Streaming Internet educational programs in the past few years have allowed schoolchildren to learn about the wreck online. The kids can ask questions to laboratory staff and divers working at the site. A new outreach program called Dive Down is being finalized for this fall, in which recreational divers can enroll in a two-day program and then make a controlled dive to the QAR site.

Even after eight years, the QAR project is still in its infancy. Researchers estimate that the 16,000 artifacts recovered to date represent just two percent of the site's remains. Hundreds of thousands of artifacts still lie on the ocean floor. It will take at least five years to finish excavation and up to 15 years to clean, analyze, and conserve everything. "We'll be up to our gills with artifacts in the lab," says Wilde-Ramsing.

Desalination and artifacts aside, there would be no interest in the project without the larger-than-life reputation of Blackbeard himself. He was said to have dressed in black and to have carried a beltful of pistols and daggers. Before attacking another ship, he decorated his long black beard with colored ribbons and slow-burning matches, which emitted evil-looking wisps of smoke, adding to the whole effect. In 1718, his vessels ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, likely intentionally, and were abandoned. A few months later, Blackbeard was killed in a fierce battle at Ocracoke Inlet. The world's most famous pirate was beheaded and his corpse thrown overboard, where it continued to swim defiantly around the boat - ­either three or seven times, depending on the story - before finally sinking.

You'd think such gruesome history would disgust us today, but in fact it's the opposite. People love pirates, and they especially love Blackbeard, whose timeless popularity and legend come close to rock-star celebrity.