When they arrived in port at Hampton Roads, it was staked on a pike at the mouth of the harbor as a warning to other pirates. Historians say Teach's demise marked the end of the golden age of piracy. Blackbeard myths began almost as soon as he was dead. Tales of buried treasure abounded. The most imaginative has his headless body swimming around Maynard's ship several times after it was thrown overboard.
Rumors say it still exists, possible at a Virginia fraternity.
My dive partner was Jerry Smith, owner of the boat and one of several dive masters around Beaufort who are supporting the QAR project and helping protect the site, which is also monitored by radar at the local sheriff's department. Visibility had improved to about three feet since morning. After floating down the anchor line, everything was calm and cool on the sandy bottom, a reassuring reference point that cleared up any disorientation caused by the low visibility. Swimming along a baseline rope, in a couple of minutes we were at the wreck, which instead of looking like the neat diagrams on the boat looked like a pickup-sized mass of oyster shells, coral, sea urchins and algae, guarded by a few puffer and pin fish. We floated around the wreck for about 10 minutes and I looked, looked hard, and a couple of times even touched it - Blackbeard's treasure, or as close as anyone will ever get to it.