5 cannons raised from wreck of Blackbeard's ship

Archeologists work on the Queen Anne's Revenge in N.C.

10/29/2013

BEAUFORT, N.C.  — Archaeologists in North Carolina have recovered five more cannons from the wreck Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

The largest of the guns raised Monday weighs about 3,000 pounds. The wreckage of the ship is in Beaufort Inlet.

Project Director Billy Ray Morris says historians think the largest cannon was made in Sweden, indicating that Blackbeard had guns from different countries. State officials say about 280,000 artifacts have been recovered from the wreck.

Blackbeard, the world’s most famous pirate, captured a French slave ship and renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge in 1717. Volunteers with the Royal Navy killed Blackbeard in Ocracoke Inlet the following year, five months after the ship sank.

The wreck was located in 1996.