| Subject: |
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QAR |
| Name: |
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Jim Sinclair |
| Date Posted: |
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Nov 19, 06 - 6:47 AM |
| Email: |
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jimsinclair@searex-inc.com |
| Website: |
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http://,1 |
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The following is an interesting article...
Shipwrecks if there is no controversy what good are they?
Jim
Discoverer criticizes artifact recovery effort
BY WALTER PHILLIPS
NEWS-TIMES
MOREHEAD CITY — Discoverer Mike Daniel is very frustrated and angry — upset actually — with the lack of progress he feels has been made in recovering artifacts from what is believed to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge, flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard, which was intentionally grounded entering Beaufort Inlet in June 1718.
On Nov. 21, 1996, Mr. Daniel, working for Intersal, a Florida corporation, as its director of operations under a permit issued by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (DCR), found the QAR.
Mr. Daniel, 58, of Jupiter, Fla., is also president of Maritime Research Institute Inc., (MRI), a nonprofit North Carolina corporation formed, under an agreement with DCR and Intersal, to work on the project “in cooperation with state archaeologists and historians of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History.”
The agreement specifies MRI, DCR and Intersal shall work in partnership “to research, survey, search, recover, preserve, protect, conserve, curate and promote the collection” of artifacts from the QAR.
The agreement said, “primary responsibility for the planning and accomplishment of the preservation, recovery and conservation of the shipwreck of the QAR and the artifacts and all operations, including security operations and any determinations as to priority of operations, is that of the secretary of DCR, and Intersal and MRI hereby assign to DCR on behalf of the people of North Carolina the interests of Intersal and MRI in the title and ownership of QAR and its artifacts.”
Mr. Daniel said he gave up his rights to the shipwreck in return for various rights outlined in a 13-page agreement. He claims the DCR has breached the agreement on almost every issue. He said he originally signed away his rights to the shipwreck for concessions from DCR, which included giving him and Intersal credit for the discovery of the shipwreck in all press releases, a point DCR has ignored.
The issue in the agreement with the most impact on the QAR is that the discoverers were to be part of a committee that determines the fate of the shipwreck. The secretary of the DCR was given veto rights over the committee if she felt their decisions were not in the state’s best interest. Mr. Daniel said Secretary Libby Evans has vetoed the entire committee so it has not even met in the last few years. He claims this breach of contract places the blame for all bad decisions relative to the shipwreck on her.
Blame
But he places the blame for some of the most destructive decisions recently made on the QAR on Mark Wilde-Ramsing, project director of the QAR. He said the latest destructive decision was creating a sandbar just outside the shipwreck.
“This sandbar, which he imagined would protect the shipwreck from ocean swells, has in fact caused huge breakers on the shipwreck, putting it in serious peril. This year we witnessed signs that huge breaking waves are now crashing in on the site. The gale in November was the first big storm to impact the site since the sandbar was created last spring.
“We found a piece of plate that had recently been broken and scattered by the big waves. Sand around the site is in a 10- inch-high ridge common to surf zones. These seas exposed the top of the ballast pile, something we have never seen on the site in the past. The waves also exposed artifacts once protected by a thick layer of sand. Instead of focusing on a rescue mission of these endangered artifacts, DCR began a methodical excavation beginning at the extreme south side of the site. We are given no input before foolish decisions like this are made,” he said.
“Know where Mark is today?” he asked, which was Oct. 30. “He’s not on the site. He’s gone to Greenville. He’s taking classes, working on his doctorate. And he won’t be on the site Wednesday, either. He’ll be back in Greenville using a government-issued car and gas to get back and forth.
“We love it when he’s not out there because we get things done. We have no respect for him as he just doesn’t have a clue of what to do,” he continued.
A response
Informed of Mr. Daniel’s criticism Wednesday, Mr. Wilde-Ramsing said, “Nothing new there.
“He found the QAR, and he’s been very unhappy with the state and the progress from the beginning.
“We made an assessment of the site and found it to be in an erosional situation that wouldn’t stay put for a long time. So the decision was made that we needed to proceed with full recovery, but the decision of the state was we didn’t have a facility to handle the large number of artifacts and pulling things up and not being able to handle them full time would leave things scattered.”
