The Daily News of Jacksonville reported that staff from the North Carolina Underwater Archaeology Branch went on a three-day expedition last week to preserve parts of the Queen Anne’s Revenge while the artifacts are on the sea floor.
Project director Mark Wilde Ramsing says aluminum rods were attached to several anchors and a cannon to change the electrochemical process that corrodes iron in saltwater. Ramsing hopes the rods will reduce or reverse the amount of salt absorbed by the iron objects.
By beginning conservation underwater, archaeologists can potentially save time and space at the conservation lab, where it can take up to five years to remove salts from a large cannon using electrolysis.
“Hopefully this will reduce the time by several years,” Wilde Ramsing said. “It’s fairly experimental and if nothing else, it will help to stop the artifacts from continuing to corrode.”
Meanwhile, a nonprofit group called Friends of QAR has been established to provide funding for the shipwreck project. And the state has an initiative to retrieve all the shipwreck’s artifacts by 2013, including a dive planned for this fall, Wilde Ramsing said.
The shipwreck was located in November 1996. Archaeologists with the N.C. Underwater Archaeology Branch have led research on the wreck for the past 13 years.
Artifacts that have already been through the conservation process are on display at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.
Since 2018 marks the 300th anniversary of the sinking of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the state hopes to mark that date with the opening of a QAR exhibit hall at the museum.
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Information from: The Daily News, http://www.jdnews.com
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AP-ES-05-10-10 0851EDT
