Education

Education

The discovery of North Carolina shipwreck site 31CR314, identified as Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge,has excited the public's imagination. Since 1998 nearly 2 million visitors have viewed artifacts from the shipwreck. Venues have included the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, where a permanent exhibit of artifacts is on display; a traveling exhibit that visited 25 sites across the state, including the 1999 State Fair; and even, in January 2002, the Maritime Museum in Paris. The shipwreck has been the subject of international attention. Articles have appeared in publications from The New York Times to the Smithsonian magazine. The QAR project was the subject of a full length UNC-TV segment on its "IQ" series and The Discovery Channel broadcasts a 1999 BBC documentary on the project several times a year. The most innovative public outreach initiative has been a distance education program, based on live streaming Internet transmission and entitled QAR DiveLive. During two sessions, in the fall of 2000 and the fall of 2001, with the cooperation of a host of public and private sponsors, DiveLive allowed nearly 15,000 school children from around the country and Canada to learn about the wreck over the Internet and to address questions directly to underwater archaeologists at the ocean bottom and researchers inthe artifact conservation laboratory. Perhaps most important is the Queen Anne's Revenge project's website, which you are now visiting. The hope is that it will provide you with the latest findings and a range of background information so that you may feel a part of the exploration of this unique and exciting archaeological discovery.