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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Cannon Recovered from Blackbeard's Flagship

A team of archeologists pulled a 1-ton, nearly 3-hundred-year-old cannon from the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. WHQR’s Michelle Bliss reports that recovering the cannon is just the first step in a conservation process that will span many years.

Blackbeard’s ship sank off the coast of North Carolina near Beaufort in 1718. After nearly three centuries underwater, the cannon is covered with thick masses of sand, salt, and sea creatures.

Linda Carlyle is secretary for the state Department of Cultural Resources. She says scientists expect to find additional hidden treasures as they break down that outer shell.

 “It is a very slow process of soaking the cannon, bringing out the salt in it and softening it up, so that they can slowly chip away to remove these concretions. So, they will slowly be taking it off, almost layer by layer.”

Divers have also recently found a shackle they believe was a leg iron used in the French slave trade.

Researchers raised the ship’s anchor last spring, and, to date, they’ve collected more than 280,000 artifacts from the wreck, which was discovered in 1996.

  

After growing up in Woodbridge, Virginia, Michelle attended Virginia Tech before moving to Wilmington to complete her Master in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. Her reporting and nonfiction writing have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, within the pages of Wrightsville Beach Magazine, and in literary journals like River Teeth and Ninth Letter. Before moving to Wilmington, Michelle served as the general manager for WUVT, a community radio station in Blacksburg, Virginia. She lives with her husband Scott and their pups, Katie, Cooper, and Mosey.