A 3,000 pound anchor from pirate Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, is recovered from the ocean on Friday, May 27, 2011 in Beaufort Inlet, in Carteret County N.C.
Davy Jones’ Locker is slowly letting out its secrets. Starting with a 3,000-pound anchor.
Archeologists made the trek to the North Carolina sea floor Friday and pulled up some major plunder: an anchor from Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The anchor stands more than 11 feet tall and stretches longer than 7.5 feet.
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But despite the hefty haul, the ton-and-a-half anchor was the ship’s third-largest anchor. The two larger ones, and one that’s smaller, remain embedded in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, as marine life has overtaken the 300-year-old shipwreck in its years of being buried off the N.C. coast. The archaeologists hope to have recovered the entire ship by 2013, a tall order considering the wooden hull and ship’s ballast have been lying on the ocean floor since 1718.
As expected, the newly-recovered anchor will become part of a museum dedicated to Blackbeard. Their collection from the single shipwreck totals more than 250,000 artifacts. And there’s no doubt the Pirates of the Caribbean folks hope to capitalize on the find, too.
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