Whydah Gally

The account

Black Sam Bellamy was the most successful pirate of the golden age and, by reputation, the most generous, a sailor who called himself a free prince and took ships without much blood. In a single year his crew captured some fifty vessels, and the pooled plunder, coin and gold and silver from every flag in the Atlantic, went into the hold of his flagship, the Whydah, a fast galley he had taken on her maiden voyage as a slave ship and made his own.

He was twenty eight years old and sailing north, some say to bring his fortune home to a girl on Cape Cod, when a savage nor'easter caught the Whydah on the night of the twenty sixth of April, 1717. Seventy mile an hour winds and thirty foot seas drove her stern first onto a sandbar within sight of land, and she broke apart. Of roughly a hundred and forty five men aboard, only two survived. The treasure of fifty ships went into the surf off Wellfleet.

For more than two hundred and sixty years it stayed a legend, until a local named Barry Clifford went looking with an old map and found it in 1984, under fifteen to fifty feet of sand. A bronze bell came up reading THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716, and just like that it became the only pirate treasure ship ever proven, not a story but a named wreck full of pirate gold.

And it is still giving up its secrets, which is the whole pull of it. The Whydah did not sink in one neat pile. She scattered for four miles along the Cape, and the coin, said to have been carried loose in sacks between her decks, is spread through shifting sand that buries and unburies it with every storm. Clifford's teams have raised over two hundred thousand objects and counting, and the heart of Bellamy's fortune, the mother lode of fifty plundered ships, is still out there in the dark water off Cape Cod, surfacing a few pieces at a time.

Known intelligence

• A 1715 slave ship captured in 1717 by the pirate "Black Sam" Bellamy and made his flagship.
• Bellamy's crew took some 50 ships in a year; the pooled plunder rode in the Whydah's hold.
• She sank in a violent storm off Cape Cod on 26 April 1717; only a handful of about 145 men survived.
• Barry Clifford found the wreck in 1984; a bell reading "THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716" made it the only authenticated pirate shipwreck ever found.

Theories of the hunt

• Much of the pooled coin, said to have been kept in sacks between the decks, is still scattered and buried under the sand.
• The wreck spread for four miles along the Cape, and key parts of it have never been recovered.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The wreck is found off Wellfleet on Cape Cod and actively worked; it scattered for four miles, so much of the coin is still buried in shifting sand.
• Captain Cyprian Southack's 1717 map, drawn for the colonial government right after the wreck, remains the best guide to the debris field.
• The large cannon concretions, fused masses pulled from the site, are thought to hold un-recovered coin; dissolving them yields finds, an ongoing process.
• The site is permitted and protected, so this is a licensed archaeological recovery, not open salvage.

The trail, in order

• 1715: the Whydah is built as a slave ship.
• 1717: Bellamy captures her and makes her his flagship.
• 26 April 1717: she sinks in a storm off Cape Cod.
• 1984: Barry Clifford finds and authenticates the wreck.

Sources and the record

• Whydah Gally (Wikipedia)
• Black Sam Bellamy (New England Historical Society)