The Whydah

by Martin W. Sandler

  In the meantime, Sam Bellamy was devastated. Gone were his dreams of instant wealth. He was embarrassed as well. He had boasted to people throughout Cape Cod that he would return with enormous riches. The thought of coming back empty-handed was something that neither he nor Paulsgrave Williams could bear.

  More than ever, Bellamy was desperate to succeed. And out of that desperation came a bold plan. If he couldn’t find treasure underneath the sea, then he would seize it from ships sailing on the surface. He would, in the language of the day, go “on the account.” He would become a pirate.

  Bellamy certainly had the heart of a pirate. Although he could be compassionate, he could also be ruthless. There was no question that he was brave and adventurous. Paulsgrave Williams was ready to join him, as were the thirty members of his treasure-seeking crew, all of whom were also bitterly disappointed at not having gained a share of sunken Spanish treasure. Prior to asking them to vote on whether or not they wanted to join his pirate band, Bellamy stood in front of them holding a pirate flag. “This flag,” he told them, “represents not death, but resurrection. . . . From this day, we are new men.”

  As their captain, Bellamy traded their salvage boat for two pirogues, huge flat-bottom sailing canoes large enough to carry at least fifty men and several powerful swivel guns. The sight of two vessels with their occupants shouting wildly, waving their cutlasses, and arming their swivel guns became one of the most frightening sights the crew of any merchant vessel could see. Bellamy was so successful at raiding ships this way that before long, he became the talk of the pirate community.

  Among those impressed with the reports of Bellamy’s raids was one of the most influential pirates of them all. His name was Benjamin Hornigold and he was a living legend, not only because of the amazing number of vessels he had captured and plundered but also for the number of successful pirate captains and officers he had trained. Among his protégés at that time was a renegade named Edward Teach, who, under the name Blackbeard, would eventually become arguably the most famous pirate of all.

  Although his reign of terror lasted little more than two years, the man known as Blackbeard was the most feared pirate ever to sail the seas. To terrorize his victims, Blackbeard would weave matches into his hair and beard and then ignite them before going into battle.

  Always on the lookout for more pirate talent, Hornigold met with Bellamy and invited him, Williams, and their crew to join his band. Bellamy was thrilled. Only months before, having failed to find the sunken treasure he had been dreaming about for so long, he had been tempted to regard himself a failure. Now not only was he a budding pirate star, but he was also about to sail with Ben Hornigold aboard his flagship the Marianne and alongside the Postillion and its famous captain Olivier LeBous, who often prowled the Caribbean with Hornigold in search of prey.

  Bellamy and his men had been aboard the Marianne a short time when Hornigold and LeBous took their ships on an extended voyage throughout the Caribbean, successfully pillaging merchant ships, particularly in the waters around Cuba. Late in May 1716, they sailed to the island of Hispaniola and anchored in a large bay. There a dispute that had been simmering for some time broke out among Hornigold’s sailors. As the Marianne had been sailing around Cuba, its lookouts had spotted several British merchant vessels, but Hornigold had refused to go after them. Proud of his English roots, he had developed a policy of not robbing British ships, no matter how valuable a cargo they might be carrying.

  That was a policy that most of Hornigold’s crew could not abide. To them, every ship was fair game, and the greatest crime of all was letting a ship filled with treasure escape their grasp. When the Marianne anchored in Hispaniola, the crew voted to oust Hornigold as their captain. Abiding by the pirate code under which they operated, Hornigold and twenty-six men loyal to him accepted the vote, left the Marianne, and sailed off in a ship that was part of Hornigold’s flotilla. In the short time that Bellamy had been aboard the Marianne, he must have impressed the crew, for as soon as Hornigold and his followers, including Blackbeard, departed, the rest of the crew voted Sam Bellamy to be their new captain.

