Cannon pulled from Blackbeard's ship

It was a lucky day for C13.

A team led by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources’ Underwater Archaeology Branch wasn’t sure they’d be able to free the one-ton, 8-foot-long cannon to raise it from its resting place on the ocean floor.

But they close out this year’s fall dive at the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck site doing just that, raising C13, which is also the 13th cannon recovered from the flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

The cannon was raised Wednesday morning from the shipwreck site in Beaufort Inlet about a mile-and-a-half off the coast of Morehead City.

“This has been giving us fits for almost two years now, last fall and this year, and I thought we wouldn’t get it up. I’m so happy to see it. It finally came out of the hole (Tuesday) and what a beautiful day,” Project Director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said before a crowd gathered at the N.C. Maritime Museum at Beaufort to view the cannon before it was taken to the conservation lab in Greenville.

Artifacts being recovered from the site have been on the ocean floor for nearly 300 years and the stop in Beaufort gave the public the first glance at the newly recovered cannon.

“The last people to see this were the pirates on Blackbeard’s flagship, and it doesn’t get better than that,” Wilde-Ramsing said.

Fresh off the sea floor, the cannon is encased in a cement-like shell of sand, salt and sea life.

Five-year-old Finn Humphries of Morehead City watched in fascination as the cannon was uncovered and team members explained that other smaller artifacts are likely to be uncovered inside the concretion as the cannon is cleaned and goes through the conservation process.

Inside the Maritime Museum, the Queen Anne’s Revenge exhibit includes many of the artifacts already recovered and on display for the public.

The Queen Anne’s Revenge sank off Beaufort Inlet in June 1718. The shipwreck was located in 1996 by Intersal Inc. of Florida by Operations Director Mike Daniel through research provided by late president Phil Masters.

Kevin Meadows of Jacksonville, vice president of Intersal Inc., said they continue to actively support the project and there’s excitement with each artifact that is raised. Each one plays a part in telling the story of coastal North Carolina’s history.

“It’s important that we share what we have here along the coast of North Carolina; it’s important historically and culturally,” he said.

For N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle, Wednesday’s trip offshore to see the recovery of C13 was her first chance to go out on a dive expedition.

But she was well familiar with the QAR project and its importance to North Carolina and she fully supports the recovery of the artifacts from the site.

“This is a priority for me within the division because I think that we’ve been given an incredible responsibility and that we have an incredible opportunity to bring up these artifacts and to capitalize on them for academics and science and as a resource for growing cultural and heritage tourism in North Carolina,” she said.

The goal is to complete the recovery of artifacts by 2013, with spring and fall dives in 2012 and 2013, and ongoing conservation efforts in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of the sinking of the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

With budget cuts, Carlisle said sharing resources and gathering private support is increasingly important.

“Our needs are supporting our dives over the next two years, during which time we hope to excavate close to all the artifacts, then to support the work going on in the lab in the ongoing years so we can present these artifacts to the people,” she said.

Carlisle said that ongoing collaboration between multiple agencies and organizations has made the QAR project possible.

Major partnerships with the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources on the latest dive expedition included the NOAA Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, East Carolina University and the town of Beaufort.

Ongoing partners have included Intersal, the U.S. Coast Guard, N.C. State Ports and Fort Macon State.