Sam Bellamy, From Penniless to the Richest Pirate of All - Part One

Now available online!

Read it here:

Sam Bellamy

Letter of Joseph Doane to Lt. Governor William Dummer - Original Document

With permission of Massachusetts Archives, today I present an electronic copy of this letter, with the text printed below.

Justice Doane captured the pirates who had been shipwrecked on the Mary Anne, plus Thomas Davis and John Julian. He took them on horseback to Boston Gaol.

Several months later he was required to be in Boston for their trial. This is his petition to be reimbursed for his expenses. 

Enjoy!

"Letter of Joseph Doane to Lt. Governor William Dummer" Massachusetts Archives Collection, 63:447. SCI/series 45X. June 2, 1717. Massachusetts Archives. Boston, Massachusetts.

            To the Honourable William Dumer Esqr: Lieutt. Governor & Command­er In Chieff In & over His Majts. Province of the Massachusetts Bay in & to the His Majts. Councill & Representa­tives in Genll. Court Assembled--

          The Petition of Joseph Doane of Eastham one of the members of the House of Representatives humbly sheweth that your Petitioner In the Month of April Anno:1717 Being Informed that a number of Men were cast on shoar on the backside of the Town of Eastham the night before who were suspected to be pirates and had that Morn­ing passed through Town inquiring the way to Rhoad Island.

          And your Petitioner being one of his Majts. Justices of the Peace in the County there did Judge it his Duty so to do [He] took with him a Deputy Sheriff persu'd, overtook, seized, exam­ined & [commited?] Seven of the Pirates that belonged to the Ship Whida comanded by Samuel Belleme Capt. of the Pirates which sd. Pirates were cast on shore in a Pink by them taken the day before & two days after he your Petitioner seized, examined & _____ one Man more that got alive ashore out of sd. Ship Whida which was also cast on Shore the same night with the sd. Pink. In Octo­ber next after, being the time when sd. Pirates had their tryall in Boston your Petitioner living one hundred Miles distant was directed by his Excellency Samuel Shute Esqr. Governour & Coman­der in Chief to be present in Boston at the tryall of sd Pirates to Inform & c. which accordingly he attended & notwithstanding he travelled fifty miles a day, yet was necessitated on his Majts. Sarvis  ten days from home, and tho he hath often had Incouragem­ent from his Excellency yet hath not had anything to Respond either for him or expenses, Your Petitioner therefore prays the [?] they be taken into consideration & he be [alowed?] what shall be Judged agreeable to Justice.

Sneak Peek Day 2 - Take another look at my book The Whydah Pirates Speak

John Julian
The Teenage Pirate
By Laura Nelson

There are only two known survivors of the April 1717 wreck of the Whydah, commanded by Sam Bellamy: Thomas Davis, a carpenter, and John Julian, a pilot.¹ Although the majority of historical records list John as a Cape Cod Indian, further research by the team recovering artifacts from the wreck site reveals that he was actually a Miskito Indian from the region of Nicaragua and Honduras in Central America called the Costa de Miskitos (the Mosquito Coast).

John was probably around 16 years old when he became the Whydah's pilot and guided it in and out of hidden harbors through the difficult waters of Cape Cod.” (Clifford, Real, 81)

According to William Dampier, who interacted with the Miskito Indians circa 1687, “They are tall, well made, raw-boned, lusty, strong, and nimble of foot; long visaged, lank black hair, look stern, hard favour’d, and of a dark Copper-colour Complexion. . . . Their chiefest employment in their own Country is to strike Fish, Turtle, or Manatee . . . . For this they are esteemed and coveted by all Privateers; for one or two of them in a Ship will maintain 100 men: So that when we careen our Ships, we choose commonly such places where there is plenty of Turtle or Manatee for these Moskito Men to strike: and it is very rare to find Privateers destitute of one or more of them, when the Commander, or most of the Men are English . . . .” (Dampier, 7-8)

In addition to their fishing skills, Dampier also wrote, “They are very ingenious at throwing the Lance, Fisgig, Harpoon, or any manner of Dart.”² (Dampier, 7) He then goes on to comment that “. . . they often come with the Seamen.” (Dampier, 10)

Colin Woodard in his book The Republic of Pirates states that John “had served with Bellamy aboard his periaguas.”³ (Woodard, 185) While there is no specific record of how John joined Sam Bellamy's crew, in March 1715, Bellamy was with a band of pirates that operated in the Bay of Honduras, the region where the Miskito Indians lived.

It was fairly common that when a pirate crew captured a slave ship still carrying its cargo, many slaves, once freed, joined the pirates.⁴ Even if they lacked skills as seamen, they often had martial skills that made them valuable to their new crews. Many learned sailing skills after joining the pirates. “Blacks received shares of booty and enjoyed other perquisites of crew membership, including the right to vote. Rewards and incentives appear to have been based on an individual's ability to function effectively within the pirate crew rather than on skin color.” (Kinkor, 200)

Black men were well represented amongst pirate crews.