  LIFE ABOARD A PIRATE SHIP was governed by a code of laws called the Articles of Agreement, or simply the Articles, which were developed in the last half of the 1600s by pirates in the West Indies. No one could become a full-fledged member of a pirate crew unless he went on the account, meaning he first signed the Articles of Agreement and then swore on a Bible, an ax, or a skull to obey them. The Whydah’s copy of the Articles was not recovered, but Bellamy’s crew would have been governed by rules much like these, from the notorious pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts:

  I. Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of moment. He shall have an equal title to fresh provisions or strong liquors at any time seized, and shall use them at pleasure unless a scarcity may make it necessary for the common good that a retrenchment may be voted.

  II. Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes. But if they defraud the company to the value of even a Piece of Eight in plate, jewels or money, they shall be marooned. If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.

  III. None shall game for money either with dice or cards.

  IV. The lights and candles should be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew desire to drink after that hour they shall sit upon the open deck without lights.

  V. Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass and pistols at all times clean and ready for action.

  VI. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found seducing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise he shall suffer death.

  VII. He that shall desert the ship or his quarters in time of battle shall be punished by death or marooning.

  VIII. None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man’s quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol in this manner. At the word of command from the quartermaster, each man being previously placed back to back, shall turn and fire immediately. If any man do not, the quartermaster shall knock the piece out of his hand. If both miss their aim they shall take to their cutlasses, and he that draweth first blood shall be declared the victor.

  IX. No man shall talk of breaking up their way of living till each has a share of 1,000 [pounds]. Every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb in his service shall have 800 pieces of eight from common stock and for lesser hurts proportionately.

  X. The captain and the quartermaster shall receive two shares of a prize, the master gunner and boatswain, one and one half shares, all other officers one and one quarter, and private gentlemen of fortune one share each.

  XI. The musicians shall have rest on the Sabbath Day only by right. On all other days by favour only.

  It was the beginning of what was probably the most amazing single year of capture and plunder in the long history of piracy. Bellamy, Williams, and their men quickly became the most feared pirates the Caribbean and the Atlantic had ever witnessed. They chased, stopped, and boarded every merchant ship they spotted. The sailors in these vessels put up very little resistance. They were terrified simply by the sight of pirates. Besides, they weren’t being paid nearly enough to risk their lives defending goods that didn’t belong to them.

  After the booty was removed from each ship he captured, Bellamy usually let the prize vessel move on, but not before offering the sailors on the plundered ship the chance to join his pirate crew. Sometimes, however, Bellamy would spot one of the merchant seamen who had a special skill that he felt was needed on his ship. That man would be forced to join the pirate crew, whether he wanted to or not.

  As he had done with Ben Hornigold, Olivier LeBous in the Postillion often partnered with Bellamy. On November 9, 1716, after capturing and looting several small vessels off the Virgin Islands, they came upon a major prize. Between the islands of St. Thomas and what is now St. Croix, the lookouts on both the Marianne and the Po
stillion spotted a large English merchant ship. It was the Bonetta, carrying a huge cargo from Jamaica to Antigua. The two pirate vessels gave chase, and when they got close to the Bonetta, LeBous raised a pirate flag, complete with skull and crossbones. Bellamy fired a cannon shot across the prize vessel’s bow. Captain Savage of the Bonetta needed no more convincing. Not even waiting for a boarding party to appear, he had some of his men row him over to the Marianne, where he formally surrendered himself and his ship to Bellamy.

  The Bonetta’s cargo was so large that Bellamy ordered Captain Savage to anchor the ship off St. Croix, where the Marianne and the Postillion joined them. For the better part of two weeks, while Savage and his crew were held prisoner on the island, the men of the two pirate ships transferred the captured goods from the Bonetta’s hold to their vessels.

  When the transfer was finally completed and Bellamy was about to let Savage sail away with his empty ship, he made his usual offer to the Bonetta’s crew. Any sailor who wanted to become a pirate and join the Marianne’s crew was invited to do so. What happened next totally surprised Bellamy and his men. Stepping forward to accept the offer was John King, who, with his mother, was a passenger on board the Bonetta.

