The Whydah

by Martin W. Sandler

  But then Bellamy had a stroke of luck. In the distance, another merchant vessel was spotted. The Whydah gave chase and soon caught up to the prize, the Fisher, which had been on its way to Virginia from Boston. According to the Fisher’s log, it was “laden with Tobacco, hides and other things.” But this time Bellamy was not interested in plunder. What he needed was information. Even though he regarded both his crewman known only as Lambeth and the young John Julian as able pilots, he feared that they were not as familiar with the dangerous Cape Cod waters as they would need to be in the case of a severe storm. Shouting over to the Fisher’s captain, Robert Ingols, Bellamy asked if he was acquainted with these waters, and, to Bellamy’s relief, Ingols shouted back that he knew the coastline “very well.”

  Immediately Bellamy ordered Ingols to come aboard the Whydah and sent four heavily armed pirates across to the Fisher to make sure that the vessel followed Bellamy’s small flotilla. As night descended, the Whydah, the Ann, the Mary Anne, and the Fisher, all with lanterns ablaze at their sterns, made their way along the dangerous coastline, the most treacherous of all from Florida to Maine.

  The famous American author Henry David Thoreau, a keen observer of Cape Cod, wrote that so many ships were wrecked off the Cape that “the inhabitants hear the crash of vessels going to pieces as they sit round their hearths.” On April 26, 1717, as the weather rapidly deteriorated, Bellamy’s fleet continued along the Cape. Around ten o’clock in the evening, the wind began to gust up to eighty miles per hour, and heavy rain squalls pounded the pirate fleet. The seas rose above fifty feet, and huge bolts of lightning streaked across the sky. Bellamy could not know that an Arctic gale from Canada was colliding with a warm front racing northward from the Caribbean. It was what meteorologists call a perfect storm, and one of the worst ever to hit Cape Cod.

  Cape Cod began to earn the dubious honor of being known as “the graveyard of the Atlantic” almost as soon as explorers and settlers from Europe began to appear on its shores. This map, drawn in the early 1900s, shows an amazing number of shipwreck sites up to the year 1903.

  As the winds increased and the seas grew as rough as Bellamy had ever seen them, Black Sam turned to Ingols, who had assured him that he knew how to deal with Cape Cod storms. But Ingols had lied. Not only was he unfamiliar with the Cape coastline and its weather, but he now appeared to be on the verge of panic.

  Desperate for help, Bellamy shouted over to the Ann, which was riding the waves perilously close to the Whydah. Although Bellamy had placed his former quartermaster Richard Noland in charge of the Ann when he captured it, that vessel’s former captain, a man known only as Montgomery, was still on board it as well. From conversations he had had with Montgomery, Bellamy had the impression that, unlike Ingols, Montgomery did know his way around the Cape Cod coast.

  Hanging on to the Whydah’s rail for dear life, Bellamy kept shouting over the storm for Montgomery. When he appeared, clutching at his own rail, Bellamy made Montgomery a promise: if he guided them to Provincetown Harbor, he would earn back his freedom and his ship.

  Montgomery immediately agreed and made his way to the Ann’s wheel. But not trusting that Bellamy would keep his word, he had his own plans. Knowing that the Ann was much lighter than the larger, treasure-laden Whydah, Montgomery told Bellamy to follow him and that he would guide him into Provincetown Harbor. Montgomery actually intended to lead Bellamy to an area of treacherous sandbars over which the lighter Ann could safely pass but upon which the heavy Whydah would run aground and, in such a devastating storm, be torn apart.

  For a time, Bellamy followed Montgomery and the Ann, but it became obvious to him that Montgomery was not heading to safety but straight toward shore. He tried to change course, but the wind was too strong. Next he ordered the crew to drop the vessel’s half-ton anchors overboard. Many of the Whydah’s crew climbed into the rigging to escape the waves washing over the deck.

  Still, the Whydah was drawn closer and closer to the treacherous shoreline. As Thomas Davis later remembered, Bellamy stood defiantly on the deck as he had done during the terrible storm off the coast of Virginia a month before, shouting “blasphemies, oaths, and horrid imprecations” to the heavens. Bellamy was again ready to order the crew to fire the ship’s cannons skyward in response to the almost deafening ceaseless thunder.

