Researchers discuss part played by Blackbeard's vessel in slave trade (Exhibit/NC)
BEAUFORT - In a display case at the N.C. Maritime Museum, beside a model of the Queen Anne's Revenge, sits a detached cross section of the replica representing the half deck.
It's meant to illustrate how these added decks provided more space so that slave merchants could pack more of their commodity on board, said David Moore, museum nautical historian.
The West African captives would have laid there, side-by-side, for much of their two- to three-month trip to the Caribbean, Moore said.
"It would have been a mess and smelly," Moore said.
The sailors would have brought the slaves up deck a couple of times a day, depending on weather, for exercise and meals, especially as the voyage neared its end, Moore said.
"It was strictly economics," Moore said. "The better they looked the more money they would get for them."
It is not the most notorious part of the ship's history - most people associate the QAR with the infamous pirate Blackbeard and his blockade on Charleston Harbor.
Yet the QAR holds just as many links to African-American history as it does to pre-revolutionary piracy
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It's meant to illustrate how these added decks provided more space so that slave merchants could pack more of their commodity on board, said David Moore, museum nautical historian.
The West African captives would have laid there, side-by-side, for much of their two- to three-month trip to the Caribbean, Moore said.
"It would have been a mess and smelly," Moore said.
The sailors would have brought the slaves up deck a couple of times a day, depending on weather, for exercise and meals, especially as the voyage neared its end, Moore said.
"It was strictly economics," Moore said. "The better they looked the more money they would get for them."
It is not the most notorious part of the ship's history - most people associate the QAR with the infamous pirate Blackbeard and his blockade on Charleston Harbor.
Yet the QAR holds just as many links to African-American history as it does to pre-revolutionary piracy