Blackbeard's ship yields fresh treasure trove

Archaeologists have unearthed a treasure trove in the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, which is the flagship in the dread pirate Blackbeard's fleet.

The sunken treasure, weapons, all the bits of the ship, all the personal items, is lying 25 feet beneath the sea off North Carolina

Project leader Billy Ray Morris and a group of 14 marine archaeologists, technicians and restoration experts from the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources think that the Queen Anne's Revenge itself is a treasure trove - a unique repository of history from centuries ago.

The team is planning to salvage the entire remains of the pirate ship by 2014.

The artefacts, after being pulled from the sea, are taken to a lab in Greenville, where it could take as much as a decade to leach out 300 years worth of salt and sea, preparing the ship for the final phase of its life out of the water.

More than 280,000 such artefacts have already been recovered from the ship, Fox News reported.

The ship ran aground in Beaufort in June 1718, on the western side of the channel.

Morris said that the ship was most likely intentionally grounded, as historical documentation indicated that the feared pirate had wanted to downsize his flotilla of four ships - and the crew sailing on them.