  It might not have been surprising that a passenger on a seagoing vessel would, for whatever reason, welcome the chance to become a pirate. But John King was at most ten years old. Young as he was, after watching Bellamy and his men in action, he was determined to join the pirates. Understandably, King’s mother became hysterical at the thought. But John King was so determined to become a pirate that he first threatened to kill himself and then threatened to kill his mother if he was not allowed to join Bellamy’s crew. As for Bellamy, he could not help but admire King’s determination, and John King became not only the youngest member of Bellamy’s crew but also the youngest pirate ever known.

  Bellamy was ready to sail on. He told Captain Savage that he was now free to sail away with the Bonetta as well. For Savage, being held captive for two weeks by Bellamy had been an extraordinary experience. During that time he had looked on in amazement as Bellamy and his men, despite being in the middle of looting the Bonetta, had chased, captured, plundered, and then released a French merchant ship and six smaller vessels. What Savage also remembered vividly was Bellamy telling him that his greatest wish was to capture a vessel even bigger than the Marianne so that he and his men could travel faster and farther in their quest to rule the seas.

  In December 1716, Bellamy got his wish. As he and LeBous were sailing the waters near Saba, a tiny, five-square-mile island off the Virgin Islands, they captured two ships, the Pearl and the Sultana. To Bellamy’s delight, the Sultana was the type of ship that he was looking for to replace the Marianne as his flagship. After looting the Pearl and forcing several men from the Sultana to join his crew, Black Sam told Captain Tosor of the Pearl that he was free to sail away with his crew and the rest of the men from the Sultana. Then he transferred his own crew to his new flagship and handed over command of the Marianne to Paulsgrave Williams.

  PIRATES WERE NOT the likable rogues portrayed in popular books and the movies. What has been referred to as the golden age of piracy was in fact “a period of unrestrained murder, robbery, and kidnapping on the high seas.” True stories of pirate cruelty shocked the populace throughout the 1700s. Among the most widely circulated tale was that of a captured merchant captain whose incessant talking so annoyed his pirate captors that they sewed his lips together with an enormous needle usually used to repair sails. Another defeated captain and his crew were sewn up in a sail and thrown overboard. When the sail washed ashore, twenty-eight bodies were found inside.

  Many of the pirates’ cruelest acts, including those of the men of the Whydah, were carried out against crews who refused to surrender immediately. Other brutalities were aimed at forcing a merchant vessel’s captain and crew to reveal where their most valuable cargo was hidden. And records, including those of the Whydah, reveal that some pirates acted cruelly simply because it was in their nature.

  Over the years, pirates developed an arsenal of brutalities. One of their favorite tactics was called sweating, in which they forced their victim to run around and around the mainmast while they threw broken bottles at him and jabbed him with pointed tools or weapons.

  Another favorite was described by English captain William Snelgrave. While being held captive on a pirate ship, he looked on in horror as the pirates abused a French captain who had refused to surrender when first fired upon. They “put a Rope about his Neck,” wrote Snelgrave, “and hoisted him up and down several times to the Main-yard-arm till he was almost dead.” The French captain was actually lucky. On some occasions, when the victim survived hoisting, he was shot to death.

  It was a brutal business, and among the cruelest was pirate Edward “Ned” Low. Described by his own men as a “maniac and a brute,” on one occasion, he had a merchant ship’s captain and his entire thirty-two-man crew killed because the captain dropped a bag of gold into the sea rather than turning it over to Low. His own crew finally set Low adrift in an open boat without food or water. A French ship rescued him, but when they recognized him, they gave him a brief trial and then hanged him.

  No account of pirate cruelty would be complete without invoking the name of Blackbeard. Sam Bellamy’s onetime shipmate and arguably the fiercest pirate captain of them all once interrupted a friendly game of cards to shoot his first mate for no apparent reason. Asked why, Blackbeard replied that if he didn’t shoot one or two of his crewmen now and then, they’d forget who he was.

