David Moore (archaeologist)


David Moore is an American archaeologist and historian. He is best known for his work on the Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project. The Queen Anne's Revenge was the flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard. He used her for less than a year, but she was an effective tool in his prize-taking.
Moore has worked as a maritime archaeologist exploring a shipwreck believed to be part of the 1622 Spanish treasure fleet sunk near the Dry Tortugas. The wreck, located in 1332' of water, yielded olive jars, copper, gold, silver, glass and other cultural artifacts. He also served as project archaeologist for the team that excavated the wreck of the slave ship, the Henrietta Marie. In 1983 he discovered the watch bell which positively identified the shipwreck. The Henrietta Marie wreck has yielded more than 7000 objects, the largest collection of artifacts known from a slave ship. Parts making up more than 80 bilboes, which were typically used to shackle pairs of slaves together, have been found at the wreck site. Other items found at the wreck site include trade goods apparently left over from trading for captives in Africa, goods acquired in Africa in addition to captives, and gear belonging to the ship and crew.
Moore is the former nautical archaeology curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina and is considered the project expert on Blackbeard. Currently he is the Director of Archaeology and Research for Intersal, Inc. which discovered the Queen Anne's Revenge. He has appeared in the documentaries Drain the Oceans Pirate Ships of the Caribbean, Real Pirates of the Caribbean, Secrets of the Dead: Blackbeard's Lost Ship, Secrets: Blackbeard's Ship, the "Pirates" episode of Biography and on the "Pirate Tech" episode of Modern Marvels. He was also responsible for much of the underwater mapping on the Queen Anne's Revenge wrecksite and updating the site plan. The Queen Anne's Revenge lies in 28 feet of water about one mile offshore of Fort Macon State Park, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Thirty-one cannons have been identified to date and more than 250,000 artifacts have been recovered. The cannon are of different origins such as; Swedish, English and possibly French, and of different sizes as would be expected with a colonial pirate crew.

Education

Moore attended East Carolina University where he received a master's degree in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology in 1989.

Works