  As its captain railed against the sky, the Whydah was shaken by an enormous jolt. Just as Montgomery had intended, Bellamy’s ship had slammed into a sandbar. The jolt was so severe that it threw sailors from the rigging into the freezing sea. Before anyone on board could react, a gigantic wave slammed into and over the Whydah, tearing all of its more than sixty cannons from their mounts. As they careened across the deck, the cannons crushed every unfortunate pirate who stood in their path. Breaking loose, heavy cannonballs and barrels filled with nails crashed through the deck and killed those whom they fell upon below.

  It only got worse. Shortly after midnight, the Whydah’s mainmast snapped, and the heavily loaded ship was drawn into shallow water, where it overturned. Then the ultimate catastrophe took place. The Whydah’s hull broke apart, and the dead and those who were still living were cast into the pounding surf.

  Within minutes, most of the pirates who had been thrown into the sea died from the frigid ocean temperatures. Among the dead was John King, the young boy who had dared threaten his own mother so that he could sail with his hero, Black Sam Bellamy. His hero drowned, too.

  Bellamy, who had just become the most successful pirate of his day, was killed by the rarest of storms. Killed by one of the few captains to defy his orders. Killed, according to many, within sight of the house of the sweetheart who may have been the reason he returned to the Cape.

  The Whydah met its spectacular end on one of the most desolate stretches of coast on thinly settled Cape Cod. Yet by the very next morning, scores of inhabitants were scouring the site of the wreck, hopeful of finding treasure either lying on the shoreline or floating in the sea.

  Nothing excited Cape Codders more than a shipwreck. Local newspapers were fond of telling the stories of schoolchildren who, as they sat by their classroom windows, paid far more attention to looking for ships in distress than they did to their lessons. Whenever they spied one, the newspapers reported, they bolted from the classroom, accompanied not only by their classmates but by their teachers as well.

  To those who lived on Cape Cod, shipwrecks were so important that many adopted the old English prayer “We pray Thee, O Lord, not that wrecks should happen, but that if any shall happen, Thou wilt guide them onto our shores for the benefit of the inhabitants.”

  The benefits that were provided to the nearby residents were sometimes so great that many Cape Codders were unwilling to leave shipwrecks to chance. The citizens of one Cape town protested vehemently against building a lighthouse on the grounds that it would undoubtedly reduce the number of shipwrecks. Even more unprincipled citizens deliberately caused ships to run aground by sending false signals to them. By waving a lantern from a beach, saboteurs could convince a ship’s captain to head their way. Believing that the light indicated the direction where he could safely navigate the dangerous coastal waters, the captain would instead run his ship aground. Because the strategy worked only on moonless nights, when the coastline could not be seen, those who caused wrecks this way were given the name “mooncussers.”

  While any shipwreck would set Cape Codders racing to the disaster, one can only imagine the excitement, even the frenzy, that was caused when word spread that a pirate ship had been destroyed on the outer beach between Eastham and Wellfleet. This was not only a chance to plunder a wrecked ship’s wood, canvas, foodstuffs, or other common items that it might have aboard, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perhaps lay one’s hands on gold or silver or other unimaginable riches. Many Cape Codders were unable to resist such a temptation.

  Historians estimate that some thirty-five hundred ships have fallen prey to the vicious storms and hidden sandbars in the fift
y-mile stretch of Cape Cod coastline between Chatham and Provincetown. More than a thousand of these shipwrecks lie between the towns of Truro and Wellfleet alone, a distance of only five miles.

  The first recorded shipwreck off Cape Cod took place in 1626. The Sparrowhawk, bound for the early colony of Jamestown, Virginia, ran aground in a storm after having sailed three thousand miles from England. The twenty-five people aboard managed to get safely to shore, and the ship was repaired. But before it could resume its journey, it was struck by another storm and wasn’t seen again for more than two hundred years. In 1863, yet another great storm partially uncovered the Sparrowhawk, allowing much of its hull and other parts of the ship to be salvaged, and providing naval historians valuable information about the hull design and construction of the earliest ships used to settle the New World.

  Visitors to the Boston Common view the reconstructed hull of the Sparrowhawk, as was pictured in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, October 21, 1869.

  In the late 1700s and early 1800s, there was an average of two shipwrecks a month off the Cape Cod coast, particularly in winter. When a storm hit, it was almost expected that the alarm “Ship ashore! All hands perishing!” would be heard on land. Citizens would rush to the beach, but almost always the waves were too high for them to even attempt a rescue.

