The Unknown Survivor

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.

Thoreau, Henry David, Cape Cod, Parnassus Prints, Inc., Orleans, Massachusetts, 1984

“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

1Thoreau, Henry David, Cape Cod, Parnassus Prints, Inc., Orleans, Massachusetts, 1984, pp 186-187

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)

4Donovan Webster, “Pirates of the Whydah,” in National Geographic Magazine (May 1999).

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

7Donovan Webster, “Pirates of the Whydah,” in National Geographic Magazine (May 1999).