Conserving And Interpreting The Mechanical Jacks From Blackbeard’s Flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge

Summary

The in-progress conservation of two mechanical jacks recovered from the early 18th-century shipwreck Queen Anne’s Revenge (31CR314), flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard, is presented here. Designed to lift or pry apart heavy objects, the jacks were likely part of the ship carpenter’s tool kit. These devices worked much like their modern hydraulic counterparts and consisted of a tapering, slotted rack with one end used for lifting; the other passed through the center of a gearbox containing gears that meshed with and drove the rack. The implementation of a successful treatment strategy however, is complicated by the variable condition of the iron and by numerous corrosion-filled cavities where the gear teeth once were. Photogrammetry, used to create a three-dimensional model, helps document the conservation process, contextualizing the day-to-day operation of the jacks and augmenting our current understanding of the vessel.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Commemorating Three Hundred Years of History: Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 211