16 February 2014

Pirates for the day


CNN has an article by Steve Almasy about Blackbeard and the Queen Anne's Revenge:
Rrrrrchaelogists have recovered five big six pounders from t' wreck o' t' famed scurvy dog Blackbeard's ship off t' coast o' North Carolina.
Now, for those of you who don't speak pirate:.
Five cannons from the Queen Anne's Revenge, the sunken flagship of Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard), were recovered recently by scientists from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources after nearly three hundred years under the water of Beaufort Inlet.
The team, working with the Coast Guard, brought the guns, at two thousand and three thousand pounds, to the surface of Beaufort Inlet (photo).
Billy Ray Morris, who manages the expedition, said he thinks the largest cannon is likely Swedish-made, as was another of the forty big guns onboard that was already recovered.
The project wrapped up for the year, but archaeologists will return for one more season in 2014. The catch brings to twenty the number of cannons that have been salvaged from the ship. Each of the guns once fired six-pound cannonballs. No word if any of the cannons was loaded.
They likely will be added to the Queen Ann's Revenge exhibit in Beaufort, North Carolina, which has more than a quarter-million artifacts.
Romanticized in history books as a notorious ruffian, Blackbeard, born in Britain, terrorized Atlantic seafarers from the shores of the American colonies to the Caribbean.
Blackbeard survived after the ship was intentionally grounded in June of 1718. He left hundreds of his crew marooned, sort of an eighteenth-century corporate downsizing, and apparently took most of the booty.
The remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge lie two miles off the North Carolina coast in 25 feet of water. Blackbeard made it six more months before he was killed in a battle with British troops. His severed head was displayed on the bowsprit of the victors' ship.
Rico says piracy, then as now, was a hard business, conducted by hard men...

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