B5F13I1

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GARY MANGIACOPA ARCHIVE
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Title:      B5F13I1
Slug:       b5f13i1
Categories: Lost Treasure
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The Sunday Post Bridgeport, Connecticut, July 24, 1988
A 15
Young adventurers to explore sunken hull of old ship
ORIENTAL, N. C. (UPI) - An
international group of young adven-
turers begin a five-week exploration
Sunday of the sunken hull of an old
wooden ship found in a pirate's
cove.
The vessel, believed to date back
to colonial times or before, was dis-
covered nearly two years ago when a
developer applied for a dredging
permit in Green Creek, bordering
the little fishing village of Oriental.
Nothing was done about the find
until Operation Raleigh, a British-
sponsored expeditionary program
for youths 17 to 24, approached
state officials in search of a summer
project for the young "Venturers."
Guided by Mark Wilde-Ramsing
and Richard Lawrence of the North
Carolina Underwater Archaeology
Unit, the youths will help dig away
the 2 feet or more of mud covering
the hull and will scour the area for
artifacts.
The 15 Venturers and their staff
advisors, coming from Britain, Aus-
tralia, Jordan, Japan, Canada and
other countries, flew first to Atlan-
ta, Ga., where two North Carolina
National Guard buses met them to
bring them to Oriental.
Matthew Owen, a logistics offi-
cer with Operation Raleigh, said the
group's first move Sunday would be
to set up camp and check out their
diving gear, which was brought in
by National Guard truck last week
and stored in a local warehouse.
The Venturers will live in tents
on the creek bank within a few feet
of the dive site and will prepare
their own food over fires and camp
stoves.
Green Creek is a part of Teach's
Cove, named for Edward Teach, the
notorious "Blackbeard," who is said
to have used the cove as one of his
many hideouts.
The cove commands a view of
the Neuse River, 5 miles wide at
Oriental, and would have provided a
sheltered waiting place for pirate
ships to swoop out and attack ves-
sels headed into Pamlico Sound.
But no one is expecting to turn
up gold doubloons or the tattered
remains of a Jolly Roger. Teach was
caught and beheaded at Ocracoke in
1718, years before the sunken vessel
likely was built.
"I would probably put it at the
other end of the 18th century from
when Teach was active, the late
1700's, rather than the early
1700's," said Lawrence.
Wilde-Ramsing said a cursory
examination of the wreck estab-
lished the vessel was 58 feet long,
made entirely of oak - which indi-
cates it was built in Europe or New
England
and its fastenings were
mostly hand-shaped, eight-sided
wooden
pegs.
The archaeologist said that
since the hulk is in shallow water of
3 to 5 feet, his best guess was that it
was an abandoned boat "that was
towed off to the side of the channel
and left."
V

[PAGE BREAK]

54
54
SCOURGE
OF
THE
SEAS
COL
ids
By DAVID J. KRAJICEK
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
A
n eight-cannon sloop was bearing down on a lumbering mer-
chantman laden with cocoa and sugar in open seas off North
Carolina's Outer Banks.
A merchant seaman took up a spyglass
▸ to identify the pursuers.
A lump caught in his throat: The ship's
flag was a black banner adorned with a
horned skeleton.
At the bow he spied a pirate, tall, broad
and sturdy as a mast timber. He was
dressed in black, and bottle-brush eye-
brows peeked from under a wide-
brimmed hat. He wore a belt strung with
six pistols. Ivory knife handles extended
from his boot tops and leather trouser
strap. At his waist hung a gleaming cut-
lass.
But the whiskers confirmed the pirate's
identity. The thick, raven-colored beard
were put out of work by the war's end in
1713, Teach and thousands of other sea-
men turned to piracy.
He took the name Blackbeard and be-
came a protégé of Capt. Benjamin
Hornigold, a leader of a pirate fraternity
known as the Brethren of the Coast,
based on New Providence in the Baha-
mas.
Hornigold, a fierce fighter and unflappa-
ble captain, was impressed by Black-
beard's fearlessness and daring exploits
as a tavern fighter and sea mate. He could
pummel any foe senseless with his fists
and drink any man under the table.
More than a dozen wives
92
SM
N
T

[PAGE BREAK]

