A folklore tale of Sam Bellamy

     Black Sam Bellamy He was a real pirate. Not a one-voyage buccaneer like Captain Kidd. Neither was he a persnickety brigand of the sea such Captain Ben Hornigold who pursued a private vendetta against Spaniards, killing and robbing them without compunction, yet refusing to seize the wealth of French, Dutch, and English shipping.  Yes, sir! Black Sam was an honest-to-goodness villain at all times, ever ready for a fight or frolic. He would slit a throat just as quickly as he would double-cross a comrade.  Gold was his deity.

     Sam was an Englishman, a west countryman, a massive, powerful brute of a man. He was distinguished by a great shock of bushy black hair, a square-cut black beard, and piercing, dark brown eyes which sometimes appeared black as jet. Because of these characteristics, he was known as Black Sam Bellamy.

     One legend claims that Bellamy with the aid of four rascally followers stole a small sloop and sailed her across the broad Atlantic and into Cape Cod Bay. The Bay at that time was a fisherman’s paradise. Here brawny men worked long and hard, catching and salting codfish, a pursuit which was healthy but not very profitable.

     Black Sam worked for a while as a fisherman, but the profits were too small. He was forever dreaming of the pot of gold buried at the end of the rainbow. Gold! Heaps of gold. These dreams were the loadstone of his existence. With his four rascals and an ex-pirate named Paul Williams from Newport, Rhode Island, he began to plan an expedition to the Spanish Main to search for the wrecks of Spanish treasure ships.

     Meanwhile, Sam became infatuated with a Cape Cod girl, the lonely daughter of a farmer. Postponing the treasure voyage, he wooed her. He was a wild, tempestuous devil, the type which seems to appeal to many women. She fell in love with him, and he treated her as if she was a wench of the taverns.

     This interlude did not tarnish Bellamy’s bright dreams of gold. One day he kissed his little sweetheart good-bye, promising to return and marry her. Away sailed the little sloop, leaving behind the empty  dreams of golden adventure driving him on, Black Sam quickly forgot his Cape Cod mistress.

     She, poor girl, waited in hope which, as the months passed by, turned to despair. She was to have a baby, Bellamy’s child. She could not hide her condition. Her neighbors, descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, labeled her a sinner, cutting her cruelly with their storm. Even her father turned his face from her. In misery and agony of spirits she left her home. In a ramshackle fish shed, hidden among the dunes, her child was born and died – all in the compass of a gray and stormy day. The skies wept; the east wind sang a dirge among the scrub pines, but no human was near to offer her solace.

     Afterward she refused to live near her condemners. She dug a small grave in a pine grove near the fish shanty. Here she buried her child, marking the grave with a rude cross. She continued to live alone amid the dunes, eking out a scanty living by God knows what means. Every day she climbed to the top of the sand hills and gazed out to sea, praying for the return of her lover.

     Meanwhile, Black Sam Bellamy arrived in the Caribbean. For weeks he sailed among jewel-like islands searching for the wreckage of Spanish treasure ships. Sir William Phips had once done the same, with spectacular results. He had found a treasure valued at more than a million pounds. With his share of the gold he had purchased a title and a governorship. Surely Bellamy could do as well.

     The rascals and their black-haired leader searched diligently, but nary a wreck could they find. The weather was hot. The sloop’s bottom became fouled with seaweeds and barnacles. The ship’s stores of pork and beef spoiled. Weevils made their home in the hardtack. Bellamy and his crew grumbled and ate fish. Williams remarked that ‘it would be more seemly to die as a pirate with a full stomach than to starve hunting for wrecks.”

     There came the day when they careened the sloop to scrape the seaweeds and barnacles from the bottom. They selected a small island with a sandy shore. It was a ticklish job to lay a ship on its side without injuring masts, stays, or ribs. This time ill luck attended their effort. Several timbers used to support and distribute the weight of the sloop slipped, and several strakes were broken and the hull was sprung. The little ship would never sail again. 

     Black Bellamy and his rascals, thus marooned on a desert island, ate sea turtles and birds – and waited

     Their enforced patience was finally rewarded. One day, two ships bore down on the island, two pirate ships aprowling. One was the Mary Anne, under the command of Captain Ben Hornigold. The other was the Postillion, commanded by the bloodthirsty brigand Louie Lebous.

---------------------- To be continued-------------------------


"Black Sam Bellamy," Profile of Old New England: Yankee Legends, Tales and Folklore, Lewis A Taft. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1965. Starts on page 201.