Whydah Gally Sinks off Cape Cod
The Whydah Gally sank in a storm off Cape Cod on 26 April 1717, taking down Samuel Bellamy and most of his crew, and became the only fully authenticated pirate shipwreck ever recovered. She was built in London in 1715 as a slave ship, named for the port of Ouidah on the Bight of Benin, and had just completed the triangular passage — trade goods to West Africa, some five hundred captives to the Caribbean, and sugar, indigo and silver home. Bellamy took her in the Bahamas in February 1717 after a three-day chase, and gave her captain one of his own ships in exchange, which was consistent with his reputation. He was about twenty-eight and had been at it barely a year, in which he took some fifty vessels. His crew was unusually mixed — English, Dutch, French, Native American, and around thirty Africans freed from captured slavers, several of whom had been aboard the Whydah herself. Captain Charles Johnson records his speech to a captured merchant captain who refused to join him: that the difference between them was that Bellamy robbed the rich under the cover of his own courage, while the merchant robbed the poor under the cover of law. The ship was driven onto a sandbar in a nor'easter with over a hundred men aboard. Two survived. Barry Clifford located the wreck in 1984. Its bell, recovered in 1985 and inscribed with the ship's name and the year 1716, is what confirmed the identification. Over 200,000 artefacts have been raised.
- Year: 1717 CE
- Category: Military