Sunday, December 23, 2001
DAILY NEWS
was fashioned in long braids and decorat-
ed with whimsical ribbons. Smoke wafted
from the elaborate chin whiskers. The pi-
rate had tucked a dozen slow-burning
hemp fuses into the braids.
There could be no doubt: This was
Blackbeard, the infamous, swaggering
brute of the high seas.
Blackbeard plied his trade for only a
few years during the early 1700s before
justice came calling. But his eccentric
garb and calculated fearsome image
served to bestow upon him criminal im-
mortality, even centuries after his demise.
He was keenly aware of his reputation,
which he burnished by inviting guests
aboard his pirate ships for showy demon-
strations of daring.
Frighteningg presence
He plundered 30 or 40 ships in his ca-
reer, often without firing a shot because
he seemed the devil incarnate to supersti-
tious sailors. They simply surrendered.
One contemporary described Blackbeard
as "the living picture of an ogre who
roamed the seas and withered all before
him with his very presence."
Blackbeard was born Edward Drum-
mond about 1680 in Bristol, England. He
could read and write, so he probably
came from a family of means. He used the
surname Teach, perhaps to spare his fami-
ly shame after he turned brigand.
Teach began his life at sea around 1700
as a legitimate merchant seaman, al-
though a fluid line separated legitimate
and illegitimate sailors in that era of the
War of Spanish Succession, as England
and France vied over world domination.
Each government commissioned priva-
teers to scour the Atlantic shipping lanes
and raid merchant vessels from the rival
nation. The financial consequences were
considerable. England's privateers helped
bring Spain to heel with relentless raids
on trade ships traveling the Spanish
Main, the ocean highway to America.
Teach spent a decade as a privateer,
learning the secrets of warfare in
the service of Queen Anne on ships based.
in Kingston, Jamaica. When privateers
He also seemed to have a wife in every
port. He coaxed more than a dozen wom-
en into marriage, often holding the cere-
mony aboard a brigantine while fellow pi-
rates snickered.
Sailing with Hornigold, Blackbeard was
educated in the intricacies of the Carolina
coast, which offered both haven and
treacherous sandbars where thousands of
ships have gone to watery graves.
After two years under Hornigold's tute-
lage, Blackbeard was rewarded in 1716
with a plundered sloop, a
single-mast ship outfit-
ted with cannons on its
upper deck. The small
ship was highly maneu-
verable and allowed
Blackbeard and his men
to swoop in on cargo
ships and remove what
booty their boat would hold.
But the greedy Blackbeard demanded
bigger bounties. In November 1717, he
captured the French slaver Concorde, a
three-master measuring 100 feet from
stem to stern-far larger than most pi-
rate ships.
Blackbeard renamed the ship Queen
Anne's Revenge and doubled the cannon
battery to 44. For a fleeting few months, it
became the most feared pirate ship in the
hemisphere.
In the spring of 1718, Blackbeard led a
flotilla of four ships and 140 buccaneers
up the American coast. They raided more
than a dozen merchant vessels leaving or
entering port, making away with gold, sil-
ver, sugar, rum, cocoa, ink and cotton.
They sold the goods in thriving black
markets, sometimes in the cities where
the commodities were destined and often
in cahoots with local authorities.
At the end of this spree, Blackbeard
sailed the Queen Anne's Revenge to Beau-
fort Inlet, N.C., where he scuttled it. He
announced his retirement from piracy
and took his 14th and final wife, age 16.
He finagled a royal pardon from Charles
FEARSOME FIGURE
Blackbeard, who
beard's booty was later discovered in a
barn owned by Eden's secretary.)
But Blackbeard had to be Blackbeard.
He quietly assembled a new crew and
resumed piracy excursions from the Out-
er Banks as far north as
Pennsylvania aboard an
eight-cannon sloop, the
Adventure.
THE
JUSTICE
Eden, colonial governor of North Caroli-
na. (Not coincidentally, tons of Black
North Carolina mer-
chants were irate to
STORY learn that Blackbeard
was back in business.
But they had no success
in seeking help from Eden. They turned
to the Virginia governor, Alexander
Spotswood.
The Virginian offered a 100-pound
bounty for the slaying or capture of Black-
beard. Spotswood commissioned the
Ranger, a speedy, lightweight sloop under
command of Lt. Robert Maynard, to track
down the world's most notorious pirate.
Confrontation
On the night of Nov. 21, 1718, Maynard
found the Adventure anchored at Ocra-
coke Inlet in the Outer Banks. At first
light the next day, Maynard ordered the
Ranger crew to run up its flag, the Union
Jack. Blackbeard responded by raising
his signature flag, a black banner with a
horned skeleton.
Blackbeard appeared on deck and
faced his foe. He cocked his sidearms, lit
his beard fuses, offered a theatrical toast
to his adversaries' damnation and let go
with volleys of 24-pound cannonballs.
The lieutenant ordered his men below
decks. Sensing victory, Blackbeard and
his brigands boarded the Ranger, with the
pirates belly-laughing about the "coward-
ly puppies" hiding below. It was a trap..
plundered ships in the early 1700s.
Blackbeard died in the fight, but not be-
fore the deck was awash with his blood.
Maynard reported that the pirate was
stopped only after he was cut with 20
swords and shot with five pistol balls.
The military men severed Blackbeard's
head and heaved the body overboard.
They said the headless body did three defi-
ant laps around the ship before finally
sinking.
Skull trophy
Maynard affixed Blackbeard's head to
the bowsprit of his pirate sloop, which
they towed as a trophy back to port at
Hampton Roads. For years, the skull hung
as a warning to pirates at the confluence
of the Hampton and James rivers, a site
still known as Blackbeard's Point.
Inspired by "Treasure Island," fortune
hunters have searched for centuries at
North Carolina locations that Blackbeard
used as hideouts - an island in the Chow-
an River, a site near Elizabeth City, anoth-
er the south end of Ocracoke Island.
No buried treasure has been unearthed.
On Nov. 21, 1996, one day shy of the
282nd anniversary of Blackbeard's death,
a Florida shipwreck salvage firm located
the waterlogged remains of the Queen
Anne's Revenge buried under the sand in
shallow water 3 miles off Beaufort, N.C.
Divers have recovered many artifacts,
including a 12-inch brass bell dated 1709,
a blunderbuss barrel, cannons and an-
chors, but apparently no true treasure.
The Blackbeard legend lives on at the
Outer Banks. Locals offer an eerie expla-
nation for a dull light that can be seen
shimmering off the coast on certain clear,
cool nights. They say it is Blackbeard's
lantern as he wanders the sea, searching
for the
from
The military men poured out of the holds beard that might lead him to his missing
with muskets firing and swords slashing.
head.
noo

