Historian Says Wreck Is Blackbeard's Ship

After 10 years of research, a North Carolina historian concludes that a local shipwreck was indeed the flagship of Blackbeard the pirate. The Raleigh News and Observer reported that Lindley Butler, historian for the Queen Anne's Revenge project, called his findings an "inescapable conclusion" after a decade of studying the size of the sunken ship, the number of guns it carried and the artifacts recovered from the site.Historical records pegged the sinking of Queen Anne's Revenge by Blackbeard, who ran the vessel aground off the North Carolina coast in 1718. Butler said one of the most compelling pieces of the booty onboard was a coin weight. The small copper piece was used to determine the precise weight of coins and gold, and it possessed a likeness of Britain's Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714. Butler said: "This is the most exciting artifact to me; you can't get any better than putting Queen Anne on the Queen Anne's Revenge."