The Unknown Survivor

Part Two

 

Here I wish to continue to share stories from Cape Cod folklore concerning the possibility that there was a third survivor of the wreck of the Whydah Galley in April of 1717.

 

This story is from: A Collection of American Epitaphs and Inscriptions With Occasional Notes (Vol. IV). [Timothy Alden (Seymour, etc]. 1814.

 

[p. 22] One of the Most remarkable shipwrecks on Cape Cod, in former times, was that of the WHIDO, carrying twenty-three guns and on hundred and thirty men, commanded by Samuel Bellamy, a noted pirate. This happened on the 26 of April, 1717, on the outer shore of Wellfleet.

Bellamy had taken a number of vessels, on the coast. Seven of his men were put on board one of these, who soon became intoxicated, went in to a sound sleep, and when they awoke, found themselves, very unexpectedly, in Cape Cod harbour. Five of them escaped from the master of the vessel, who brought them in, and Captain Cyprian Southack, by order of the government of Massachusetts, was sent in search of them.

The Whido, soon after, was overtaken by a violent storm and was dashed to pieces near the table land of Wellfleet, where every one, except two, perished in the waves.

 

Captain Southack arrived at Wellfleet just after the sea had forced its way across the Cape and made such a channel that he passed through in a whale boat! This channel was soon closed, and has, ever since, been kept so, by the attention of the inhabitants or, it is probable, twenty or thirty miles of the extremity of this wonderful arm of land would, long before this time, have been washed away.

Captain Southack found and buried the bodies of one hundred and two pirates, which after the storm, lay along the shore, of those captured, and six were tried by a special court of admiralty, convicted, and executed at Boston.

From the clearness of the water and the whiteness of the sandy bottom, objects are seen from a great depth in the region, where Bellamy's crew perished. Even to this day, the great caboose of the Whido is sometime discovered as the loose sand, in which it is imbedded, is shifted from place to place by the agitations of the sea.

Some of the coppers, made in the region of William and Mary, and specimens of cob dollars, belonging to the pirate ship, are, occasionally, still found on the beach.

 

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. Aged people relate that this man frequently spent the night in private houses, and that, whenever, the Bible or any religious book was read, or any family devotion performed, he invariably left the room. This is not improbable. It is also stated that, during the night, it would seem as if he had in his chamber a legion from the lower world; for much conversation was often overheard which was boisterous, profane, blasphemous, and quarrelsome in the extreme. This is the representation. The probability is, that his sleep was disturbed by a recollection of the murderous scenes in which he had been engaged, and that he, involuntarily vented such exclamations as, with the aid of an imagination awake to wonders from the invisible regions, gave rise, in those days, to the current opinion that his bed chamber was the resort of infernals.