Experts who have been poring over the discoveries from Blackbeard's ship for years have new insight into the lives of 18th century pirates — they know what was in the shipboard library.
Archaeologists in the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources have uncovered fragments of papers that they believe originate from pages of a book onboad the Queen Anne's Revenge, the pirate's wrecked ship.
Their analysis reveals the fragments are from a copy of Captain Edward Cooke's “A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711”.
The discovery was made during work by the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab, where 16 fragments of paper were discovered in sludge removed from the chamber of a cannon.
"The largest fragment was only about the size of a quarter. Paper is an extremely rare material to find on shipwrecks, especially one 300 years old, because it usually disintegrates very quickly under water," the state agency that oversees the lab said.
It took months of conservation efforts before the title of the tome could be determined.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the book had a maritime theme.
Published in 1712, Cooke's book is an account of his journeys on the Duke and Duchess led by Captain Woodes Rogers. Among his adventures, he recounted the rescue of marooned Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel "Robinson Crusoe".
The Queen Anne's Revenge was the flagship of Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard. The vessel grounded off North Carolina in 1718 but was rediscovered in 1996.
