Samuel Bellamy (Black Sam)
Samuel Bellamy took some fifty ships in about a year and drowned at twenty-eight with most of his crew. Born in Devon around 1689, the youngest of six children, he went to sea young and probably served in the Royal Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession, arriving in Cape Cod around 1715. He turned to treasure hunting off the Florida coast, where a Spanish plate fleet had been wrecked by a hurricane, and found nothing. He joined Benjamin Hornigold's pirate company in 1716 and, when the crew voted Hornigold out for refusing to attack English ships, was elected captain. He was called Black Sam for wearing his hair long and unpowdered, and his crew called themselves Robin Hood's men. Captain Charles Johnson records a speech he is said to have made to a merchant captain who refused to join him — contrasting men who rob the poor under cover of law with those who rob the rich under the protection of their own courage, and calling himself a free prince with as much authority to make war on the world as any ruler with a fleet. In February 1717 he captured the Whydah Gally, a new English slave ship returning from the Caribbean, off the Bahamas, and made her his flagship — a fast vessel he armed with twenty-eight guns. In April 1717 he ran into a violent storm off Cape Cod. The Whydah was driven aground and broke up; all but two of about 145 aboard died. The wreck was located in 1984 and is the only authenticated pirate ship recovered.
- Lived: 1689 CE – 1717 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: pirate
