The Post Chronicle
by Mitch Marconi
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The likelihood the famed outlaw's sword would have been left behind - unless he was unable to retrieve it from the wreckage, which remained intact for nearly a year after it ran aground - is not very high.
However, the fact that it was an ornamental sword may lend some credence to the concept, as "fancy" gear was not given to lower-ranked sailors, especially on Blackbeard's ship.
The sword was found in pieces and carefully reassembled by the excavation team that has been working on the wreckage since 1997.
Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the pirate, terrorized the eastern seaboard of the American coast for just two years, but remains a piratic icon thanks to his relentless thievery, plundering and murders.
Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from the wreck site, including a roughly cast Spanish bronze bell, a pewter charger big enough to serve a suckling pig, an English blunderbuss barrel, even a French urethral syringe for the treatment of syphilis, according to a NatGeo report.
Blackbeard, who died with a hidden, ill-gotten treasure that no one has ever found, met his ignoble end with a gunshot to the chest and a beheading, after which his body was tossed overboard into the ocean by American naval forces.
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