Pirate's Ship to Sail Again?

By Katie Avent

Reprinted with permission from The Boating News (May 1999) a monthly coastal and boating waterway guide published in Charleston, SC. For more boating news, visit their website at: http://www.theboatingnews.com

British soldiers shot him, stabbed him, slashed his throat and cut his head off --not your most reputable sort of guy and most genteel sort of death.

His exploits --most of them evil deeds indeed-- spanned several states -Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, even the Caribbean.

But folks in a small, rural county in North Carolina think they can draw tourists with a replica of the dreaded pirate Blackbeard's ship and remains of his ill-begotten treasurers.

"Talk now is of heritage tourism," said Margie Brooks, tourism director of the Greater Hyde County Chamber of Commerce. "If this isn't heritage tourism, I don't know what is."

One of the hottest topics of conversation in eastern North Carolina for the last couple of years has been the discovery of what state historians and others are 99 percent sure is Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, a 40-gun sailing vessel.

The wreck of Blackbeard's ship was found in November 1996 by Intersal Inc., a Florida treasure-hunting company, in 20 feet of water in Beaufort Inlet. A blunderbuss barrel, a bronze bell dated 1709, a 24-pound cannonball and a sounding weight were brought up from the wreck.

If Hyde County's hopes for the replica come true, Ocracoke would be home port to Queen Anne's Revenge, which would be owned and operated by Maritime Research Institute, a nonprofit subsidiary of Intersal, which has the rights to display Blackbeard's archives. Mike Daniel, head of the nonprofit institute, worked for Intersal when the shipwreck was found.

Officials are now discussing using part of an empty Coast Guard building on Ocracoke for a museum or visitors' center as well as a couple of long docks for keeping Queen Anne's Revenge. Brooks said the building built in 1942 is 18,000 square feet.

The project now is in the hands of a consulting business in Annapolis, Md., which will decide if the floating replica and history center is financially feasible.

Thomas Flynn, president of Thomas Point Associates, has worked with maritime and waterfront development in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

Brooks said the Hyde County chamber received a $20,000.00 rural tourism grant from the North Carolina Department of Commerce to pay for Flynn's study, which should be completed by the end of May.

If Flynn gives the project a go-ahead, then construction plans and fund raising will begin. "Three to five years I think would be a good guess as to when it might actually happen," Brooks said.

Researchers first must find out if there is a plan for this type of vessel. Hyde County planners want to make the replica as authentic as possible, yet at the same time would like for the ship to be able to travel to points along the Intracoastal Waterway such as Bath and Edenton. More research will tell if this is possible.

Brooks said, "It will travel at least up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but hopefully more than that."

Officials want the replica built by area boatbuilders. "In the Carteret County area, there are a lot of boatbuilders," she said. "If there's any way possible, we want to make it a North Carolina vessel. We see it as being an ambassador for the state of North Carolina."

Hyde officials hope the replica can be built without debt. "We envision that building it will not be a particular (financial) problem. We feel like we'll get corporate help. A couple of businesses have already volunteered engines," Brooks said.

The story goes that Blackbeard planned to disband his fleet of more than 300 pirates and four ships. He ran aground Queen Anne's Revenge and its sister ship Adventure near Fishtown, now Beaufort. NC.

After loading his tender with treasure, he sailed away and left more of his crew on an island a few miles away. He then sailed with 23 men to Bath and surrendered to Governor Eden. But in 1718, before receiving a pardon from King George I, he was killed in a battle with British soldiers off Ocracoke Island.

Officials believe that this moment in history gives them claim to make Ocracoke the home port for the proposed 100-foot replica of the pirate's ship.

And Hyde County may have found a treasure in Blackbeard's death.

Brooks describes the county as "small-town U. S. A." The 5,400-population county has no traffic lights, she said. In fact, the Greater Hyde County Chamber of Commerce has only two employees, a part-time executive director and a part-time office worker. Others, such as Brooks and Arthur and Alice Keeney, are volunteers on the 200-member chamber's committees.

"We are a very poor rural county. With the exception of Ocracoke, we don't have a heck of a lot," Brooks said.

Through the years Ocracoke, on the bottom tip of the Outer Banks, has become a thriving vacation spot for those willing to take a ferry to the bridge-less island.

Hyde County depends on the Ocracoke tourist trade to supplement its farming and fishing neighbors' tax base.

"We don't envision this vessel will be in Ocracoke or Hyde County year-round," Brooks said. During the summers, Ocracoke isn't hurting for the tourist dollars, but October through January the island could use the business, she said. During Ocracoke's busy season, Queen Anne's Revenge would travel to festivals and make other stops.

As Brooks and committee members researched the idea of building a replica of Blackbeard's ship, they looked at the replicas of Capt. James Cook's Endeavour and the HMS Bounty, but there was no working replica of a pirate ship.

Hyde County thinks it might have found a niche.

The Boating News