Queen Anne’s Revenge: Blackbeard’s Shipwreck, Artifacts, and the Supreme Court Battle

The Queen Anne’s Revenge was the flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard that sank off the coast of North Carolina in the early eighteenth century. In the 1990s, a private salvaging company located the wreck, which yielded close to 400,000 artifacts over the next twenty-five years. These objects reveal the vessel’s past as a pirate ship and a slave trading boat. Unfortunately, an initial agreement between the private company that uncovered the wreck and the state of North Carolina gave way to numerous lawsuits in the 2000s, illustrating the challenging legal issues surrounding shipwrecks and their complicated salvaging operations.

Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard, c. 1680-1718) is arguably one of the most famous brigands to emerge during the Golden Age of Piracy. Renowned for his long black beard that triggered the nickname, he lit fuses during battles to provide himself with a supernatural, even demonic, appearance. Blackbeard had a short but illustrious career as a pirate. Little is known about his early life until he served on British privateering missions during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13), also known as Queen Anne’s War. After this war, Teach recruited sailors now destitute following the conflict to create a terrifying crew that hunted for merchant ships in North American and Caribbean waters. In 1717, Teach, off the coast of Martinique, took over a French vessel, La Concorde, which served as a slave trading ship shuttling its human cargo between Africa and the New World. Renaming the ship Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), Blackbeard expressed his displeasure with the new House of Hanover that had taken over the British Royal Throne following Queen Anne’s (of the Stuart House) death in 1714. The QAR became his flagship, and he outfitted it with forty cannons. In 1718, after a few successful heists, Blackbeard attempted to make land in Beaufort Inlet, but the QAR went aground on a sandbar and started to sink. Hastily assembling the most valuables, Blackbeard and his crew used a smaller boat to reach land. A few months following this tragedy, Blackbeard was killed in an engagement with British Naval Forces.

In 1996, after a long search, the private salvage company Intersal Inc., based in Florida, located the QAR’s final resting place off the coast of North Carolina. Unfortunately, time had not been kind to the wreck, as most of its wooden hull had disintegrated, save a few planks and metal fittings. Remaining, however, was the vital cargo that littered the ocean floor. Since it quickly became apparent that Blackbeard had managed to rescue most of his booty, Intersal and the State of North Carolina reached an agreement. Under the stipulation of this contract, Intersal received exclusive rights to pictures and film material. In return, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources received ownership of the artifacts located on the site. In addition, any proceeds from reproductions resulting from recovered artifacts were to be split evenly between the private company and the governmental agency.

In the twenty-five years since the QAR’s first discovery, divers have recovered close to 400,000 artifacts that assist in reconstructing the six months the QAR sailed under a pirate flag. Several underwater discoveries yielded insights into the wreck’s earlier and darker history as a slave ship traversing the Atlantic Ocean. The great majority of the recovered objects speak to the heavy armament of the pirate vessel. For instance, thirty of the forty cannons that made up the QAR artillery have now been located. Rescue teams have lifted more than twenty cannons in addition to hundreds of cannonballs and bar shots, employed to slash through the rigging and sails of enemy ships at close range. Although few intact smaller arms have been recovered, the hundreds of thousands of lead shots lifted from the ocean indicated that the pirates were indeed “armed to the teeth.” In addition to the armament, artifacts revealed surgical and navigational instruments, including a urethral syringe still containing mercury, a reminder of the painful and rudimentary eighteenth-century treatment of the sexually transmitted disease called syphilis. The recovery of partial shoe buckles indicated a relative wealth among the crew, as did deer and wild boar bones, suggesting that the pirates had ample fresh meat supplies. Finally, African gold jewelry and glass trade beads lifted from the QAR speak to the vessel’s slave trader past. The gold jewelry probably ended up on the ship with the slave cargo, and glass beads were most likely employed to obtain the Africans in bondage, selected for shipment to the thriving plantation economy of the Caribbean islands. The shipwreck’s recovered artifacts significantly complement the written records available for the eighteenth century.

Unfortunately, the agreement between Intersal and the State of North Carolina has been fraught with difficulty and illustrates the complicated legal tangle surrounding the salvage of shipwrecks. Although both parties renewed the initial contract in 2013, disagreements soon arose. Intersal maintained and consequently sued the state of North Carolina for using 2,000 photographs and over 200 minutes of video connected to the wreck without the company’s consent. Frederick Allen, the photographer contracted by Intersal, took the state of North Carolina to the Supreme Court for using his material without permission. In March 2020, however, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of state rights and told Allen that he could not sue the state of North Carolina for using film and video without permission.

FURTHER READING: State of North Carolina. “Queen Anne’s Revenge Project. Natural and Cultural Resources.” https:// www.qaronline.org/. Accessed February 12, 2023.

Totenberg, Nina. “In Blackbeard’s Pirate Ship Case, Supreme Court Scuttles Copyright Claims.” National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820381016/in-blackbeard-pirate-ship -case-supreme-court-scuttles-copyright-claims. Accessed February 12, 2023.

Wilde-Ramsing, Mark U. and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton. 2018. Blackbeard’s Sunken Price: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne’s Revenge. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.