*Blackbeard's crew was 60 percent black;
*Edward England's crew of 300 included about 80 black pirates;
*Half of John Lewis's crew of 80 were black men from English colonies;
*On his last voyage, Christopher Condent's crew of some 500 pirates included an estimated 200 black men;
*Bart Roberts's crew included 70 black men out of a total of 267; and
*Two pirate crews, the names of their commanders unknown, were almost 100 percent black. (Clifford, Real, 80)

According to A General History of the Pyrates, when Captain Olivier Levasseur (also known as La Buse, the Buzzard) met up with Howell Davis off the coast of Gambia, half of his crew were blacks.

Tales of Piracy - How Six Pirates were Captured and Killed

My latest article about the pirates of the Whydah Galley was published today!

You may read it here:

Tales of Piracy - How Six Pirates Were Captured and Killed


http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2016/5/30/tales-of-piracy-how-six-pirates-were-captured-and-killed#.V0yn2se9jHg

John King - The Boy Pirate

My latest article is now published! You may read it here:

http://www.cindyvallar.com/JohnKing.html

A Different Look at John Julian

I came across this article while web surfing. It offers a differing opinion as to whether John Julian, captured after surviving the wreck of the Whydah Galley was the Julian the Indian later executed in Boston, Massachusetts for killing a bounty hunter while attempting to escape slavery.

     

  

Mystery of the Whydah survivors

Almost 300 years ago today, on the night of April 26, 1717, a violent storm blasted the Cape and crashed a large sailing ship into the sandbanks just off shore. Nearly all of the crew perished in the storm, the bodies of many victims washing up near Marconi Beach. Today that shipwreck is still making headlines, since the Whyd...

By Gregory N. Flemming

Posted Apr. 26, 2014 at 2:15 AM

Almost 300 years ago today, on the night of April 26, 1717, a violent storm blasted the Cape and crashed a large sailing ship into the sandbanks just off shore. Nearly all of the crew perished in the storm, the bodies of many victims washing up near Marconi Beach. Today that shipwreck is still making headlines, since the Whydah is one of the only pirate ships ever uncovered by divers. Three decades after the initial discovery, Barry Clifford's Expedition Whydah continues to recover gold, weapons and other artifacts from the ocean floor.

But one aspect of the Whydah shipwreck remains a mystery. What happened to the two lone survivors who swam ashore in the storm? One was an "Englishman" named Thomas Davis. The other, according to newspaper reports and trial records, was an "Indian" named John Julian. There is no record of what happened to either of these survivors once they were taken to Boston shortly after the wreck.

On the fateful morning of Friday, April 26, the pirates in the Whydah had captured a vessel heading to New York. The pirate captain, Samuel Bellamy, put seven men on the ship, but those men "drank plentifully" of the wine they found aboard and soon lost control of the vessel. The weather got worse with every passing hour. Sometime after 10 that night, a horrendous storm pounded the coast, bringing lightning and heavy sheets of rain. The Whydah sank just off Marconi Beach. Nearly all of the more than 130 men aboard the Whydah died — except for Davis and Julian.

The following Saturday, Davis and Julian were taken to Boston on horseback with the seven other pirates who had gotten drunk aboard the captured vessel. The men were tried for piracy in Boston, and most were convicted and hanged. But the court believed Davis' claims that he was innocent, a forced captive. John Julian, presumably because he was an "Indian" and assumed to be a servant, was never brought to trial.

Today, it is widely claimed that Julian was sold into slavery and then executed 16 years later for murder. The victim was a man named John Rogers, who was chasing a fugitive slave in September 1732. The fugitive was called Julian the Indian, and Rogers captured him later that day. When Julian tried running away again the next morning, Rogers chased him into a cornfield. The two men struggled, and Rogers was stabbed in the chest with a jackknife, dying almost immediately. Julian was convicted of the murder and, ultimately, executed on Boston Neck in a snowstorm on March 22, 1733.

 

Descriptions of the Whydah survivors almost always suggest that John Julian was the same Julian who was executed for John Rogers' murder 16 years later. But there is no conclusive proof. In both instances Julian is described as an "Indian," but in the trial following the Whydah shipwreck, he is specifically referred to as John Julian. In every document surrounding the 1733 execution, the first name John is never used — he is only described, in newspaper reports and execution leaflets, as Julian, an Indian. The Expedition Whydah research also concludes that Julian from the Whydah was a young man, maybe just 16 years old. In at least one execution narrative attributed to Julian, he claims he lived with his family until he was about 20.

Barry Clifford's divers continue to uncover new evidence about the Whydah — more artifacts and information than we have about any other pirate ship that sailed the Atlantic. But the fate of the only two Whydah survivors, including John Julian, may remain a mystery forever.

Gregory N. Flemming is the author of "At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton," to be published in June (www.gregflemming.com).

You may view this on the original web site if you wish at: http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20140426/Opinion/404260341#ReaderReaction