The Unknown Survivor

Part Four

 

 

...After [Cyprian] Southack returned to Boston, however, there appeared a sinister character on Cape Cod, a man who had the dress and appearance of a pirate. This is not idle hearsay, but the fact is recorded by the local historians for Massachusetts Historical Society, and it is published in the year 1793 by that organization where you may read it today.

 

Year after year this unusual person would appear at Billingsgate, and for a few days would be seen out in the vicinity of the Whidah's wreck. Then he would disappear just as mysteriously, and be gone for 12 more months.

 

Who was this mysterious person and what eventually happened to him?...

 

One October day in the year 1782, a resident of Eastham, after a great storm, decided to hike down along the beach toward the lower Cape, and reached the scene where the Whidah had been wrecked around 7pm that night. Far in the distance he saw a bonfire, and hastened toward it. Upon drawing closer, he discovered the same mysterious character known to almost every resident of that section.

 

This sinister individual, with a cocked pistol at his side, was three feet down, in a hole in the sand, and had just struck the top of a chest. The Eastham resident, in his excitement, dislodged a bit of material from the top of the cliff where he was walking, and the pirate, with an oath, sprang for his pistol.

 

The Cape Cod resident ran for the underbrush and escaped, but not before a close call from one of the pirate's bullets. He returned several days later by daytime, but never found anything. The pirate was later found dead by the roadside with gold doubloons in his money belt.

 

- from the Boston Sunday Post, Edward Rowe Snow, September 28, 1947.