He mentioned problems with the recovery of the CSS Neuse in Kinston, a Civil War ironclad, and lessons learned from the recovery of La Belle off Texas, flagship of the French explorer La Salle that foundered in Matagorda Bay. Those recoveries showed that a permanent staff was necessary.
Mr. Daniel said all the money for recovery for the QAR effort was taken when Hurricane Floyd hit in September 1999.
“But in partnership with a Save America’s grant and East Carolina University, we are preserving,” he said.
The Save America’s grant comes from the U.S. Park Service, Mr. Daniel said, and it funds a conservation facility, providing funding to take care of the backlog.
“Hurricane Floyd showed us how badly the site can be scoured during storms, and without a conservation lab we took a chance,” he continued.
“Early on hopes were everything would be rosy.
“Now through the graces of the department (DCR), we now have six positions dedicated to the project, including the director, one archaeologist, two conservators, two assistant archaeologists and a computer technician, plus we have graduate students.
“The budget allowed us to go out for six weeks, and we’re progressing.
“We’re in full recovery now. The artifacts are better off in a conservatory lab rather than lying on the seabed.
“But we need to impress the General Assembly that we need a full-time budget, not a one-time infusion of money.
“Last year was a short session. This year we have a full session (referring to the legislative long session).
“We’ve been going out for six to eight weeks in the fall, when we have to contend with some rough weather, but the wind is from the north. In the spring, we have southwesterly winds, but fieldwork is only one part of it. Nine-tenths of the work is in conservation. The easy part is going out, which everybody likes.”
Emphasizing that everything brought up has to be processed and documented, he said, “Mike (Daniel) has a different opinion — just bring everything up and the money will fall from the sky.
“I’m sorry he feels that way. Things (the relationship) haven’t been the best. But he’s just one voice among many.
“The cannons are starting to come up. And we have a surprise we’ll reveal Friday (today at the media conference). We found another bell. I don’t know if it has Concorde (the vessel Blackbeard stole and then renamed the QAR) on it, but we’re finding more things than I would have expected, and we have to have a place to put them.
Saying the community has rallied around the project and been supportive, he added, “Archaeology is frustratingly slow, but at least it’s not geological time.”
The site
The QAR wreck site encompasses about 7,500 square feet. An Oct. 27 story in The News-Times by staffer Cheryl Burke said archaeologists hoped to cover 2,000 square feet in the fall dive expedition that started Oct. 2 and ended Nov. 8.
The fall search started on the south end of the site, where the stern of the QAR lies. Divers were working in 5-foot by 5-foot squares from west to east toward shore.
In a subsequent story on Nov. 10, Ms. Burke said artifacts, ranging from gold dust, a finial and apothecary weight, fasteners, lead shot, lead sheets, cast hoops and pieces of clay pots and bottles were retrieved.
Artifacts brought up have been sent to the QAR conservation lab in Greenville, where “most will undergo cleaning and X-ray to see if small artifacts are hidden in the compressed rocks and sand that surround them,” her story said.
“We have some pretty exciting finds. We originally expected to excavate 60, 5-foot by 5-foot squares, and ended up with 68,” she quoted Mr. Wilde-Ramsing as saying.
Her story said much of what was brought up would be discussed during a press conference at 11 a.m. today at the N.C. Maritime Museum, Beaufort, the responsible curator of the artifacts.
Her story said while plans were to bring up two cannons during the dive, Mr. Wilde-Ramsing said that was postponed until spring because a large enough vessel was not available.
The Associated Press reported Oct. 31 that retrieving the cannons, which might weigh between 2,000 and 2,500 pounds depending on how much concretion has attached itself, would be delayed until the spring because of the lack of an adequate vessel.
Smaller cannons retrieved have weighed between 800 and 1,000 pounds.
The story also said it had been determined that the ship’s 2,600-pound sternpost needs to come up at the same time, but the archaeology lab used for conservation of artifacts in Greenville was not ready to accept the sternpost.
Thus far archaeologists have retrieved nine cannons from the site. Fifteen remain on the ocean floor, and there may be more to be discovered. When Blackbeard took command of the captured French ship, the Concorde, he added more than 20 guns to the 16 she already carried.
