Part
One
By Laura Nelson
To those who study pirate
history, there were only two survivors of the wreck of the Whydah Galley
commanded by Sam Bellamy in April of 1717: Thomas Davis, a Welsh carpenter, and
John Julian, a Miskito Indian pilot. But for those who are fans of Cape Cod folklore
concerning the Whydah, there exists the possibility that there was a third
survivor, who's name remained unknown even upon his death.
The most famous reference to
him is made by Henry David Thoreau, who writes:
“In the year 1717, a noted pirate named
Bellamy was led on to the bar at Wellfleet by the captain of a snow
which he had taken, to whom he had offered his vessel again if he would pilot
him into Provincetown Harbor. Tradition says that the latter threw over a
burning tar-barrel in the night, which drifted ashore, and the pirates followed
it. A storm coming on, their whole fleet was wrecked, and more than a hundred
dead bodies lay along the shore. Six who escaped shipwreck were executed.'
“At times to this day,”
(1793), says the historian of Wellfleet, “there are King William and Queen
Mary's coppers picked up, and pieces of silver called cob-money. The violence
of the seas moves the sands on the outer bar, so that at times the iron caboose
of the ship [that is, Bellamy's] at low ebbs has been seen.' ”
“Another tells us that, 'For many years
after this shipwreck, a man of a very singular and frightful aspect used every
spring and autumn to be seen traveling on the Cape, who was supposed to have
been one of Bellamy's crew. The presumption is that he went to some place where
money had been secreted by the pirates, to get such a supply as his exigencies
required. When he died, many pieces of gold were found in a girdle which he
constantly wore.' ”1
April 26, 1717, started out
like any other day for the pirates. In the morning, they captured the Mary
Anne, “a pink with more than 7,000 gallons of Madeira wine on board... and
the Fisher – a small sloop with a cargo of deer hides and tobacco,
captured that afternoon,”2
In the evening a storm began
to roll in, heralded by a dense fog.3 “According to eyewitness accounts,
gusts topped 70 miles [113 kilometers] an hour and the seas rose to 30 feet [9
meters].4
The accident was best expressed by Thomas Davis in his deposition before trial:
The Ship being at an Anchor, they
cut their Cables and ran a shoar, in a quarter of an hour after the Ship
struck, the Main-Mast was carried by the board, and in the Morning She was beat
to pieces. About Sixteen Prisoners drown'd, Crumpstey Mast of the Pink
being one, and One hundred and forty-four in all.5
“Although the beach was just
500 feet away, the bitter ocean temperatures were cold enough to kill the
strongest swimmer within minutes. Other crew members were crushed by the weight
of falling rigging, cannon, and cargo as the ship, her treasure, and the
remaining men on board plunged to the ocean floor, swallowed up by the shifting
sands of the cape.”6
When local residents arrived
on the shore the next morning “more than a hundred mutilated corpses lay at the
wrack line with the ship's timbers.”7
So it is entirely
conceivable that someone else could have survived the wreck and remained
undiscovered.
To be continued…
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clifford, Barry and Kenneth
J Kinkor, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to
Pirate Ship. National Geographic, 2007.
“The Trials of Eight Persons
Indited for Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel
H Baer (2:289-319). Pickering and Chatto, 2007.
ENDNOTES
2Clifford,
Barry and Kenneth J Kinkor, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah
from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. National Geographic, 2007, p 130
3Clifford,
Barry and Kenneth J Kinkor, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah
from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. National Geographic, 2007. In Real Pirates,
Barry Clifford describes the storm: “An Arctic gale from Canada was colliding
with a warm front moving northward from the Caribbean. Their confluence
produced one of the worst storms ever to strike Cape Cod. (p 130) “Technically
known as an occluded front, the warm and moist tropical air is driven for miles
upward where it cools and falls at a very high speed, producing high winds,
heavy rain, and severe lightning.” (p 262)
5“The
Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden
Age, edited by Joel H Baer (2:289-319). Pickering and Chatto, 2007, p 318
6Clifford,
Barry and Kenneth J Kinkor, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah
from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. National Geographic, 2007, p 131
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