When you read about Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge being found in Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, now known as Beaufort Inlet. NC, what you might know is that before he stole the ship, it was called the La Concorde and it was a French slave ship.
Many pirates carried enslaved peoples as cargo from one place to another because it was a lucrative business for them.

As archaeologists, conservators, and historians, staff of the Queen Anne's Revenge Conservation Lab and Underwater Archaeology Branch of the Office of State Archaeology are dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the past. Join us as we explore day by day the origins of Blackbeard, his famous flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, and the ship's prior history as La Concorde, a transatlantic slave-trading vessel.

The origins of Queen Anne's Revenge's, much like its Captain's, Blackbeard, stretch into an obscurity beyond the historical record. We do know that the story of QAR began long before it fell into the famed pirate's clutches. In fact, Blackbeard's captaining of QAR constituted only a small portion of the vessel's seafaring years. Before Blackbeard, the ship was called La Concorde and belonged to a wealthy French merchant, trafficking human cargo across the Atlantic on the notorious "Middle Passage." After 1718, it belonged, for a time, to the ocean alone.

Since its discovery near Beaufort inlet in 1996, the remains of the vessel have become the property of the people of North Carolina, under the stewardship of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
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Late in the fall of 1717, the pirates made their way to the eastern Caribbean. It was here, off the island of Martinique, that Blackbeard and his fellow pirates captured the French slave ship La Concorde -- a vessel he would keep as his flagship and rename Queen Anne's Revenge.
After crossing the Atlantic during its third journey, and only 100 miles from Martinique, the French ship encountered Blackbeard and his company. According to a primary account, the pirates were aboard two sloops, one with 120 men and twelve cannon, and the other with thirty men and eight cannon.

With the French crew already reduced by sixteen fatalities and another thirty-six seriously ill from scurvy and dysentery, the French were powerless to resist. After the pirates fired two volleys at La Concorde, Captain Dosset surrendered the ship.

The pirates took La Concorde to the island of Bequia in the Grenadines where the French crew and the enslaved Africans were put ashore. While the pirates searched La Concorde, the French cabin boy, Louis Arot, informed them of the gold dust that was aboard. The pirates searched the French officers and crew and seized the gold.

The cabin boy and three of his fellow French crewmen voluntarily joined the pirates, and ten others were taken by force including a pilot, three surgeons, two carpenters, two sailors, and the cook. Blackbeard and his crew decided to keep La Concorde and left the French the smaller of the two pirate sloops.

The French gave their new and much smaller vessel the appropriate name Mauvaise Rencontre (Bad Encounter) and, in two trips, succeeded in transporting the remaining Africans from Bequia to Martinique.

Leaving Bequia in late November, Blackbeard cruised the Caribbean in his new ship, now renamed Queen Anne's Revenge, taking prizes and adding to his fleet. From the Grenadines, Blackbeard sailed north along the Lesser Antilles plundering ships near St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Nevis, and Antigua, and by early December he had arrived off the eastern end of Puerto Rico.

From there, a former captive reported that the pirates were headed to Samana Bay in Hispaniola (Dominican Republic).

By April 1718, the pirates were off the Turneffe Islands in the Bay of Honduras. It was there that Blackbeard captured the sloop Adventure, forcing the sloop's captain, David Herriot, to join him. Sailing east once again, the pirates passed near the Cayman Islands and captured a Spanish sloop off Cuba that they also added to their flotilla.

Turning north, they sailed through the Bahamas and proceeded up the North American coast. In May 1718, the pirates arrived off Charleston, South Carolina, with Queen Anne's Revenge and three smaller sloops.

In perhaps the most brazen act of his piratical career, Blackbeard blockaded the port of Charleston for nearly a week. The pirates seized several ships attempting to enter or leave the port and detained the crew and passengers of one ship, the Crowley, as prisoners.

As ransom for the hostages, Blackbeard demanded a chest of medicine. Once delivered, the captives were released, and the pirates continued their journey up the coast.

Soon after leaving Charleston, Blackbeard's fleet tried to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, now known as Beaufort Inlet. During that attempt, Queen Anne's Revenge and the sloop Adventure grounded on a sandbar and were abandoned. Research has uncovered two eyewitness accounts that shed light on where the two pirate vessels were lost.

According to a deposition given by David Herriot, the former captain of Adventure, "the said Thatch's ship Queen Anne's Revenge run a-ground off of the Bar of Topsail-Inlet." Herriot further states that Adventure "run a-ground likewise about Gun-shot from the said Thatch".

Captain Ellis Brand of HMS Lyme provided additional insight as to where the two ships were lost in a letter (July 12, 1718) to the Lords of Admiralty. In that letter Brand stated that: "On the 10th of June or thereabouts a large pyrate Ship of forty Guns with three Sloops in her company came upon the coast of North carolina ware they endeavour'd To goe in to a harbour, call'd Topsail Inlet, the Ship Stuck upon the barr att the entrance of the harbour and is lost; as is one of the sloops."

In his deposition, Herriot claims that Blackbeard intentionally grounded Queen Anne's Revenge and Adventure in order to break up the company, which by this time had grown to over 300 pirates. Intentional or not, that is what happened as Blackbeard marooned some pirates and left Beaufort with a hand picked crew and most of the valuable plunder.

Blackbeard's piratical career ended six months later at Ocracoke Inlet on the North Carolina coast. There he encountered an armed contingent sent by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood and led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

In a desperate battle aboard Maynard's sloop, Blackbeard and a number of his fellow pirates were killed. Maynard returned to Virginia with the surviving pirates and the grim trophy of Blackbeard's severed head hanging from the sloop's bowsprit.

Sources: https://www.qaronline.org/ ; https://shipwrecks.hist.sites.carleton.edu/queen-annes-revenge/qar-p-3/ ; https://www.qaronline.org/history/ships-journey?fbclid=IwY2xjawJndwlleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHkaSxE6DKwUVLnYM2anB07Ddgoilo6WC4E12CbLwQmXW0LJ6EMFxCEg9D6Zl_aem_SOnHnb9begVX0HCHoXRbTg