[PAGE BREAK]

A10
SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011 THE HARTFORD COURANT
After 15 years of 'maybe,
ship sleuths take a bow
BY DAVID ZUCCHINO
Tribune Newspapers
BEAUFORT, N.C. - In
the fall of 1996, a private
'treasure-hunting company
discovered a shipwreck in
shallow waters a mile off
the coast of this colonial
fishing harbor.
Divers found a bronze
bell dated 1705, an English
musketoon gun barrel and
18th century cannons and
cannon balls.
ran
North Carolina's top ma-
rine archaeologists were
pretty sure the wreck was
the Queen Anne's Revenge,
the cannon-heavy flagship
of the notorious pirate
Blackbeard that
aground in 1718. But being
scientists, they used buzz-
kill qualifiers such as "be-
lieved to be" and "consistent
with" to describe the wreck.
Now, after examining
thousands of artifacts and
digging through historical
records, those same archae-
ologists have finally deliv-
ered a verdict: The ship is
very likely, just about dead
sure, all but certain, no
doubt the Queen Anne's
Revenge.
"It's in the right place,
from the right time, with a
preponderance of circum-
stantial evidence that has
become overwhelming."
said David Moore, a sturdy,
bearded nautical archaeol-
ogist who has spent 15 years
diving the wreck.
No one has found "the
smoking blunderbuss," said
Jeffrey Crow, a historian
with North Carolina's Of-
fice of Archives and History.
strong tendency toward
Ruling Theory, whereby re-
searchers seem to shape
evidence to fit a precon-
ceived identification."
That unpleasantness is
long forgotten as overflow
crowds have jammed the
Queen Anne's Revenge ex-
hibit that opened June ll at
the North Carolina Mar-
itime Museum in Beaufort.
The display is the first
permanent exhibition of the
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shipwreck's artifacts.
It'll be a long while be-
fore all the wreck's esti-
mated 750,000 artifacts -
and perhaps the absolute,
definitive, clinching proof
of Blackbeard's flagship
are hauled up and carefully
examined, Moore said.
How long?
Moore shrugged. "I'd say
another 15 years."
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[PAGE BREAK]

