One does not have to be a history buff to have heard of the pirate Blackbeard. He attained legendary status and appears in history, fiction and pop culture alike.
However, Blackbeard did exist and engaged in piracy around the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century in the Atlantic Ocean. The wreck of his ship,
Queen Anne’s Revenge, was found on November 21, 1996 and since then the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources has been releasing information gleaned from whatever is retrieved from the shipwreck.
Recently, the archeologists discovered 16 small fragments of paper from the chamber for a breech-loading cannon. This was quite a find as according to the department, "Paper is an extremely rare material to find on shipwrecks, especially one 300 years old, because it usually disintegrates very quickly under water."
However as the fragments were processed by the labs, it was found that some text was still visible on some of them. Since that discovery, the lab has been busy trying to identify where it's from.
Finally, after months of research it was matched to the book
A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711 by Captain Edward Cooke. The book is about the the adventures the Captain had on his expidition in those years, describing the American coasts, from Tierra del Fuego in the south, to California in the north and all his interactions there. This type of book is called a voyage narrative which was quite popular at the time.
Does this mean this was a part of Blackbeards personal library? That Captain Cook's adventures inspired him or perhaps one of his crew? Maybe, though the fact the fragments were found in a cannon could also mean someone used pages of it for cleaning cannons.
Start a Conversation
Post comment