By Michelle Bliss
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-990083.mp3
Wilmington, NC – A team of divers is retrieving artifacts from Blackbeard's infamous flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, nearly 300 years after the vessel sank off North Carolina's coast near Beaufort in 1718.
WHQR's Michelle Bliss reports that researchers will recover a cannon later this month, but they're already finding hidden treasures.
Divers are planning to recover a 2,500-pound cannon, the 14th cannon they've preserved since the wreck was discovered in 1996.
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Spokesperson Jennifer Woodward says that in the meantime, the team is searching for smaller artifacts to shed light on life aboard the ship.
"One of the things that they've just recently recovered was a shackle that they believe was a leg iron that might have been used as part of the slave trade, and they're currently x-raying that to see that what it actually is."
The piece is very similar to a shackle discovered at the site of another slave ship off the coast of Florida.
"Another exciting find was a brass lid and this goes hand-in-hand with a number of nesting weight cups that they have discovered in previous dives. So, everything's starting to come together. It's kind of like a mystery, finding all the little different pieces."
The weight cups could have been used to measure medicine or gold dust. Researchers raised the ship's anchor last spring, and, to date, they've collected more than 280,000 artifacts from the wreck.
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