A rare piece of North Carolina's early history was pulled from the Beaufort Inlet this week and displayed in Greenville.
An anchor believed to be from Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, was taken from the water by researchers with the QAR Project, a state-funded research expedition that will eventually bring up 700,000 individual artifacts.
The anchor was displayed at the QAR Conservation Lab on the East Carolina University West Research Campus on Thursday afternoon.
Historians say that the infamous pirate and his ship ran aground in 1718 in Beaufort Inlet. The wreckage, which was first found in 1996, is located about a mile from Fort Macon in 25 feet of water.
As more artifacts are recovered researchers are more and more confident that the wreckage is what remains of Blackbeard's ship.
“This is the oldest shipwreck we have worked on in North Carolina,” Mark Wilde-Ramsing, QAR project manager, said. “It is associated with Blackbeard and every artifact is important for understanding what was going on at the time.”
The 160-pound anchor is one of the largest pieces recovered from the ship so far, but researchers will eventually bring up very large pieces, including cannons weighing about one ton each, Wilde-Ramsing said.
The five-pronged anchor was not the primary anchor for the Queen Anne's Revenge, it would have been too small. The Queen Anne's Revenge was a 100-foot ship that could carry 200 people.
Wilde-Ramsing said the anchor was probably for a smaller vessel that was associated with Blackbeard's flagship.
Researchers brought up the anchor because it had broken loose from the ground and they worried that is could be lost if not recovered now.
Years of dredging in the inlet exposed the wreckage and loosed many items that are at risk of being washed away. The wreckage was previously covered with sand for hundreds of years, Wilde-Ramsing said.
He said it will be more than seven years before all of the items associated with the ship are brought out of the water.
It will take about six months to get the anchor cleaned and then it will be placed in a special bath for two years before it can be displayed in a museum. Most of the items from the shipwreck will wind up at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, Wilde-Ramsing said.
“Archeologists work with real things and to literally have items that were used 300 years ago is a great find for the public,” Wilde-Ramsing said. “I'm really proud that North Carolina has this wreck and is doing such a good job recovering it.”---www.reflector.com