  IT DID NOT TAKE LONG for Bellamy to establish the Sultana as one of the most feared of pirate vessels. On December 16, 1716, just a day after taking command of his new flagship, he and LeBous, with Williams and the Marianne also operating in the vicinity, captured a merchant ship out of Bristol, England, called the St. Michael. They held the ship’s crew on the nearby island of St. Maarten while they plundered its cargo. They then returned the ship to its captain, but not before thirteen of his crew voluntarily joined the men of the Sultana. A fourteenth member of the St. Michael’s crew also became part of Bellamy’s pirate band, but his participation was anything but voluntary.

  This map shows the Caribbean at the time known as the golden age of piracy. Because of its location between the southern tip of North America and the northern part of South America, the Caribbean contained major trade routes for merchant ships, making it prime hunting grounds for pirate ships constantly on the prowl.

  His name was Thomas Davis. Having first gone to sea when he was seventeen, he was now the St. Michael’s shipwright, or onboard carpenter. The last thing Davis wanted was to be a pirate, but the Sultana badly needed his skills. As Bellamy ordered Davis aboard the Sultana, the young man begged him to let him go. The St. Michael’s captain also pleaded for Davis’s release. Finally, even though he had promised the carpenter that he would eventually be set free, Bellamy called a meeting of the pirates and let them decide Davis’s fate. The crew, offended by the fact that he had so vehemently opposed becoming a pirate, forced Davis to do just that.

  The St. Michael would rank as one of the largest vessels Bellamy plundered after he took command of the Sultana. It was the first ship he took using a strategy that would become known throughout the seafaring world. As soon as they spotted prey, Williams, in the fast, highly maneuverable Marianne, would chase after it and track it down. Just as the targeted ship was preparing to put up a fight, Bellamy would show up in the much larger Sultana, its cannons pointing ominously at the prize vessel. On almost every occasion, the result would be an immediate surrender.

  As Bellamy became increasingly successful and well known, LeBous grew tired of operating in the younger pirate’s shadow. By mutual agreement, they parted ways, and LeBous sailed off to seek glory of his own. Bellamy, on the other hand, now had a different desire. The Sultana’s hold was filled almost to capacity with barrels and crates containing clothing, cloth, foodstuffs, and other valuable plunde
red goods. Special compartments that had been built in the space between the deck and the hold housed bags of coins, gold dust, and jewelry. The exact value of the stolen treasure on the Sultana was not recorded, but there is no question that it was worth a significant fortune. Yet Bellamy was not satisfied. He wanted an even bigger, faster ship, one that could carry even more booty, one that could outrun even the British navy’s fastest ships.

  Then, in late February 1717, the Sultana’s lookout spotted the Whydah making its way back to England. As Bellamy gazed out at the huge slave ship, he realized he was looking at his heart’s desire. Like some other pirate captains, Bellamy craved having a slave vessel for his flagship. Slave ships were built for speed so that they could complete the Middle Passage as quickly as possible, and they were also larger than most other vessels. Speed and size were important assets to pirate ships for pursuing prey and for storing large amounts of plunder. And slave ships had two other valuable features as well: they were always heavily armed, and they had huge kitchens called galleys, with large cooking pots and other utensils that could be used to feed more than a hundred men.

  Now, as Williams trailed behind him in the Marianne, Bellamy stepped up his pursuit in a race that under ordinary circumstances the far swifter Whydah would have easily won. Bellamy could not have known it, but his chase was aided by an extraordinarily valuable cargo whose equally extraordinary weight slowed his target.

  Still, it took Bellamy’s vessel three full days of sailing as fast as it could through the waters between Cuba and Hispaniola, known as the Windward Passage, to catch up with Captain Prince’s expertly piloted ship. Finally, the Sultana pulled within cannon range of the slave vessel off Long Island, in the Bahamas. Bellamy had already ordered that his personal pirate flag be raised. Now he had his gunners fire two shots across the Whydah’s bow. The experienced Captain Prince, fully aware that to put up a fight he had no chance of winning meant incurring brutal treatment at the hands of the pirates, lowered both the Whydah’s flag and its sails, indicating his official surrender.