The Whydah Read online

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Slave Ship Whydah

  CHAPTER TWO

  A New Pirate King

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bigger Ships, Bigger Prizes

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Pirate Ship Whydah

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Whydah Rules the Waves

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Wreck of the Whydah

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Survivors

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Adventures of Cyprian Southack

  CHAPTER NINE

  Legends

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Search for the Whydah

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Victory at Last

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  What the Artifacts Tell Us

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  Photography Credits

  Acknowledgments

  IN 1984, newspaper headlines and television newscasts around the world announced that the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah had been discovered off Cape Cod. The Whydah was the first sunken pirate ship ever to be found. It had lain undiscovered for so long — almost three hundred years — that many had come to wonder if it had ever existed, if the incredible stories they had heard about the ship, its crew, and its amazing cargo of treasure were actually myths.

  The stories connected with the Whydah are tales of pure adventure, populated by colorful characters, including one of the boldest and most successful pirates ever. Filled with outlandish deeds, amazing courage, barbarous acts, triumphs, and tragedy, the stories are made even more extraordinary by the fact that they are true.

  The saga of the Whydah continued after it went down, and this part of its story is, in many ways, as fascinating as the tales of deeds and misdeeds aboard the ship when it rode the high seas. In the ordinary course of events, ships that outlive their usefulness are stripped or broken apart. But over the centuries, many have been shipwrecked — so many that much of human history lies hidden beneath the waves. Famed oceanographer Robert Ballard has described shipwrecks as “the pyramids of the deep.” “I think there’s more history in the deep,” he has said, “than in all the museums in the world combined.”

  When a ship sinks, it becomes a time capsule. If it is salvaged, like the Whydah, it provides evidence of what ships were like and what life was like at the time of its sinking.

  The Whydah was not only the first sunken pirate vessel to be discovered; it was also the first pirate ship to be excavated. Marine archaeologists have uncovered artifacts in its wreck that have changed our entire notion of who the pirates were and how they lived. Pirates have long been the subject of legend and literature — and considerable imagination. But the true story of the pirates is every bit as fascinating as the fiction they spawned.

  Martin W. Sandler

  Cotuit, Massachusetts

  IN FEBRUARY 1717, Captain Lawrence Prince was heading home, back to England, on his ship the Whydah, which was loaded with a fortune in gold, silver, and other valuable goods. It was the final leg of the magnificent vessel’s highly successful maiden voyage.

  Formally named the Whydah Gally, the ship was built in 1715 for Sir Humphry Morice. A member of the British parliament, Morice was one of the most active slave traders of his day. His new ship, named for the infamous West African slave trading port Ouidah, was constructed to carry captured Africans to Caribbean plantations, where sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, and other highly valued products were grown. There the captives would be sold into slavery.

  Morice selected Lawrence Prince to be the ship’s captain. It was an understandable choice, as Prince was well suited to command a ship constructed for such a brutal purpose. He had spent several years serving under the feared Welsh privateer Captain Henry Morgan, who had been employed by England to capture or destroy Spanish ships and raid Spanish towns in the Caribbean. That Prince could be ruthless in carrying out his duties is evidenced by an official Spanish government report of a raid he led on a town in Nicaragua. Prince, the report stated, “made havoc and a thousand destructions, sending the head of a priest in a basket and demanding 70,000 pesos in ransom.”

  In 1671, Prince helped lead Morgan’s raid on Panama. His share of plunder from the attack allowed him to retire to Jamaica, where he lived as a prosperous landowner for more than forty years before being given command of the Whydah. It was an impressive ship. Three-masted and 102 feet long, it featured the most advanced nautical technology available, including state-of-the-art steering mechanisms and the most up-to-date navigational and sounding equipment. It was armed with eighteen cannons and had room for ten more. Extremely strong, the Whydah could carry three hundred tons of cargo. Most impressive of all, it was fast, capable of traveling over the waves at the then-amazing speed of just over thirteen knots, or fifteen miles per hour. Among the ship’s most visible features was a long platform on its deck for captives who could not fit in the vessel’s huge hold during the long voyage from Africa to the Americas. They would be shackled to the platform, lying side by side, exposed to all weather, with a barrier separating the male prisoners from the women and children, many of them their wives, sons, and daughters.

  Early in 1716, with Captain Prince at its helm, the Whydah set sail from England loaded with cloth, firearms, gunpowder, liquor, hand tools, utensils, and other trade goods. The ship sailed along the coast of West Africa, passing what is today the Gambia, Senegal, and Nigeria, until it reached Ouidah, its namesake port. There Prince exchanged his cargo for almost four hundred slaves. The price Prince paid for each of the slaves is not known, but records from the Royal African Company, one of the world’s largest traders in slaves, show that in 1731, the company bought forty slaves in Ouidah by trading 337 rifles, 40 muskets, and 530 pounds of gunpowder.