Equipment
Saying he had spent a fortune in dive and recovery equipment, Mr. Daniel said he offered his equipment, along with his 56-foot trawler with a big dive platform, to the dive team in October, but it was refused. So archaeologists diving on the QAR used a 50-foot barge loaned to them by the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.
He said he had a 6-inch dredge and an 8-foot sluice while state archaeologists were using a 4-inch dredge and a 4-foot sluice. Whatever is recovered from the dredge, which vacuums the bottom, runs into the sluice paved with riffles where flow is controlled, creating eddies where particles can be captured.
He said had they used his larger dredge and sluice it would have been more efficient at retrieving fine particles, such as gold dust that might have been missed. Mr. Daniel maintains that “the gold dust on the QAR is the only treasure directly associated with Blackbeard, which makes it of the utmost importance and every effort to capture it should be employed.”
What Mr. Daniel found
Noting similarities with the QAR and the Whydah, a pirate ship sailed by Samuel Bellamy which sank in 20 feet of water in 1717 off Cape Cod, he said when he and his crew found the QAR in 1996 they brought up in 15 minutes a brass ship’s bell dated 1705, a blunderbuss barrel, a lead sounding weight, a 24-pound cannon ball and a lead cannon apron, which kept the touch hole, where the wick was located on top of the loaded cannon covered. He said pirates, who always kept their cannons loaded, were the only ones who used cannon aprons. These artifacts form the majority of the QAR traveling exhibit.
“Because we were concerned about preserving the integrity of the site and the fragility and age of the remaining artifacts, we stopped our work,” Mr. Daniel said in March 1997, when the announcement of what was discovered, including the possibility this might be the QAR, was made.
Under the partnership agreement, MRI is “fully qualified under state and federal law to engage in fund raising and to receive philanthropic tax-exempt contributions as project funds.”
And MRI and the state have “the exclusive right to nationally and internationally tour and exhibit a representative cross section of the artifacts …”
Expressing grave concern the QAR site could be pilfered or damaged irretrievably by storms, Mr. Daniel said while all the remaining cannons could be retrieved in one day, perhaps it was better to leave them where they are because they serve as a frame of reference.
“When visibility is only two feet but you know where each cannon is you can use them as guides,” he said.
Still, he said, a lot can be lost, and a lot probably has been lost in the past 40 years.
‘A level of government’
“They’re milking it (the QAR recovery project) for the yearly appropriations,” he said. It’s become a level of government.”
Estimating $2.34 million in appropriations has been spent on the recovery of QAR artifacts so far and an equal amount or more in salaries, he said, “So long as they don’t work it, they’ll continue to get their money.”
Quoting Steve Weeks, an admiralty attorney in Beaufort who is also on the board of MRI, he said Mr. Weeks said government has created a career for the archaeologists.
“Instead of having the best interests of the people at heart, they have a bureaucracy at heart,” said Mr. Daniel.
He questions why it has taken 10 years to begin serious work on the QAR as the DCR has received funding for the project since the discovery. He feels the project has far more to offer the people of North Carolina and recommends that a legislative oversight committee with advisers on how this project can best benefit the state be formed before the more destructive experiments are created, like the sandbar.
The ‘fall guy’
Mentioning the imbroglio embroiling the museum in the Pepsi Americas’ Sails 2004 tall ships event and the transfer of 36 acres of Gallants Channel property from the Friends to the state, he said Dr. David Nateman, museum director, would be the “fall guy.”
He said George Shannon, a former director of the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, was unceremoniously dismissed from his position because he had angered the DCR over the Gallants Channel property.
“He (Dr. Shannon) was a Ph.D, an archaeologist, and he knew eco-tourism and what the QAR could do for the state. The DCR wanted the Gallants Channel property, but he wouldn’t turn it over.”
He said charges were trumped up because Dr. Shannon had used a museum volunteer to install a small outrigger on his canoe.
“That was it. Then he was ordered not to talk about the charges.
“My mission is the preservation of history,” Mr. Daniel said, adding the players in this drama have no comprehension of how important and how extensive the shipwreck is.
“They’ve got their talons in it, like leeches,” he added.
Drawing a comparison with the Titantic, he said, “She lies 1,000 miles from shore in 13,000 feet of water, yet a half billion dollars had been raised by showing artifacts from her to 16 million people nationwide.”
