
DATE: Wednesday, October 22, 1997           TAG: 9710220543

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

TAKING A SHOT AT BLACKBEARD'S PAST DIVERS WILL TRY TO RETRIEVE CANNONS FROM PIRATE'S SHIP ON OCEAN BOTTOM

Two cannons that may have belonged to Blackbeard are scheduled to be brought up from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean today.

Using an industrial crane mounted on the deck of a 90-foot research vessel, divers hope to retrieve the two cannons, which may have sat on the ocean floor off Beaufort, N.C., for more than 270 years.

The 8-foot-long cast-iron cannons, which could weigh more than 5,000 pounds each, would be the largest artifacts yet recovered from the site of a shipwreck that state officials believe is the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of history's most notorious pirate.

``This is a big deal. Really exciting. Those cannons could be an important piece of evidence in determining if that boat really belonged to Blackbeard,'' state archaeologist Steve Claggett said Tuesday from his Raleigh office.

``We believe these were 24-pound guns,'' which shot 24-pound cannon balls, Claggett said. ``None of the other ships that we know of carried 24-pound guns except Blackbeard's.''

In November 1996, divers from a Florida-based research group discovered what officials said are the remains of Queen Anne's Revenge. The wreck sits about two miles off Beaufort and lies about 20 feet below the surface. This month, archaeologists began diving on the wreckage as part of a $40,000 project funded by state and local governments.

So far, divers have discovered 11 cannons, dozens of cannon balls, two anchors, a grappling hook, ship's rigging tackle, a plate believed to be made of pewter, several pieces of a thick ceramic storage container, pieces of glass bottles and fragments of barrel hoops.

The cannons that divers hope to raise today rest on a bed of ballast rock on top of a layer of gray sand. Coral, sand and broken shells encrust their long barrels. The cannons probably fell out of the ship during or after the wreck, Claggett said.

Plans call for lifting the cannons about six feet out of the water with a crane, then transporting them by boat to a Beaufort dock. Scientists will store the armaments in tanks filled with fresh water. At least one of the cannons will remain at a new laboratory near the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort and the other might be moved to an underwater archaeology laboratory at Fort Fisher, near Wilmington.

``We had special storage tanks built to hold these cannons so that we can treat them mechanically to remove some of the growths on them,'' Claggett said. ``We'll run low-level electrical currents through them to remove the rust later. Cleaning them probably will take several years.''

Archaeologists hope to find a marking or stamp on the cannons' barrels that would indicate when and where they were manufactured and, thereby, link them more closely with the Queen Anne's Revenge.

``The cannons alone won't tell us that this was Blackbeard's boat,'' state Department of Cultural Resources spokeswoman Fay Mitchell Henderson said Tuesday. ``But they will be an important factor in our continuing research and discovery.''

Blackbeard was an English privateer who historians say was named Edward Teach.

In May 1718, his reign of terror climaxed when his crew blockaded Charleston, S.C., for more than a week.

On his way back up the coast the next month, Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge became grounded near Beaufort and sank.

Blackbeard died during a battle off Ocracoke Island six months later.

Some say the pirate captain scuttled his ship, saving the treasures but telling his crew the loot was lost.

Others say the ship got stuck on a sandbar, but that Blackbeard had time to save all that he had stolen before the vessel went down.

The ship is believed to have been built by British shipbuilders about 1710.

After Blackbeard captured it seven years later, it carried a crew of 125 pirates. The wooden vessel was 103 feet long, 24 1/2 feet wide and required at least 13 feet of water to float.

When Blackbeard commanded Queen Anne's Revenge, it had 40 cannons mounted on its decks. ILLUSTRATION: THE RESEARCH PROJECT

In November 1996, divers from a Florida-based research group

discovered what officials said are the remains of Queen Anne's

Revenge.

The wreck sits about two miles off Beaufort and lies about 20 feet

below the surface.

This month, archaeologists began diving on the wreckage as part of a

$40,000 project funded by state and local governments.

So far, divers have discovered 11 cannons, dozens of cannon balls,

two anchors, a grappling hook, ship's rigging tackle, a plate

believed to be made of pewter, several pieces of a thick ceramic

storage container, pieces of glass bottles and fragments of barrel