My "friends" in Virginia had to be in this somehow............

ID of Blackbeard's Ship Never Really in Doubt

The disclaimer about the wreck's identity was more an acknowledgement of the strict code of scientific scrutiny than the result of any serious doubts about the ship's identity, said Erik Goldstein, curator of arts and numismatics—the study of coins and tokens—for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. Archaeologists working on the wreck were always sure of its identity.

State officials "were just being safe," Goldstein said. "At the beginning phase of an excavation, unless you find something like a ship's bell with the name engraved on it, it takes a little while to put the pieces together and gather documentary evidence. It was good, responsible behavior on the part of those folks."

There were two reasons for dropping the official doubt about the identity of the shipwreck, added David Moore, curator of nautical archaeology at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

First, the museum recently opened "Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge," a greatly expanded exhibit of artifacts from the shipwreck. Had the confirmation of the ship's identity not been made, curators would have had to title the exhibition something like "Artifacts From the Purported Queen Anne's Revenge," Moore said.