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Recent analyses of the numerous pieces of bituminous coal and anthracites evenly scattered around the shipwrecked Queen Anne’s Revenge in North Carolina are no evidence that the famous pirate Blackbeard traded with the fossil fuel.
The shipwreck was discovered in 1996 but it actually sunk in the 18th Century.
After being a French slave ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge held a crew of 400 pirates commanded by a man named Edward Thatch (also spelled as Teach) who would be better known as Blackbeard. The dreaded pirate captain cruised the Caribbean amassing a hoard of treasure still yet to be discovered.
Blackbeard’s enterprise ended in 1718 after the pirates famously blockaded the port of Charleston, South Carolina. The crew left the port and sailed north where they tried to maneuver into Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, now known as Beaufort Inlet.
The Queen Anne’s Revenge, however, hit a sandbar in the inlet along the coastline. That’s where its reign ended.
In addition to coal, when the boat was found 300 years after sinking, it contained gold grains, mercury and glass trade beads.
Most of these items were common at the time but the coal pieces were a puzzle.
According to a recent paper published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, coal was primarily used for cooking or heating in 17th- and 18th-century ships since coal wasn’t used for propulsion until the 1870s. The team behind the paper found no evidence of it being used for heating or sailing on the pirate ship.
Also, the types of coal found were normally sourced in the Appalachians but mining had not been developed there during the period Blackbeard was active.
In addition to this, European settlers did not discover Pennsylvania anthracite until maybe the later part of the 1760s and real, legitimate mining didn’t happen until the 1800s.
“It turns out we didn’t need to sort out the source because the happenstance of the shipwreck and the coal was totally a coincidence,” James Hower, co-author of the study, said in a media statement. “It was most likely dumped from US Navy ships in the Civil War era.”
As it happens, Beaufort became an invaluable harbour and coal refuelling station during the Civil War after Union troops captured nearby Fort Macon on April 26, 1862.
Hower explained that there was a heavy influx of ship traffic at that time, especially during the Union’s blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina—a major port for the Confederacy and the last one to fall in February of 1865.
At one point, it was ordered that 1,000 tons of coal were kept on hand in Beaufort for ships in the area. From 1862-64, 421 vessels made nearly 500 trips into the city for coal.
The station would close in 1865—147 years after the Queen Anne’s Revenge sank.
The researcher and his colleagues also cite forces of nature as a factor that explains why the coal settled in and around the shipwreck. The inlets and sand shoals along the Outer Banks frequently shift over the years due to waves, tidal currents, tropical storms and hurricanes.
“This research demonstrates that our studies of coal are not just for utilization. We can do something that teaches us about our history and not just mining history,” Hower pointed out. “One way or another, somebody used this coal. It wasn’t Blackbeard, but it was the US Navy.”