  The Whydah’s voyage from England to West Africa was the first leg of the infamous slave-trading route known as the Triangular Trade. Once the four hundred slaves were crammed aboard his ship, Prince set sail across what was called the Middle Passage, headed for the Caribbean island of Jamaica. It was an almost ten-week voyage, during which nearly 20 percent of the captives died. The slavers did not provide enough food, and they packed their captives as tightly as possible. In these conditions, diseases such as smallpox, measles, and dysentery often spread out of control. Some of the slaves tried to commit suicide by throwing themselves overboard, but they were prevented from doing so by the special netting installed all around the deck. Despite their ordeal, 312 unfortunate souls survived and were dropped off at a huge Jamaican sugar plantation, where they were forced to work for the rest of their lives. Prince, on the other hand, received a fortune in gold, silver, and other valuables from the plantation owners to take home to the Whydah’s owners in exchange for having delivered his human cargo.

  This map shows the route of the Triangular Trade in which ships sailed from England and other European countries to the coast of West Africa loaded with goods to exchange for slaves. The second leg of the journey brought the slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, where slave labor was used by plantation owners. The slaves were traded for gold, silver, and other valuables, which were shipped back to Europe for the final leg of the journey.

  Prince was little concerned about the slaves’ horrific plight. He would have focused on getting home as quickly and as safely as possible and being rewarded with the handsome payment he would surely receive. As the Whydah was proceeding in waters off the West Indies, two distant specks came into view. It soon became apparent that they were heading toward the Whydah. Could they be two friendly vessels, their captains anxious to exchange news and gossip with a fellow mariner? Could they be antislavery warships determined to capture or destroy vessels engaged in the s
lave trade? Or could they be pirates? This last possibility struck terror into the hearts of every ship owner and captain.

  Prince and his crew had no way of knowing from this distance that the two specks were indeed pirate ships. Not only that, but they were commanded by a man who, in the space of just one year, had become one of the most feared pirate captains of his day.

  SLAVERY DID NOT BEGIN in the Americas. What came to be called “the evil institution” existed in every ancient civilization, including Arabia, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The transportation of more than twelve million slaves from West Africa to Europe’s American colonies, however, was one of the largest movement of slaves in history.

  The Caribbean islands had everything needed for the establishment of a thriving plantation system: extensive open land, fertile soil, good harbors, and a climate perfectly suited to growing raw materials that were in demand throughout Europe. Everything, that is, except the enormous number of laborers needed to do the backbreaking work that growing and harvesting plantation crops required. The plantation owners found their answer in slave labor and made their fortunes on the backs of millions of captured African men, women, and children. The slave owners’ continued prosperity was based on the labor of generations of captives who were born into slavery on their plantations.

  Many of the millions of captives who were taken from Africa to the New World were kidnapped by African tribal chiefs and then sold to British slave merchants called factors who lived in Africa. Others were taken prisoner in tribal wars started by these chiefs for the sole purpose of acquiring captives to be sold. The slave rosters also included those who had been convicted of crimes. In some cases, African chiefs fabricated crimes so that they could increase the number available to be sold into slavery.

  Millions of others were captured by British slave traders who traveled inland to ambush and seize local men, women, and children. After being taken, these captives were chained in long lines called coffles and forced to walk as many as a thousand miles to the coast, where they were held, sometimes for as long as a year, in prisons called factories until a slave ship like the Whydah arrived.

  Various European countries that were engaged in the slave trade maintained compounds in Africa, where captives were held until ships arrived to transport them to the Americas. The compounds shown here, in what is now Nigeria, belonged to England, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands.

  People were kidnapped from all corners of Africa, from grasslands, farmlands, and cities such as Loango or Timbuktu, vital centers of scholarship and learning. They included the wealthy as well as the poor and artists whose work was highly valued throughout the world. Slavery is traumatic and dehumanizing, and the psychological damage Africans suffered when torn from their homes, families, native land, and everything else they cherished was as devastating as the physical pain and cruelty they would experience once transported and sold.

  An unspeakable tragedy for millions, being enslaved was eloquently described by one of the very few slaves to leave behind an account of his feelings and experiences, Ghana native Quobna Ottobah Cugoano: “It would be needless,” he wrote, “to give a description of all the horrible scenes which we saw, and the base treatment which we met with in this dreadful captive situation. . . . Let it suffice to say, that I was thus lost to my dear indulgent parents and relations, and they to me. . . . Brought from a state of innocence and freedom, and, in a barbarous and cruel manner, conveyed to a state of horror and slavery.”

  HIS NAME WAS SAMUEL BELLAMY. He was sometimes called Black Sam or Black Bellamy because of his jet-black hair and dark complexion. And he didn’t wear his hair under a powdered wig, as was the fashion of the time, but grew it long and tied it back with a black satin bow. With his long velvet coat, knee britches, silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes, he cut a most dashing figure. His outfit was completed by the sword that hung at his left hip and the four pistols that were secured by a broad sash. Even though he could be as ferocious, and even as brutal, as any of his fellow pirate leaders, he often showed mercy and generosity toward those whom he captured on his raids. These traits earned him the nickname Robin Hood of the Seas.

