Topics Related to La Concorde
The most common material conservators encounter from the site of Queen Anne’s Revenge is lead.
What might dividers, trigger guards, nesting weights, an apothecary mortar, buttons, a powder scoop, and the inner workings of a pocket watch have in common?
On April 12, 1718, Blackbeard made a dramatic show of his ferocity and tenacity as he climbed the ranks of legendary pirates.
As a pirate, Blackbeard would have been very aware of his need to be well armed. It was all well and good to catch another ship, but if you couldn’t overpower them your career as a pirate would be short and unsuccessful. When it began its final voyage, La Concorde was armed with only 16 cannon; enough to mount a token defense with a healthy crew, but not a heavy armament by any measure. How then did Blackbeard use such a lightly armed ship? Simple: he added more guns.
Ceramics are some of the most abundant objects found on archaeological sites.
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).
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.
Cannon, lead shot, pewter plates, gold dust, even a contentious pirate flag all readily come to mind when thinking of Blackbeard’s ship Queen Anne’s Revenge.