B5F9I1

Transcribed Text (OCR)

GARY MANGIACOPA ARCHIVE
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Title:      B5F9I1
Slug:       b5f9i1
Categories: Lost Treasure
Source:     https://garymangiacopraarchive.com/b5f9i1
Pages:      2 scanned, 2 extracted
OCR:        Google Vision API (document_text_detection)
Processed:  2026-06-06
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Kennebec Jour
Augus
Maine
7 July 1998 page 14 cal 1-5 TUESDAY
N.H. island described as 'pirate's bank' for Blackbeard
ISLES OF SHOALS, N.H. (AP)
The woman who has summered on
the Isles of Shoals for more than 70
years doesn't doubt for a minute
that the 17th century pirate Black-
beard hid treasure on Lunging Is-
land.
For Prudence Crandall Randall,
whose family has owned 7.1-acre
Lunging since 1926, her island child-
hood was interwoven with the sto-
ries passed down to her about pi-
rates and their treasure.
Sitting in the living room of "Hon-
eymoon Cottage," the only house on
Lunging, she retold the story of
Blackbeard, who had captured and
scuttled a British frigate carrying
the pay for the King's regiment near
Nantucket.
He was making for his stronghold
on the north end of Long Island
when Captain Kidd, a former pirate-
turned-bounty hunter, nearly caught
up with him.
Knowing he would be overtaken
before he made it back to his lair,
Blackbeard swung around, and fled
north, reaching the Isles of Shoals
off the New Hampshire coast just as
the wind died down.
"He knew, as I would have known,
having lived with the elements so
closely, that the wind would pick up
again about four or five in the morn-
ing," Randall said.
Accordinmg to legend, Black-
beard split the loot -half for his
crew, and half for himself and his
first mate. The crew buried its cut
on another of the Isles of Shoals and
the loot reportedly was found many
years later.
But Blackbeard and his first
mate's share of the booty, rumored
to be gold and silver bars, never was
found.
Lunging is the only of the Isles of
Shoals with a natural harbor and a
- one of the rea-
small sandy beach-
sons where Blackbeard and his
mate are said to have buried their
treasure.
When Randall was a teen-ager,
treasure hunters became interested
in the island.
One such hunter thought the loot
was under a granite ledge now sub-
merged near the harbor. After dig-
ging to water level, it was decided
the only way to get through the
ledge would be to dynamite it.
But Randall's father, the Rev.
Frank Crandall, who regularly re-
placed window panes cracked by
Coast Guard target practice blasts,
would not allow explosions on the is-
land for fear of damaging the cot-
tage.
According to Bob Cahill, owner of
the New England Pirate Museum in
Salem, Mass., Lunging was a "pi-
rate's bank.'
Cahill, who traveled to Lunging
for a story on Blackbeard for the
television show "Unsolved Myster-
ies," says the island indeed was
Blackbeard's summer lair.
Local fishermen, according to leg-
end, guarded the treasures for a cut
of the proceeds.

[PAGE BREAK]

Kennebec JOURNAL AUGUSTAMAINE
New
Taray
Hampshire town abuzz
with mystery of lost cannon
WINCHESTER, N.H. (AP)
History and mystery have people
talking in Winchester after an ap-
parent Civil War cannon was found
in the Ashuelot River, then disap-
peared.
Diver Brian Severance checked
out the river bottom almost daily,
recovering everything from antique
bottles to wagon wheels. In May, he
came upon a cannon barrel.
"It was sitting halfway up in the
sand, and there were bottles all
around it," he said. "It wasn't that
rusty. It couldn't have been there
more than 35 to 40 years.'
Severance told Town Adminis-
trator Thomas MacQuarrie about
it. The news was printed in the
town newsletter, and MacQuarrie
sent the Fire Department out to
search for the cannon in mid-Au-
gust, when the water level was low.
Firefighters couldn't find it.
MacQuarrie said he thinks they
looked in the wrong place.
Severance said he thinks some-
one else got there first.
"I went over the area for an
hour and a half, and it's gone," he
said. "Someone took it. When I
went back to look, there was a path
leading down to the bank that was-
n't there before."
Severance, of Brattleboro, said he
found the cannon about 6 feet from
the shore. The barrel was about 6
feet long and 6 inches in diameter,
he said, and the end was plugged.
"Two people could have re-
moved it easily," he said.
MacQuarrie has not given up.
He plans to have the Fire Depart-
ment search the river again.
One question is, Where is the
cannon? Another is, Where did it
come from? A man headed out of a
barber shop on Main Street said he
believes he knows.
"I've been in town 80 years," said
the man, who didn't give his name.
"Sure, I remember seeing it. It was
iron and it was painted black and it
was on wheels. It was over there
somewhere,' he said, pointing
across the street to a grassy area
next to Town Hall where the Sol-
dier's Memorial Monument now
stands. He guessed that he saw the
cannon there some 70 years ago.
NOU 2002 MONDAY POSIBSAll,2