But archaeological detec-
tive work has proved that
every significant artifact -
from swords to gold pieces
to silver boot buckles to a
diamond-encrusted wine
glass is dated before the
1718 wreck. That and other
compelling evidence con-
firm that the ship can be
none other than the Queen
Anne's Revenge.
The two marine archae-
ologists who wrote the
scholarly paper that has
prompted the state to seal
the deal on Blackbeard's
90-foot ship said, "It was
the right-sized vessel, in the
right place, at the right time,
and with artifacts of the
right period."
But then they had to add
this downer: "And often,
with archaeology, that's as
good as it gets."
Mark Wilde-Ramsing,
deputy state archaeologist
and head of the Queen
Anne's Revenge project,
Wrote the paper with
Charles Ewen of the an-
thropology faculty at East
Carolina University. Al-
though he has long believed
the shipwreck is Black-
beard's, Wilde-Ramsing
urged caution for years as
the wreck was studied.
"Extraordinary claims
extraordinary
require
proof," he said.
The paper, to be pub-
lished next spring in the
scholarly journal Historical
Archaeology, provides that
proof, he said.
Blackbeard didn't leave
many clues. After his flag-
ship, a French slave ship
named La Concorde that he
captured and renamed, ran
aground on a sandbar in the
spring of 1718, he and his
pirate crew took their sweet
time unloading the ship,
leaving behind virtually
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[PAGE BREAK]

Ship found in 2 feet of mud in cove where
United Press International
ORIENTAL, N.C. An archeol-
ogist revealed Saturday he has
found an old ship of sail buried in
the mud of Teach's Cove where
the infamous pirate Blackbeard
lurked.
The time-ravaged hulk was un-
covered by Mark Wilde-Ramsing,
36, of the North Carolina Under-
water Archaeology Unit, in shal-
low water during a routine inspec-
tion of a site where a developer
had applied for a dredging permit.
"It was buried in about two feet
of mud and had been pretty well
eaten, said Wilde-Ramsing. He
The pirate twisted his long black beard
into snake-like strings and then tied them
behind his ears to appear ferocious.
estimated the vessel to be about
100 feet long, with a beam of 25
feet, and a draft of eight to 12 feet.
The discovery was made last
December but officials kept the
find secret, fearing treasure
hunters and souvenir seekers
would swarm into the area and
tear apart the wreck.
New Haven Register, Sunday, April 26, 1987 Page A13
cove where Blackbeard roamed
Wilde-Ramsing came forward
with the story because rumors of it
had begun to circulate and he
wanted to put to rest a story that
treasure had been found.
"I don't believe it has any trea-
sure on it," said Wilde-Ramsing.
"The value of it lies wholly in the
historical information we could
gain from it."
The discovery was made in
Green Creek, part of Teach's Cove.
The cove is named for Edward
Teach, the notorious Blackbeard,
who legend suggests had one of his
many hideouts there.
Teach is painted in local legend
as a fearless, merciless sea robber
who struck terror in the hearts of
victims and crewmen alike. It is
said he twisted his long black
beard into snake-like strings and
then tied them behind his ears to
appear even more ferocious.
One of the more fanciful local
tales concerning Teach is that dur-
ing one of his lootings of a mer-
chant ship on the high seas he cap-
tured a princess.
Deeming it unwise to take her
home to wife No. 14, he dropped
the princess off in Oriental, intend-
ing to return. Before he made it
back, he was captured and behead-
ed at Ocracoke in 1718.
Wilde-Ramsing said an analysis
of pieces taken from the wreck re-
vealed the vessel was made of
white oak, which "argues for it be-
ing European or from the
Northeast.
The archaeologist said the ves-
sel had mostly wooden fastenings
and the pegs were "hand shaped,
eight sided, and they had square
wedges in the ends of them to:
tighten them up. That is indicative
of an old boat, even Colonial."
Wilde-Ramsing said his best
guess was the wreck was an aban-
doned boat that had been towed
off to the side of the channel.
But he said he could not rule
out the possibility the vessel was a
pirate "prize" that was towed to
the side and burned after being
looted.
State authorities have lined up a
group of local residents to watch
for any would-be looters.

