Restraining Device

Restraining devices, like the shackle shown above, are common on ships of the eighteenth century as a means to deal with unruly sailors. While drunkenness was at times encouraged as a means of temporarily boosting morale, it could also lead to great disorder, especially considering that Blackbeard may have been dealing with a crew of potentially hundreds of pirates at one point during his piratical career.

It is possible that the shackles found on the site were used to restrain the enslaved Africans during the ship's Middle Passage as La Concorde. Rope-bound shackles have also been found on the wreck of Henrietta Marie, an English slave ship which sank off the coast of Florida in 1700.