The Unknown Survivor, the article

My latest article was just published today. You can read it here:


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

If you wish, here are some additional sources of information about the "Mysterious Stranger:"

 

Alden, Timothy [Seymour, etc.] A Collection of American Epitaphs and Inscriptions with Occasional Notes (Vol. IV) 1814.

Rogers, Mary Bangs Old Cape Cod: The Land, The Men, The Sea Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press. Cambridge, 1931.

 

Swift, Charles F. Cape Cod the Right Arm of Massachusetts: A Historical Narrative Yarmouth: Register Publishing Company, 1897.

The Unknown Survivor

From Cape Cod Pilot, Jeremiah Diggs, American Guide Series Federal Writer's Project Works Progress Administration for the State of Massachusetts. Sponsored by Poor Richard Associates. Modern Pilgrim Press. Provincetown, MA. 1937, pps. 14-22.

Several years after the wreck (of the Whydah Galley) Rev. Mr. Osborn was making his way up the Cape from Truro when in the darkness he lost the road. Following the dunes in what he thought the right direction, the road at that time ran close to the sea, he suddenly heard loud voices and saw a glimmer of light. He was close to the lonely hut of Goody Hallet, and she was in violent altercation with a villainous looking stranger.

“Hold you tongue, old woman,” He heard the stranger say, “those days at Crosby's Tavern were long ago. You don't resemble the Maria Hallett of then.”

“Aye,” came Goody Hallett's shrill voice, “I Have changed, and Indian Tom did tell me where the booty was hidden. But God's truth! When I searched only a few pieces of gold were left. He didn't tell me it was you, Black Bellamy, who escaped with him from the wreck until the night ne died, nor have I divulged it since.”

“I swore by my sword,” raged Bellamy, “that I would drink a cup with you that night even if I had to sail the WHIDAH over the Great Salt Marshes to do it. Tonight I swear you will show me where the rest of the gold is hidden or I will run you through.”

Goody gave a derisive laugh. “Come, I'll show you where it was, all I ever found has kept me barely alive.”

 

The two left the house and walked towards the shore. Mr. Osborn followed the unfamiliar way and when he reached the bank they were out of sight. He stood listening for voices.

“This is the spot,” he heard Goody say, “where Indian Tom told me I would find the gold, but nothing but rotted leather bags with a few coins stuck in the corners remained.”

“Dig!” roared Bellamy in a voice boiling with anger, “Dig deeper. If you didn't take it it must still be there.”

The noise of dirt and gravel being pushed to one side assailed the minister's ears. He endeavored to reach a place on the bank where he could peer over without being seen. He trembled with the feeling of evil that surrounded the place.

“There you can see for yourself,” cam Goody Hallett's voice triumphantly, “the leathern bags are still here. I have never seen the treasure.”

“You lie, old witch!” cried Bellamy in a passion of rage, “This for your pains!”

Suddenly the listener's blood was chilled by a bubbling shriek! He threw caution to the winds and peered over the bluff. There flat on the sand, arms spread awry, lay Goody Hallett. Black Bellamy had made good his threat. Her throat was cut from ear o ear!

He stepped back and viewed his handiwork. “There,” he roared, “let that be a lesson to ye, Goody Hallett.” Then with a fiendish laugh he ran towards the breakers.

Mr. Osborn waited to see no more, but rushed to his horse and galloped the news to the village. The next day the woods from Wellfleet to Nauset Harbor were combed, but the stranger was not found.

Five days later, his drowned body was picked up at the self same spot on the beach.

That was the end of the case, except that from that to this the reputed treasure has never been found. Either Goody Hallett really did re-hide the whole and was murdered for her pains, or the sea washed it away during the years before Indian Tom acquainted his relative of the hiding place. After heavy storms gold coins were picked up for many years along Goody Hallett's beach, and it seems reasonable that these are what eked out her existence after she stopped knitting for the townswomen.

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.

 

The Unknown Survivor

Part Three

The Wild Man of Cape Cod

For years after Bellamy's pirate ship was wrecked at Wellfleet, by false pilotage on the part of one [of] his captives, a strange-looking man used to travel up and don the cape, who was believed to be one of the few survivors of that night of storm, and of the hanging that others underwent after getting ashore. The prates had money when the ship struck; it was found in the pockets of a hundred drowned who were cast on the beach, as well as among the sands of the cape, for coin was gathered there long after.

They supposed the stranger had his share, or more, and that he secreted quantity of specie near his cabin. After his death gold was found under his clothing in a girdle. He was often received at the houses of the fishermen, both because the people were hospitable and because they feared harm if the refused to feed or shelter him; but if his company grew wearisome he was exorcised by reading aloud a portion of the Bible. When he heard the holy words he invariably departed.

And it was said that fiends came to him at night, for in his room whether he appeared to sleep or wake, there were groans and blasphemy, uncanny words and sounds that stirred the hair of listeners on their scalps. The unhappy creature cried to be delivered of the murders he had committed.

For some time he was missed from his haunts, and it was thought he had secured a ship and set to sea again; but a traveler on the sands, while passing his cabin in the small hours, had heard a more than usual commotion, and could distinguish the voice of the wild man raised in frantic appeal to somebody, or something; still, knowing it was his habit to cry out so, and having misgivings about approaching the house, the traveler only hurried past

A few neighbors went to the lonely cabin and looked through the windows, which, as well as the doors, were locked on the inside. The wild man lay still and white on the floor, with the furniture upset and pieces of gold clutched in his fingers and scattered about him. There were marks of claws about his neck.

Narrative taken from Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, Vol. 1., Charles M Skinner, JB Lippincott Company, 1896, pps. 309-310.

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.

 

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).