[PAGE BREAK]

Pertient 28 August 1958
Old sunken ship
is still a mystery
to archaeologists
United Press International
ORIENTAL, N.C. The sunken
hull of an old wooden vessel found
in pirate Blackbeard's hideaway is
the remains of a massively built
twin-masted ship that apparently
was abandoned, archaeologists
said Saturday.
Richard Lawrence, one of the
North Carolina Underwater Ar-
chaeology Unit divers who sur-
veyed the wreck, said while no
gold doubloons were found, the
mud-entombed hull has given up a
wealth of historical information.
The vessel is believed to date
back somewhere between 1780 and
1820 long after Blackbeard was
beheaded. It was about 62 feet
long, weighed 110 tons, had a draft
of about nine feet and likely was a
square-rigger, or brig.
"Anytime we can find a vessel
of this period and examine it, we
are adding a great deal to our body
of knowledge," Lawrence said.
The most interesting of the arti-
facts found was a token about the
size of a dime, with the name
"Carolus," Latin for Charles, writ-
ten backward across it.
"It could have been a stamp or
an impression that was made from
a coin," said Lawrence. "After
Carolus there is the Roman nu-
meral II, but you can't quite make
out whether there might have been
another line there for III."
Despite the token, the archaeo-
logist said experts had no conclu-
sive way to establish the national-
ity of the vessel, but since it was
constructed almost entirely of oak
it most likely was built in New
England or Europe.
Lawrence said if it were built in
Europe, his guess would be that it
was British. He said it was most
unlikely that it was built locally,
since the area has always been rich
in pine, and boats built in the area
reflect the fact.
The vessel was first discovered
Snearly two years ago when a
developer applied for a dredging
permit in Green Creek, bordering
the little fishing village of Oriental.
Green Creek is a part of Teach's
Cove, named for Edward Teach,
the notorious Blackbeard, who is
said to have used the cove as one
of his many hideouts.
Teach, however, was captured
and beheaded at Ocracoke in 1718,
more than a half century before the
vessel was built.
New Haven Register

[PAGE BREAK]

Long-lost copy of Bill of Rights belongs to North Carolina, judge rules
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. - A 1789
copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights
that was missing from North
Carolina for 138 years belongs
to the state, a federal judge ruled
Friday.
But U.S. District Judge Ter-
rence Boyle told U.S. marshals
to hang on to the parchment for
now, pending further appeals in
the convoluted dispute involv-
ing the government and a pair of
Connecticut men who owned
the document before it was
seized last year.
Archivists have estimated the
value of the draft of the pro-
posed Bill of Rights that Presi-
dent Washington sent to state
lawmakers to encourage them
to join the United States at $30
million.
At a hearing held Friday,
Boyle swept aside a lawyer's
argument that he has no juris-
diction in the case.
"I think the court has to
order and adjudicate whose pos-
session is lawful in order to
resolve this case," Boyle said.
He then ruled that the document
belongs to North Carolina.
Still pending is a federal law-
suit filed in Connecticut by Bob
Matthews of Washington Depot,
Conn. Matthews argues that the
government illegally took the
document from him and
antiques dealer Wayne Pratt last
year.
An agent posing as a museum
buyer at a meeting in Philadel-
phia pretended to purchase the
paper from Matthews and Pratt
for $5 million, then presented a
seizure warrant from a North
Carolina federal judge.
The document had been
missing from Raleigh since the
end of the Civil War, when the
city was occupied by federal
troops.
The parchment resurfaced in
2000, when Matthews brokered
a sale in which Pratt bought the
paper from two Connecticut
women for $200,000.
Pratt, the antiques dealer, is
not opposing the government
and has agreed to donate the
document to North Carolina. In
return, U.S. Attorney Frank
Whitney of Raleigh has dropped
a federal lawsuit to get it and
has cleared Pratt of possible
crimes.
Matthews got
though he maintains that he is
entitled to half the value of the
document or an equivalent tax
write-off.
Whitney says Matthews has
no claim on the document
because Pratt was the dealer and
had the right of possession and
because the document was orig-
inally stolen.
In court Friday, Matthews'
attorney, Michael Stratton,
argued that Boyle lost jurisdic-
tion over the case when Whitney
dropped his case against Pratt.
He also argued that many issues
had not been resolved, including
ownership of the document.
that ran the state during the
Civil War.
Pratt's lawyer,
Thomas
Dwyer, said he agrees with the
government that, as stolen con-
traband, the document belongs
to North Carolina.
a
He also argued that by filing
lawsuit in Connecticut,
Matthews is ignoring orders
filed in North Carolina federal
court.
Matthews' lawsuit, filed in
Connecticut in October, charges
the government with conduct-
ing an "illegal sting operation"
to return the document to North
Carolina.
It accused Whitney, U.S.
Marshal Charles Reavis and five
other federal prosecutors and
investigators of seizing the
"This document was actually
abandoned by the state of North
Carolina. They wanted nothing
to do with it," he said, referring
nothing, to the Confederate government stolen document illegally.
24 January 2004 Sat NEW HAVEN REGISTER, COWN
paz A3-5