(C)2008. Scott Taylor Photography, all rights reserved Photos by Wendy M. Welsh Courtesy of North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC North Carolina’s Outer Banks comprise more than 200 miles of sandy barrier islands that stretch southward along North Carolina’s shoreline from Virginia. To the north are Roanoke, Ocracoke, and Hatteras. The southern Banks—the Crystal Coast— include Harkers Island, Carrot Island and Shackleford. This is the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” a realm of shifting sandbars, treacherous shoals, wandering channels and submerged islands. It’s the last resting place for hundreds of illfated ships, from WWII German U-Boats to commercial cargo vessels and pirate ships. In pre-Revolutionary times, pirates roamed the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to the Caribbean. During any of the frequent European wars, entrepreneurial seamen signed on with one monarch or another as privateers—licensed pirates. They were hired to disrupt shipping and seize lucrative cargo from anyone who wasn’t an ally. When peace broke out, the rulers offered amnesty to the privateers if they’d stop pirating. But many unemployed privateers declared allegiance to no one and went into the pirating business on their own, plundering any ship that looked promising. Ships from France, England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain—all were considered fair game. Residents of coastal villages relied on the black-market pirate trade to survive, and whatever cargo the pirates seized could be sold for a profit. Gold, of course, was the best prize of all. BLACKBEARD’S FLAGSHIP Queen Anne’s Revenge was a fast, strong ship; a 300-ton, 40-gun frigate that Blackbeard had captured from the French. But only six
The lovely Cape Lookout Lighthouse, Harker’s Island, North Carolina Outer Banks; They may appear to be coins (scattered below), but these are silver reale weights, which were used to weigh the reale coins themselves. Opposite page: Divers peruse a sunken WWII German U-Boat near Beaufort, one of hundreds of wrecks in North Carolina’s “Graveyard of the Atlantic”.
months after he’d taken her, he ran aground in Beaufort Inlet. In June of 1718, Blackbeard decided to downsize his large crew by scuttling his flagship and marooning most of his men on an island. He offloaded the ship’s cargo onto a smaller vessel and departed with a few friends for the nearby island of Ocracoke. He accepted the governor’s amnesty, quit the pirate’s life, but soon reneged on the deal. England declared him a most-wanted criminal, and Blackbeard was killed on Ocracoke by the Royal Navy in November of that same year. WHERE’S THE GOLD? In 1996, the research company Intersal, Inc. found Queen Anne’s Revenge while searching for El Salvador, a Spanish treasure galleon that went down in 1750 during a hurricane in the same area. Intersal turned over the research and recovery of Queen Anne’s Revenge to the state of North Carolina. Dredging operations, under the direction of the Department of Cultural Resources, have retrieved cannons, anchors, a ship’s bell, a small amount of gold, and many general shipboard items left behind when the crew abandoned ship. Yet, as Queen Anne’s Revenge sits in the shallow water and deep sand of Beaufort Inlet, the question on everyone’s mind is, what happened to Blackbeard’s legendary treasure hoard? “It’s an archeological treasure, not a monetary one,” says David Moore, the curator of nautical archaeology at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. For the past 15 years, he’s been diving the H I L U X U RY AUGUST/S EP T E M B E R 20 1 2
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