The Queen Anne's Revenge was the pirate Blackbeard's flagship, the name a nod to his earlier service to the Crown. It was a French slave ship, originally La Concorde, captured by Blackbeard in 1717 and put to work doing his nefarious business along with the rest of his fleet. This even included the brazen blockading of Charleston's harbor in search of loot from ships trying to enter and leave the harbor. Soon after leaving Charleston in 1718, Blackbeard lost the Queen Anne's Revenge and the sloop Adventure to a sandbar when he tried to enter what is now Beaufort Inlet in North Carolina. The ships soon sank in 25 feet of water.
In 1997 a ship was found in Beaufort Inlet that practically screams Queen Anne's Revenge. Thousands of artifacts have been brought to the surface by the Division of Archives and History's Office of State Archaeology of North Carolina, in what is now known as the QAR Project. Plenty of weapons have been brought up also, including cannon, gunparts, sword hilts and ammunition. The guns include cannon from 1/2 pounders up to 6 pounders, from English to Swedish make. One thing that stands out is that almost all the cannon are loaded. And not just with round shot, but with a combination of nasty stuff, nails, broken glass and chained shot, not meant to sink a ship but to clean the crew off it. There are plenty of cannon still down there and that will keep the Archaeologists busy for quite a while.
