Wednesday’s episode of the PBS series “Secrets of the Dead” takes viewers to the exhumation of the supposed flagship of Blackbeard’s fleet, named Queen Anne’s Revenge.

The remains of the ship were discovered in 1996 in Beaufort Inlet on the coast of North Carolina. It had been under the sand and the sea for three centuries and was now a rubble heap of ballast stones and rotten timber when researchers found it. Researchers filtered through the ruins to get more clues about the ship. No treasures were found, indicating a possibility that Blackbeard and his crew had removed all of it from the vessel. A specialty anchor could have meant they had tried to take the ship off the shoals but did not manage it.

According to the historical trials of Blackbeard’s crew say that the ship was stranded on June 10, 1718, on a voyage back from Blackbeard’s most ambitious projects: the blocking of Charleston harbor where he had captured nine ships, taken prominent hostages and made commerce collapse in the port until his ransom demands were fulfilled. David Moore, the curator of the N.C.

Maritime Museum that holds the artifacts from the ship, says about this adventure that it was “Probably the single biggest haul of his entire career.”

Exhuming the remains of the ship has taken a decade already and may need more. It is said that after the ship was stranded Blackbeard took its treasures and went into temporary retirement from which he bounced back to piracy soon. It took the Royal Navy five bullets and 20 blows to finally get the better of him at Ocracoke in 1718.