The Queen Anne's Revenge site lies in 20 to 25 feet of water 1.2 nautical miles off Fort Macon and 1,500 yards west of the present Beaufort Inlet shipping channel [ see location map]. That channel passes between the barrier islands of Shackleford and Bogue Banks into the port towns of Morehead City and Beaufort. To better understand the shipwreck site, researchers initiated a variety of environmental studies. The results of these studies identify working conditions at the site to help plan archaeological investigations. Related information will also have historical importance because it reveals the natural processes that affected the ship during the wrecking episode and for the nearly three hundred years since the vessel was lost.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) have digitized historic charts to track past movements of the inlet's channel and associated shoals in the vicinity of Queen Anne's Revenge. Cartographic studies of the inlet through historic times show that the inlet's channel naturally migrated back and forth and appears to have passed over the shipwreck several times. Consequently, the shipwreck was periodically subjected to intense channelcurrents, while at other times it may have been covered by as much as 20 feet of sand.Wells Report / Researchers Corner- .pdf format] . ...click here for more