Blackbeard

Blackbeard: Archaeologists Friday raised the anchor of Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard the pirate ship and its crew intentionally grounded off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. The anchor, one of the four carried on the ship, was on top of a pile of rubble, which seems to be the remains of the middle of the vessel including its cargo, "said Mark Wilde-Ramsing, a Deputy State Archaeologist and Project Director, Queen Anne's Revenge. The nearly 3000-pound anchor is the largest artifact yet recovered from the wreck of the notorious pirate's flagship. Next week, Wilde-Ramsing said, researchers hope to dig a small test hole into the side of the pile where the anchor was removed to get a sense of what else might be hidden there. They're particularly keen to find organic material such as seeds and spores that could help detail the pirates' stops in exotic ports. After blockading Charleston and holding hostages until terrified residents handed over a chest of medicine as ransom, the pirates ran their flagship aground near the inlet leading to Beaufort in what some think was an intentional act by Blackbeard to reduce the size of the fleet. Queen Anne's Revenge was originally the French slave ship La Concorde that Blackbeard and his band captured in the fall of 1717 in the Caribbean and renamed. He led a fleet of four ships pirate hunted prey in the Caribbean during the winter, so moved to the coast of the United States in spring of the 1718th Blackbeard, an Englishman whose real name was Edward considered Teach, was killed by Royal Navy sailors in a battle near Ocracoke few months later.