Maritime Museum Role in QAR Recovery. Of all the glamorous and exciting activities in working with a pirate’s shipwreck, one important function – exhibition – rarely gets the credit it deserves. After all the discovery, mapping, surveying, diving, recovering, and conserving, what do you do with 300 year old artifacts, some as small as a fleck of gold and some as large as a 7 ˝ foot cannon, weighing 1,900 pounds? The answer for the Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck Project is to send them to the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. Its mission is to preserve and interpret all aspects of the rich maritime heritage of the North Carolina coastal environment. The museum sponsors numerous educational programs and field trips. It offers a variety of exhibits, including those brought over from the QAR. Connie Mason, collection manager, is a 13-year veteran at the museum, a historian, singer, folklorist, and storyteller. With other staff members she determines when, where, and how artifacts are to be exhibited. Scientists and scholars from around the world have been involved with research on the QAR since its discovery but Connie says that a recent event brought an even greater international perspective to the museum. The Musee National de la Marine in Paris asked permission to borrow and display flecks of gold and a pewter syringe recovered from the QAR site. Preserved artifacts will continue to be showcased at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. The museum plans to open a new repository for Blackbeard artifacts in April. A public showing will be held at the Gallant’s Channel repository on April 12 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Question of the Day. Why in 1717 did Blackbeard name his flagship for a queen who had been dead three years? One man’s answer can be found in Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders, a UNC Press publication by Lindley Butler. Blackbeard began marauding at sea legally as a British privateer in the War of Spanish Succession during the reign of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch. Blackbeard may have been paying homage to a ruler whom he had respected and served before he became an outcast; however, the term “revenge” suggests a further motive. In that era, it was customary for the lawless to express their contempt for authority by invoking the name of the previous monarch or rival claimant for the throne. When Blackbeard, a stateless pirate, attacked British commerce with a ship named after the last Stuart, he was not so much indicating his political allegiance as he was offering an in-your-face slap, or a thumbing of his nose at the current British authority in power.

QAR Joins the Flat Stanley Expedition. Kathleen Marshall at Juanita Elementary School in Kirkland, Washington and her class of second-graders were learning to do research by researching pirates. They culminated their study with a family pirate party to present what they had learned. Between 75-100 people packed their library for dinner and the kids’ show. Now they have completed the book Flat Stanley. Stanley was flattened to ˝ inch thick by a falling bulletin board. He has many wonderful adventures while he’s flat. Marshall and her second graders have started a project where they mail people a Flat Stanley so they can take him to places they go. He keeps a journal of the interesting things he does. Currently, Marshall’s Stanley is on his way to the Bering Sea with a juggler doing school workshops in the Bering Straits area. Since we know a thing or two about pirates and adventure, they asked the QAR Shipwreck Project to join them in their escapades. It sounded exciting to us. Marshall said that when she told them we would, the kids all cheered. Hey, we feel honored they asked us.

Welcome to a New Staff Member. Bridgette Iris has been added to the QAR staff as a computer/ technology specialist. Thanks to the generosity of the Town of Morehead City and the Morehead Noon Rotary Club, she first joined us as an Intern. Bridgette is working on our website to make it more efficient and visually appealing. She also worked with last October’s DiveLive event to help digitize the live video as it came into our computers via a microwave station from under the ocean and to encode the video so it would be suitable to stream live over the Internet. Bridgette is originally from Cape Cod, MA and is in her final semester of the Internet Technologies Program at Carteret Community College in Morehead City.

Good News From A Bathymetric Survey. A team of researchers from the UNC-CH Institute For Marine Sciences, Jesse McNinch, Chris Freeman and Robert Gammisch, recently conducted a bathymetric and sub-bottom survey of the QAR site. Working from the RV Coot, a research vessel from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the team towed sensors over the site that relayed detailed sonar information to on-board computers. Their full report is not yet in, but preliminary results show very little erosion or change in the QAR site.

Chris Freeman operating survey computers and (right) Sonar image of exposed wreckage

In the Morehead City/Beaufort area?

Visit the North Carolina Maritime Museum at 315 Front Street, Beaufort, NC where artifacts from Queen Anne's Revenge are exhibited. To learn more about the museum contact them at 252/728-7317.

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Volume 1, No. 1
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Volume 1, No. 3
Volume 2, No. 2
Volume 3, No. 1
Volume 3, No. 2
Volume 3, No. 3
Volume 4, No. 1
Volume 4, No. 2
Volume 4, No. 3
Volume 5, No. 1
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Volume 5, No. 3
Volume 6, No. 1
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Volume 7, No. 1
Volume 8, No. 1