The Queen Anne's Revenge: Blackbeard's Infamous Ship and the Secrets She Still Holds

Last time, we told the story of Edward Teach — the fearsome pirate known as Blackbeard. But every legend needs a stage, and Blackbeard had one of the most dramatic of all: a 40-gun warship called the Queen Anne's Revenge. This is her story...

Before she earned her infamous name, the Queen Anne's Revenge had a far darker history. She began life as a French merchant vessel called La Concorde, built in 1710 and put to work in the transatlantic slave trade — carrying enslaved Africans from the West African coast to the Caribbean in horrific conditions.

That changed in November 1717, when Blackbeard intercepted her near the island of Martinique. Outgunned and outnumbered, the French crew surrendered quickly. Blackbeard saw immediately what the ship could become. He armed her heavily — eventually mounting around 40 cannons along her decks — renamed her the Queen Anne's Revenge, and set about terrorising the Atlantic seaboard and the Caribbean. In May 1718, just months after capturing her, he used the ship to blockade the entire port of Charles Town, South Carolina (modern-day Charleston), holding the city hostage until his demands for a chest of medicine were met. It was a breathtaking display of audacity. She was built to intimidate as much as to fight, and she did both extraordinarily well — all in a reign that lasted barely six or seven months.

The Queen Anne's Revenge met her end not in a blaze of cannon fire, but run aground at Topsail Inlet (now Beaufort Inlet) on the coast of North Carolina in May 1718 — just weeks after the Charles Town blockade. Whether it was a genuine accident — the inlet was notoriously treacherous — or a deliberate move by Blackbeard to shed a large portion of his crew and consolidate his plunder among a smaller, trusted group, is a question historians still argue over. Either way, the ship was abandoned. Blackbeard transferred what treasure he could and walked away. Within months, he was dead.

The Queen Anne's Revenge slipped beneath the shallow waters of the inlet and, for nearly three centuries, the sea kept her secrets.

In 1996, private research firm Intersal, Inc., working with the State of North Carolina, located a wreck in just 20 feet of water off Beaufort — tantalizingly close to shore. The site was promising, but confirmation took years. It wasn't until 2011 that North Carolina officially declared it Blackbeard's flagship.

What clinched it was a remarkable convergence of evidence: a brass coin weight bearing the bust of Queen Anne of Great Britain, a wine glass stem embossed with crowns commemorating the 1714 coronation of King George I, and a French surgical syringe bearing a control mark showing it was manufactured in Paris between 1707 and 1715. Each object told the same story — this was a ship operating in the early 18th century Atlantic world, and the details matched perfectly.

Since excavation began, the project — overseen by the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources — has recovered over 400,000 artifacts from roughly 60% of the site. The finds span the full range of life aboard a pirate warship:

Weapons and hardware: Twenty-four cannons have been raised, along with anchors weighing over a ton, shot, gunpowder, and rigging components. This was a ship built for serious, sustained combat.

Medical tools: Surgical instruments, apothecary weights, and that distinctive Parisian syringe — used for treating venereal disease — paint a vivid picture of health at sea. Disease killed far more pirates than enemy swords.

Personal effects: Buttons, buckles, clay pipes, pewter tableware, and glassware bring individual sailors back to life. These are the quiet, human traces of hundreds of men living in cramped, often terrifying conditions.

With roughly 40% of the wreck site still unexcavated, the Queen Anne's Revenge isn't finished yet. Every dive adds another layer to our understanding of Blackbeard's world — the violence, the camaraderie, the surprising sophistication of the golden age of piracy.

She ran aground over 300 years ago. But she's still giving up her secrets, one artifact at a time.