By Roderick McClain
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-970307.mp3
Wilmington, NC –
In June of 1718, the infamous Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge, sank off North Carolina's coast and now rests in 20 feet of water near Beaufort. WHQR's Roderick McClain reports nearly 300 years later, a team of researchers is planning to raise the anchor.
In the coming week teams from the UNC-Wilmington, Cape Fear Community College and the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources plan to attach the anchor to two airtight bags which, when filled with gas, will pull the artifact from its resting place. Linda Carlisle, secretary of Department of Cultural Resources, says conservation efforts have been in place since the wreck was discovered in 1996.
"We are now working very, very seriously to try to complete the excavation of all of those artifacts by 2013."
Carlisle says the timeline has been condensed because the right hurricane in the right place would spell an end to the wreck of Queen Anne's Revenge.
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