brought up from the wreck will tell historians and archeologists more about not just piracy in the early 1700s, but also the slave trade at the time.

Related Links

• Recovery of Blackbeard Ship “Queen Anne’s Revenge”
  A look at the excavation process, including several photos of recovery efforts at the site. (Source: BlackbeardThePirate.com, 2006)
• Blackbeard the Pirate and the Presumed Wreck of Queen Anne’s Revenge.
  Background on Blackbeard’s career as a pirate and the history of his flagship. (Source: North Carolina Maritime Museum, North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 2002)
• Blackbeard: Pirate Terror at Sea
  A biography of Blackbeard. (Source: National Geographic for Kids, 2006)