Work by conservationists from North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources shows that Blackbeard and his crew got a kick out of reading “voyage narratives”—a popular form of literature in the late 17th and early 18th century that chronicled the true accounts of maritime expeditions. When these printed accounts didn't match with the book fragments from Queen Anne's Revenge, the researchers looked to other stories of Pacific voyages that referenced the plunder of Ilo and eventually determined that their bits of paper came from pages 177, 178, and 183-188 of the 1712 first edition of Captain Edward Cooke's A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711. Advertisement 
 
 The conservators made the discovery while working on artifacts pulled from the wreckage of Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground near Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina in 1718. Blackbeard stole the ship from the French in 1717, when it was being used as a slave ship (the French had stolen the merchant ship from its original British owners in 1711, when it was called the Concord). During conservation work on artifacts recovered from the wreckage of Queen Anne’s Revenge, flagship of the pirate Blackbeard, 16 tiny fragments of paper were discovered in a mass of wet sludge removed from the chamber for a breech-loading cannon. The largest piece was only the size of a quarter, but it’s exceptionally rare to find paper in a submerged wreck—particularly one that’s 300 years old. The team of QAR Lab conservators is working with specialist paper conservators and scientists from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Division of Archives and Records, along with the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, to conserve the very fragile paper fragments, and a display about the find is being planned as part of the department’s Blackbeard 300th anniversary events during 2018. As the work progressed another discovery was made – that there was still legible printed text on some of the fragments, although only a few words were visible. Voyage narratives were popular literature in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, inspiring new voyages both real and fictional. Selkirk’s story became the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, “Robinson Crusoe.” Although books like these voyage narratives would have been relatively common on ships of the early 18th century, archaeological evidence for them is exceedingly rare, and this find represents a glimpse into the reading habits of a pirate crew. This unique find from the wreckage of Queen Anne’s Revenge provides archaeological evidence for books carried on ships in the early 18th century, and adds to our knowledge of the history of Blackbeard’s flagship and those who sailed her. The historical record has several references to books aboard vessels in Blackbeard’s fleet, but provides no specific titles; this find is the first archaeological evidence for their presence on QAR. Archaeological conservators with the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ QAR Lab have discovered and conserved a type of artifact that very rarely survives on shipwreck sites – paper.
– Pirates of yore plundered, but they also read books, apparently. While cleaning sludge out of a cannon recovered from Blackbeard's flagship, scientists discovered bits of paper and were able to figure out the name of a book kept on board. The 16 fragments, each no bigger than a quarter, were lumped together inside the chamber of one of 27 known cannons aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, which ran aground off North Carolina in 1718 and was discovered by divers in 1996, per a release. A few printed words on seven of the fragments helped with the sleuthing, reports National Geographic. After months studying the pieces—one of which reads "three or" and "Hilo, to"—researchers at North Carolina's Queen Anne's Revenge Conservation Lab identified the book from which the paper came. Deciding Hilo likely referred to the Spanish settlement of Ilo in Peru, researchers scoured early accounts of voyages mentioning the place until they came across the right one. It was a first edition of Edward Cooke's A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, which describes a British naval officer's seafaring adventures from 1708 to 1711. Published in 1712, the book would act as inspiration for Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. According to Gizmodo, such "voyage narratives" also inspired real-life expeditions and might've given Blackbeard "fresh ideas about new places to plunder." Whatever its purpose, the book was apparently considered dispensable when pages 177, 178, and 183-188 were applied to the cannon, possibly as a seal for its wooden plug. (Blackbeard's flagship also carried some unusual medical artifacts.)