Mr. Daniel visits the county once a month and gives presentations to school children who he said are fascinated with what treasures have been brought up and what perhaps still remains to be recovered.
Finding the QAR
His tale of how the QAR was discovered is intriguing.
Relying on historical research provided by Intersal’s president, Phil Masters, who had researched archives in London, Mr. Daniel was leading a search for the El Salvador, a Spanish galleon that was carrying a great deal of treasure when she sunk. She lies somewhere in this area.
Prior to this search, Mr. Daniel had pored through archives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Atlanta, evaluating changes over the last half century with the Beaufort bar and Beaufort Inlet, including what the Corps had done in dredging the inlet.
Pointing out that previous searches had looked at existing sandbars, he said sand banks form as a result of storms, which want to close them in. This gave him a choice: continue the search in line with previous searches, meaning going over the same ground, or extend the search by going out farther, to the outer bar. He chose the latter.
Knowing there had been three channels into Beaufort, and that the Corps had used a hopper dredge to transfer sand from the inlet to an offshore spoils area, he realized a useful search for shipwrecks would require extending the search to a more defined area. His idea and plan of where to search produced results.
Illustrating it, he drew a rough sketch of Beaufort Inlet and three 30° arcs corresponding with three different channel entrances into Beaufort at various times. The first was dated in 1738 by a cartographer named Mosely. The second was a channel used in the Civil War and the third was a 1927 channel corresponding roughly to the entrance of 1738.
Aided by electronic search devises including a magnetometer and a computerized microwave positioning system used by Intersal Survey Specialist Jim Whitaker, on the 11th day, the last day of scheduled operations in which they found four shipwrecks around the inlet, Mr. Daniel found the QAR outside the area Mr. Whitaker had previously charted. She was lying less than two miles offshore in about 20 feet of coffee-like water protected by 6-foot deep sandbanks.
“Actually some of the sandbanks were only a foot and a half high but the site was protected by 6-foot-deep sand banks until the dredging began on the current channel. Actually, a foot and a half of sand and a built-up layer of shell, which protected it from surge, covered the site. It was a unique geographical area,” he said.
What he saw in his first dive looked like pipes, but he knew from experience they were not pipes. They were cannons, several of them, and after his first dive he reported there were 12 to 15 of them.
Blackbeard’s name
Mr. Daniel questions how many knew the name “Blackbeard.”
“Certainly Lt. Robert Maynard and Virginia Gov. Alexander Spottswood knew it, but I doubt Edward Teach, or Tache, or Tatch, or Thatch, the pirate, knew it.”
He surmises that following the siege of Charleston in May 1718, in which Teach had threatened to kill dozens of influential South Carolinians and send their heads to the governor if his demands for medicine were not met, that Gov. Johnson of South Carolina was the first to document the name.
The moniker of “Blackbeard” may have been used to impress the population, comprised of many French-Huguenots, who would compare Blackbeard to Bluebeard, a Mother Goose fairy tale villain who murdered his seven wives.
Noting Mother Goose was published in 1697, 20 years before Blackbeard came to Charleston, he said the story was known at that time. The story of Bluebeard is thought to have been taken from the real life 15th century Breton nobleman, Gilles de Rais, who was a lieutenant to Joan of Arc and after her death went mad and was convicted of murdering more than 200 children in Brittany. Coincidentally, Gilles de Rais was tried and executed in Nantes, France in 1440. The Queen Anne’s Revenge was originally the Concorde de Nantes, a slave ship from Nantes, France.
A description of Blackbeard in 1717 stated he was “… a tall spare man with a very long beard which he wears very long …”
British Royal Navy Lt. Maynard, killed Blackbeard on Nov. 22, 1718, at Ocracoke. Two hundred seventy-eight years later, plus one day, Mike Daniel discovered his flagship near Beaufort Inlet. Regardless of whether Edward Teach ever knew he was called Blackbeard, his legend is undoubtedly larger than he ever was.
Saying the movie about the Titanic has made the collection of artifacts from that ship the most viewed in the world today, and with “Pirate’s of the Caribbean” being the number one film of all time, Mr. Daniel stresses that “North Carolina is missing a golden opportunity with the Queen Anne’s Revenge.” |
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Re: QAR by Pat Clyne · Nov 19, 06 - 9:45 AM
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