Topics Related to Cultural Resources (DCR)
If you thought this would be a post about Blackbeard’s thought process or piratical tactics... you would be wrong. Instead, this post will discuss arguably one of the most important structural features of Blackbeard’s flagship: the head, or toilet, commonly referred to as the “seat of ease.”
When we think of glass today, we mostly think of something like clear, flat window glass – impervious to water and unchanging across the years. Sure, if someone hits a baseball through it the window will break, but there’s not much you can do to chemically damage the glass itself… right?Glass is made of three major components: silica (from sand), a flux (potassium or sodium compounds), and a stabilizer (calcium, magnesium, and lead compounds).
November 17, 2018, 3pm - 6:30pm
Fascinated by pirates? Intrigued by archaeology? Curious about artifact conservation? Register for Saturday at the QAR Lab on November 17, 2018 for a FREE guided tour from the archaeologists and conservators responsible for conserving, documenting, and investigating Blackbeard’s flagship!
Salt is bad for most things; it breaks apart glass and ceramics, corrodes copper alloys, and contributes to the decay of organic materials. It is especially bad for iron artifacts and, after 300 years in the ocean, the iron from Queen Anne’s Revenge is very, very salty.