  Bellamy was born in the winter of 1689 in a small town near the seafaring city of Plymouth, England. The sea was in his blood, and he became a sailor on some of his neighbors’ boats even before he reached his teens. He was still not twenty when he joined the British navy and took part in several battles in the War of Spanish Succession, a conflict involving the major powers of Europe, including England. When the war ended in 1714, Great Britain abruptly released more than forty thousand sailors from service. Among those newly unemployed was twenty-four-year-old Sam Bellamy, who decided to seek his fortune in America.

  He arrived in Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, in the spring of 1715. The following spring, in nearby Newport, Rhode Island, he met Paulsgrave Williams. The two were destined to become best friends and fellow adventurers. Forty-two-year-old Williams, whose father had been attorney general of Rhode Island, came from a wealthy family. He had also become well off in his own right by establishing himself as a highly successful goldsmith. But, like Sam Bellamy, Williams was dissatisfied with his life. He wanted adventure. Bellamy, too, sought adventure, but more than anything else, he wanted to be rich.

  For more than a hundred years, Spanish ships called galleons had been transporting enormous amounts of gold, silver, jewels, and other treasures mined in the New World or stolen from the native peoples who lived there. Over these years, a good number of galleons had been lost at sea, the victims of hurricanes, typhoons, and other disasters. Stories of these sunken treasure ships had fired the imaginations of adventurers on both sides of the Atlantic who were eager to get their hands on the lost riches. Sam Bellamy was one of these men. And he had a particular treasure in mind.

  On July 30, 1715, not long after Bellamy arrived in Provincetown, eleven Spanish ships loaded with tons of gold and silver sank off the coast of Florida in a hurricane. All this treasure was still lying on the seabed a year later. Here was their golden chance, Bellamy told Williams, their chance to get rich beyond their wildest dreams, their chance to live like kings. What they needed to do was get to the spot where the ships had gone down and bring up the treasure before the Spanish mounted a recovery effort. Williams needed no convincing, and he promised Bellamy that he would lend him the money to buy a ship and hire a crew to make the dream a reality.

  According to legend, Sam Bellamy met someone else in the late spring of 1716 who would have a profound influence on his life. While Paulsgrave Williams was raising the money to finance their treasure-seeking adventure, Bellamy was living at Higgins Tavern in the Cape Cod town of Eastham. One warm June evening, he took a walk through the cemetery adjoining the tavern. He had just begun his stroll when he heard the sound of a young woman singing. He came upon an apple tree, and sitting under it, absorbed in her song, was a young woman with the most golden hair and the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen. He could go no farther. He had to get to know that girl.

  Bellamy introduced himself. He learned that her name was Maria Hallett and that she was fifteen years old. He told her what it was like to serve in the British navy, what the battles at sea were like, and how much he wanted to make a success of himself.

  For her part, Maria had never seen a man as lively and as handsome as Sam Bellamy. And there was something more. Strange as it might seem to draw such a conclusion in just one meeting, there was no doubt about it: something in his eyes told her that he indeed was going to make a name for himself.

  From their first meeting until Bellamy left in search of the Spanish treasure, he and Maria spent as much time together as they possibly could. But there was a problem. Maria’s parents were not pleased with what was obviously developing into a serious relationship. As prosperous farmers, they had far more ambitious plans for their young daughter than a life with a sailor who, as far as they could tell, had little chance of providing Maria with the comforts t
hey wished for her.

  Still, Maria kept up her relationship with Bellamy. Her feelings for him grew even stronger when he told her about the Spanish wrecks. He assured her that her parents would greet him with open arms when he returned to the Cape with a ship loaded with gold, silver, and precious jewels. As for her, he stated, he had every intention of marrying her when he returned and then taking her to the Caribbean and making her princess of their own island.

  Almost everything in the remarkable story of Sam Bellamy is well documented. Everything, that is, except the tale of Maria Hallett. As authors Barry Clifford and Paul Perry wrote, “The truth about [Sam and Maria’s] brief relationship will always remain shrouded in speculation.” But as author Arthur T. Vanderbilt has also written, “I would not be surprised if, someday, someone came across musty old records that prove there was a fifteen-year-old girl named Maria Hallett who lived on the outer Cape in 1716, and there met the young sailor with dreams of Spanish gold.”

  What is certain is that in early 1716, Bellamy, Williams, and a crew of about thirty men, including skilled divers, left Cape Cod in a small ship that Williams had obtained and sailed to the site of the wreck of the Spanish treasure fleet. When they arrived, they were hardly alone. Other groups of divers were attempting to locate the treasure as well. And no one was finding anything.

  For the next full month, the fortune seekers kept at it, sending their divers down to every likely spot. Finally, their provisions ran out. So, too, did their hopes. They hadn’t found a single silver bar or one gold coin. Eventually they would learn that they hadn’t beaten the Spanish government to it after all: Spain had already completed a salvage operation so large and so successful that almost 80 percent of the treasure had been recovered. The remainder of the bounty would not be found for another 250 years, by treasure hunters working with advanced modern equipment.