If yesterday’s blog post wet your interest in sunken ships, how about a little more shipwreck science? Today, we’re travelling back to 1718, an age when infamous pirates sailed, and sank in, the seven seas! So get out your diving gear, we’re going down, down, down… 

Location: The coast of North Carolina. Depth: 8 meters (26 feet). A shipwreck lies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean shelf. Marine archaeologists (scientists that study objects and buildings made by ancient humans that have sunk in the ocean) believe that the ship is The Queen Anne’s Revenge, no less than the flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard. Blackbeard! The pirate’s real name was Edward Teach, or possibly Thatch, no one really knows for sure. But he was definitely the ultimate swashbuckler! The British Navy sank his ship in 1718. Now archaeologists believe that they have found that ship. 

Unfortunately, the ship is falling apart! Marine archaeologists are trying to save it and have asked for the help of engineers, scientists that build and design equipment, buildings, and use science to solve other practical problems. And archaeologists sure have a whopper of a practical problem for them to solve too… how to keep an important, 200-year-old shipwreck from falling apart at the seams. How will the engineers solve the problem? They are going to bury the boat in a giant sand dune, which will protect it from the waves and salt water that are breaking the ship down. This is a pretty new idea. It’s never been done before. So how do the engineers know it will work? They don’t, but there has to be a first time for everything, even in science! The sand dune will be 2 meters (6 feet) high, 60 meters (200 feet) wide, and 180 meters (600 feet) long!