North Carolina Maritime Museum

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was the most feared pirate of his age, and in 1718 his flagship the Queen Anne's Revenge, a captured French slave ship he had turned into a heavily armed raider, ran aground and sank in the shallow water off Beaufort Inlet. The wreck lay hidden on the sandy bottom for nearly three centuries until it was discovered in 1996.

The recovery of the wreck has been one of the great archaeological projects on the American coast. Divers have raised cannons, anchors, ship's fittings, medical instruments, gold dust, and countless small objects of daily life aboard a pirate ship, each requiring years of careful conservation in saltwater tanks before it can be displayed. The museum in Beaufort is the public home for much of this haul, letting visitors see the actual gear of Blackbeard's crew rather than a legend.

Beyond the pirate treasure, the museum tells the wider story of North Carolina's coast and its people. Exhibits trace the lives of the watermen who worked the sounds for fish, oysters, and clams, the boatbuilders who shaped vessels to fit these shallow waters, and the crews of the lifesaving service who launched into the surf to rescue sailors from the many ships wrecked along the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

The museum also holds strong natural-history collections, with displays on the shells, birds, fish, and coastal habitats of the region. Together the human and natural stories give a full picture of a coast defined by its relationship with the water, where livelihoods, dangers, and wildlife all flow from the sea.

Across the water from the main museum stands the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, where the museum keeps the craft of traditional wooden boatbuilding alive. Here builders shape and assemble wooden boats by hand using time-honored techniques, and visitors can watch the work, see boats taking form, and learn how the small craft suited to North Carolina's shallow sounds were made.

The boatbuilding center is a working place, not just a display, and it reflects the museum's mission to preserve not only objects but skills. For anyone interested in how wooden boats are actually made, it is a rare chance to see the trade practiced rather than merely explained.

Beaufort is one of the oldest towns in North Carolina, a colonial seaport whose narrow streets are lined with restored eighteenth and nineteenth-century homes and whose waterfront looks out on the sounds and barrier islands of the Crystal Coast. The town invites slow walking, with its old cemetery, its boardwalk, and its shops and seafood restaurants along the water.

The museum makes the ideal starting point for exploring this stretch of coast. Just offshore, the Rachel Carson Reserve is home to a herd of wild horses, boat tours leave the waterfront for the shell-strewn beaches of the barrier islands, and the beaches and history of the Southern Outer Banks stretch out nearby, all within easy reach of Beaufort's harbor.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.