Yargh. Pirates!
Posted on 10/28/2014 6:15:24 AM PDT by csvset
BEAUFORT | One cannon was raised and another found as state underwater archaeologists closed out their latest dive at the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck site.
Crews were cleaning up Monday after a three-week fall dive expedition that focused on the large pile of artifacts molded together in a cement-like mass of iron and sand at the ship’s midsection.
The plan was to bring up two small cannon at the uppermost layer, but that changed somewhat as work to free one of the guns from the mass revealed a new discovery.
“We were only able to bring up one of the two cannons, but we discovered another gun underneath the second one, so it all balanced out,” QAR Project Director John “Billy Ray” Morris said.
The QAR team with the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Underwater Archaeology Branch closed out the fall dive Monday.
The trip was the latest in 17 years of recovery efforts at the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck site. The flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard sank off the coast of Beaufort after running aground nearly 300 years ago.
On Friday, the QAR team raised a 5-foot cannon weighing about 600 pounds after freeing it from a concretion of artifacts about 25 feet wide and 30 feet long. Attached to its barrel were several cannonballs.
While they discovered one new gun this dive, Morris suspects there will be others as they continue to work on the large pile during future dives.
“I think there’s a real good possibility,” he said.
To date, 23 cannons have been recovered from the site.
Wind and wave action kept the team working on shore for much of the final week of the dive, but Morris commended everyone involved in the project for making the dive a success.
“It was a successful dive with a first-rate crew that did a great job,” he said.
Morris said they’ll be back out at the site again as soon as funding for another dive becomes available.
“Funding is our biggest holdup,” he said.
Intersal Inc., a private research firm, discovered the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck Nov. 21, 1996. The shipwreck was located near Beaufort Inlet by Intersal’s director of operations, Mike Daniel, who used historical research provided by late Intersal President Phil Masters. Daniel now heads Maritime Research Institute, the nonprofit corporation formed to work on the project in cooperation with state archaeologists and historians of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History.
Yargh. Pirates!
Pirate Ship ping.
Did they find any of those puffy shirts?
Did they find any of those puffy shirts?
Arrr! Ye stupid phone!
Of interest to you.
Thanks csvset and abb. Earlier in the week I'd read that the 23rd cannon had been raised from the site.
I may pull out my old VHS copy of Disney’s “Blackbeard’s Ghost” tonight and celebrate!!
Beautiful Beaufort by the sea,
Twenty miles from Yamasee
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