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Blackbeard's ship excavated


Capn_Enigma

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BEAUFORT, North Carolina (Reuters) -- Nearly three centuries ago, the notorious pirate Blackbeard ran aground in his ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, off what is now a North Carolina beach town.

This month, a crew of 13 heads out to sea each day, hoping for clear-enough weather to dive the 20 to 25 feet to the ocean bottom to excavate what they believe is Blackbeard's ship.

The team has found cannons, a bell, lead shot of all sizes, gold dust, pewter cups and medical devices, like a urethral syringe used to treat syphilis with mercury.

"A saying at the time was 'a night with Venus and a month with mercury.' And mercury doesn't even cure you," lead archeologist Chris Southerly said in an interview.

For more information, click on this CNN page

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"The floggings will continue until morale improves!"

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Do not get too excited ! We archaelogists always say that the excavation is specific place , in this case the Queen Anne's Revenge , So one can get more funding for the dig :ph34r: . But a fine dig it seems to be from what I have read.

But I doubt it to be the Queen Anne's Revenge . But one can always hope.

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always surrounded by shadows , always in the shadow. A spectre he be !

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Part of a story on the from page of YAHOO this AM>

--------------------------------------------------------

There were accounts that he tied slow-burning cannon fuses to his long black hair before going into battle.

18TH CENTURY PSYCHO OPS

"With the fuses in his hair and heavily armed, he's a frightening person," says Butler, who added that pirates preferred to take ships without a shot. "There were some psychopathic pirates out there, but Blackbeard was not one of them. We have no evidence that Blackbeard ever murdered anyone or ever tortured anyone.

Blackbeard at first fought with the British as a privateer, a kind of legal pirate, attacking Spanish and French ships in the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century.

With the war's end, Blackbeard and thousands of other unemployed sailors turned to piracy. His troop captured a French slaver called La Concorde in a brief skirmish in November 1717, says Butler.

He renamed the ship the Queen Anne's Revenge, which was probably 90 to 105 feet long. The band also had three smaller sloops, with about 400 men under arms.

In May 1718, Blackbeard's pirates sailed into the port of Charleston, South Carolina and, in a stunningly audacious move, blockaded the harbor. The ransom demanded, and paid, was a chest of medicine worth 400 pounds, says Butler.

"In a way, I guess it did sort of terrorize that port. Blackbeard at that time had a fleet of four vessels, with 60 cannons. This was the most powerful fleet in this hemisphere at this time," says Butler.

Shortly after terrorizing Charlestown, Blackbeard lost his lead ship, running the Queen Anne's Revenge aground on one of the many shifting sandbars off North Carolina, says Butler.

Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help....

Her reputation was her livelihood.

I'm a pirate, love. By nature and by choice!

My inner voice sometimes has an accent!

My wont? A delicious rip in time...

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Yes..like head and cheese, the words "legal" and "Pirate" should not accompany one another :huh:

Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help....

Her reputation was her livelihood.

I'm a pirate, love. By nature and by choice!

My inner voice sometimes has an accent!

My wont? A delicious rip in time...

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"There were some psychopathic pirates out there, but Blackbeard was not one of them. We have no evidence that Blackbeard ever murdered anyone or ever tortured anyone.

The idea that Blackbeard was a psychopath has always intriged me.... I want to do some looking into it, I don't think he was a Homicidal psychopath, But brilliant, and the storys about him were more like advertising than true.... I want to do some research and find more information on this....

Kind of like that "bit" in PotC, where the prissoner says... "I've herd about th' Black Pearl, they never leave any prisoners" and Jack ask who tells the storys then.... If Blackbeard really tried to experience what Hell was like, or shot one of his crew just to keep them on their toes..... who told the storys ? Or were they stratigicly "leaked" so everyone would be terrified of him, and then surrender without a fight ?

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who told the storys ?  Or were they stratigicly "leaked" so everyone would be terrified of him, and then surrender without a fight ?

Ahh..in a story I have been writing the Captain relishes

The sea,

Treasure ....

and menacing without necesarily killing as a means to his goal of procreating himself as a legend. He does it as a matter of sport....course every now and then 'e gets a bit carried away.. well he IS a Pirate Captain heh heh ;)

Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help....

Her reputation was her livelihood.

I'm a pirate, love. By nature and by choice!

My inner voice sometimes has an accent!

My wont? A delicious rip in time...

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Isn't that what history is all about?

How many of today's historians have participated in Pickett's Charge? How many were aboard "Titanic"? How many saw the exploding "Hindenburg", or Lindbergh landing in Paris?

Most of the recent history is based on eyewitnesses accounts, be it from letters, official documents or other sources. The historian's real work is to eliminate contradictions between these accounts, so that a sensible picture emerges from the blur.

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"The floggings will continue until morale improves!"

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Isn't that what history is all about?

Well kind of.... but I want to do some research and find out if Blackbeard "leaked" the stories about himself to make his job easier.....

How many of today's historians have participated in Pickett's Charge?

But they are still arguing about exactly what happened during Picket's Charge.....Just from different view points.... That's kind of what I want to do....

I start out arguing that Blackbeard wasn't some crazed psychopath, but used propiganda to make his job easier.... The facts and information that I find may totaly dissprove that... I could be compleatly wrong.... but it would still be interesting to find out..... :lol:

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