During the age of pirates, none was more notorious and feared than Blackbeard. Clad in cutlasses, daggers, and pistols, legend has it that he had matches woven into his abundant black beard, which he lit in the midst of battle. With a large an array of weaponry and sinister smoke emanating from his face, his victims were so stuck by fear that they often gave up without a fight.

The Queen Anne's Revenge, a 300-ton frigate armed with 40 cannons, was Blackbeard's infamous flagship. In the spring of 1718, Blackbeard sailed his pirate fleet into Charleston Harbor, blockading the North Carolina port city and abducting a number of its prominent citizens. Upon receiving a ransom, the Queen Anne's Revenge and the rest of Blackbeard’s vessels escaped, only to be run aground in the area of North Carolina’s Beaufort Inlet. Blackbeard stripped his flagship of its treasures and escaped, leaving most of his men and the damaged Queen Anne's Revenge behind.

In 1996, a private research group discovered a shipwreck in North Carolina’s Beaufort Inlet thought to be Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge. Since that time, Richard Lawrence has been involved in all phases of research and management for that site and is a part of the five-member Queen Anne’s Revenge Archaeological Advisory Committee.

Co-sponsored by the Friends Of State Archaeology (FOSA) and by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Connecticut Archaeology Center, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn. 860.486.4460 and http://www.cac.uconn.edu/mnhcurrentcalendar.html