It may seem like a huge leap from an electrical distributorship to a sunken pirate ship, but Phil Masters has made the jump. Masters, a former vice president of Kennedy Electric Supply Corp., Jamaica, N.Y., is fulfilling a lifelong dream to spend his days searching for shipwrecks. His discovery of what is likely the wreck of the flagship of Blackbeard, the fearsome 18th-century pirate, has allowed Masters to become a full-time maritime researcher and historian. The notoriety of Blackbeard and the abundance of relatively undisturbed archaeological artifacts that the site appears to contain have enabled Masters to raise enough money to devote all of his time toward uncovering the site's buried history.

Masters began working at Kennedy Electric Supply running a branch in 1972, but left in 1978 to chase his dream. It proved to be an expensive venture. "To make a long story short, economically I was in trouble in '89," he says. "I called up Kennedy Electric and said 'Help!' and the next thing you know I was back in New York working at Kennedy Electric again after 11 years." Masters spent another eight years working at the electrical distributorship, filling all his spare time searching for the elusive shipwrecks. Finally, in November 1996 his per-sistance paid off.

Intersal, Inc., the company Masters formed to conduct the searches and which is now based in Beaufort, N.C., located a wreck less than two miles off the coast of North Carolina, in an area known as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic," a treacherous stretch of coastal waters where cold currents from the Arctic collide with the warm, northbound Gulf Stream. The shipwreck is believed to be the remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge, a large wooden sailing vessel that ran aground on a sandbar in Beaufort Inlet in the summer of 1 718 with the pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard) in command.

Thought to be British-built around 1710, the Queen Anne's Revenge was captured as a merchant ship (then sailing under the name Concorde) by Capt. Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard and their pirate crew. It is said that Hornigold, Blackbeard's leader and pirate-mentor, gave the Concorde to his protege as a reward for his ferocity and fighting skill. Blackbeard renamed the vessel Queen Anne's Revenge and set out on his own, eventually commanding as many as four ships and 300 pirates that terrorized the Carolina coastal waters.

Intersal's first dives down to the doomed ship resulted in the recovery of several artifacts, including cannon and cannonballs, a brass bell inscribed with the date 1709, a brass barrel of a blunderbuss, lead sheets identified as cannon touch-hole aprons and several iron barrel hoops. Because of the age and fragility of the artifacts, Richard Lawrence, head of North Carolina's underwater archaeology unit, said the state would need to expand facilities for treating and preserving artifacts before more items could be brought up. Diving operations were suspended at the site on December 5 last year.

Masters has been busy while waiting for work to resume on the site, writing, reading and researching shipwrecks over the winter months. "We're still looking for two more (shipwrecks) here in North Carolina," he says. "The Adventure, the second Blackbeard ship (which tried to come to the aid of the Queen Anne's Revenge when she foundered, but was lost in the attempt), and El Salvador, a 1750's Spanish galleon."

The El Salvador is the reason for a recent trip Masters made to Bermuda for research. Masters says there was a Bermuda ship that went down alongside El Salvador at the same time. "If we can find out where the Bermuda ship wrecked and the details of that, we might be able to tell where El Salvador wrecked," he says. "We have a pretty good idea now, but we'd like to get a closer fix on her if we can."

Meanwhile, diving and artifact recovery at the site of the Queen Anne's Revenge wreck are scheduled to resume in May 1998. Masters is optimistic about his future as treasure hunter and maritime historian, but concedes the dream could prove hard to hold onto. As for a backup plan, Masters will probably return to the electrical wholesaling business. He says, "I've been told by everybody at Kennedy that if this doesn't work out, 'pick up a phone and call us. You can always have your old job back.'"

For more information on the discovery of Blackbeard's ship and the efforts underway to salvage it, visit the state of North Carolina's Web site at www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/qar.

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