Queen Anne's Revenge
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- For the Flogging Molly song, see Queen Anne's Revenge (song).
The Queen Anne's Revenge was the name of the pirate Blackbeard's infamous flagship. Originally named Concord, the vessel was built by Britain in 1710, but captured by the French a year later. The ship was modified to hold more cargo and renamed La Concorde. The slave-ship was captured again by the pirate Captain Benjamin Hornigold on November 28, 1717 near the island of Martinique. Hornigold turned the ship over to one of his pirates - Edward Teach, who was later known as Blackbeard, and made him captain. Blackbeard converted La Concorde into his flagship, adding 20 more cannons and renaming it the Queen Anne's Revenge. With it he ranged the west coast of Africa and the Caribbean, attacking British, Dutch and Portuguese ships.
Queen Anne's Revenge was described as a 300-ton frigate armed with 40 cannons. Her name may have come from the War of the Spanish Succession, which was known in the Americas as Queen Anne's War, and in which Blackbeard was known to have fought.
Shortly after ransoming Charleston harbour and refusing to accept the Governor's pardon, Blackbeard ran Queen Anne's Revenge aground while attempting to enter Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. Another of Blackbeard's ships, Adventure, was lost trying to free her. Blackbeard disbanded the flotilla, and escaped by transferring supplies onto a smaller ship. The pirate captain abandoned several crew members on a small island nearby, who were later rescued by Captain Stede Bonnet. Some sources suggest that Blackbeard purposefully grounded the ships as an excuse to disperse the crew. Shortly afterward he accepted a royal pardon for himself and his remaining crew from governor Charles Eden at Bath, NC.
In 1996, Intersall, Inc, a private research and recovery company, discovered the remains of a vessel which they believe to be the Queen Anne's Revenge. Many cannons and more than 16,000 artifacts have been recovered from the wreckage, however none of them appear to be of French origin (as would be expected from a French slave ship), but are mainly British. This therefore raises doubts about the identification of the vessel as the Queen Anne's Revenge. Recovery of artifacts from the site continues in the current 2006 field season, under the supervision of Project Director Mark Wilde-Ramsing of the North Carolina Underwater Archaeology Branch.
Both the identity of the vessel and the ethics of the state of North Carolina's collaboration with Intersall, Inc, have been questioned by members of the professional archaeological community in a 2005 article in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.
In November 2006, more artifacts were discovered at the site and brought to the surface. The additional artifacts appear to support the claim that the wreck is that of the Queen Anne's Revenge. But criticism over recovery efforts and the apparent lack of progress was lodged by the discoverer of the wreck against the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources and the project director in the Carteret County News-Times, a newspaper in Morehead City, North Carolina.
