Most people know the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab as the place charged with the preservation of artifacts removed from this important archaeological site. This, however, is not our only responsibility.
After the battle of Ocracoke in November 1718, only sixteen members of Blackbeard’s crew were rounded up and brought to Virginia to await trial. The men waited for three months for the seemingly inevitable guilty verdict of piracy and death sentence.
On July 25, 1718,* Woodes Rogers arrived in the Bahamas as the islands’ first appointed Royal Governor. Piracy grew rampant in the untamed colony, and Rogers’ official mission was to stamp it out.
In March 1718, the HMS Phoenix arrived in New Providence carrying the King’s Pardon, and among the first to sign was none other than Blackbeard’s former commander Benjamin Hornigold.