  It was not until 1872 that things began to change. In that year, the U.S. government created the first truly efficient coastal lifesaving service. Lifesaving stations built every five miles along the Cape Cod coast were each manned by six or seven surfmen and a station keeper, who kept a constant lookout for ships in distress. At night, men from the stations patrolled the beach, ready to summon aid for any vessel in trouble.

  Members of the United States Life-Saving Service head out to sea in an attempt to rescue passengers from a wrecked ship off Cape Cod.

  Whenever a ship in distress was sighted, one of the members of the lifesaving crew fired off a red flare, letting those on the stricken ship know that help was on the way. Then, if the sea permitted it, the lifesaving crew launched their special oversize surfboats and raced to the aid of the shipwrecked mariners. If the sea was too rough to allow surfboats to be launched, the lifesaving team stayed on the beach and, using a small cannon called a Lyle gun, fired a double line with a pulley to the stricken ship. Then they pulled the crew safely to shore, one by one, in a basketlike device called a breeches buoy.

  Thanks to the introduction of the lifesaving service and the building of the Cape Cod Canal, which allows ships to avoid many of the Cape’s most dangerous waters, the rate of shipwrecks has been greatly reduced. But the devastating storms and hidden sandbars still remain. And despite the extraordinary advancements in ship construction and navigational technology, every captain worth his or her salt knows that the waters that form the vast graveyard of the Whydah and so many other ships must be treated with caution and respect.

  OF THE 146 MEN aboard the Whydah, only two survived the disaster. Somehow Thomas Davis and young John Julian were able to swim ashore and climb the steep sand dunes. They then made their way to the nearby house of farmer Samuel Harding, who, with his wife, stood wide-eyed as Davis told him what had happened to the Whydah and its crew.

  Harding could not help but feel sorry for Davis’s crewmates. But in the sailors’ bad fortune, he saw opportunity. Harding, like the majority of Cape farmers, was barely making a living. There had to be goods in the Whydah wreckage that he could use. The next morning, he hitched up his wagon and took Davis and Julian down to the shore. They brought back several loads of goods that he hid in his barn. Harding’s good luck was bad for Davis and Julian. A number of locals saw them aiding the farmer and guessed that the strangers were from the wreck. Carrying out what they saw as their civic duty, the townspeople informed the local authorities, who arrested Davis and Julian and placed them in jail.

  While only two men from the Whydah came out of the storm alive, seven of the some sixty pirates and original crew aboard the Mary Anne survived. When the Whydah, the Mary Anne, the Ann, and the Fisher had been making their way up the coast, the Mary Anne had been in the lead. Up to that point, the seven men whom Bellamy had transferred onto the Mary Anne from the Whydah had considered themselves the luckiest pirates alive, being placed on a ship filled with cases of fine wine. But the Mary Anne developed a serious leak and fell to the rear. As they manned the pumps nonstop, the crew “damn’d the Vessel and wished they had never seen her.”

  And then things got even worse. With a great shudder and roar, the Mary Anne smashed into a sandbar. Only the quick thinking of the pirate Thomas Baker, who immediately cut down two of the vessel’s masts, prevented it from meeting the same fate as the Whydah. Its crew knew they had to flee the area before the authorities, always eager to get their hands on pirates, arrived. As they were making their plans to escape, a canoe pulled up to the stricken ship. Aboard it were two men, John Cole and William Smith, who had spotted the wreck and offered to take the crew back to the mainland. But as they rowed toward shore, Cole and Smith overheard the men they had rescued making plans to find their way to a pirate haven in Rhode Island, where they felt they would be sheltered. As soon as they were alone, Cole and Smith reported their plans to the Eastham sheriff. All seven were arrested and placed in jail in the nearby town of Barnstable.

  The pirates aboard the Ann and the Fisher fared much better. As the devious Captain Montgomery had planned, the Ann had led the unsuspecting Whydah toward the sandbars and then, under the cover of darkness and the storm, had turned back out to sea, where it anchored next to the Fisher to ride out the storm. The Fisher, however, began leaking badly, and those aboard it transferred its loot to the Ann and opened all the hatches on the Fisher. Tons of water poured in, and the Fisher was sent to a watery grave. With that accomplished, the Ann, captained by the Whydah’s former quartermaster Richard Noland, set sail for Maine, hoping to meet up with Bellamy, the Whydah, and the Marianne. When the Whydah failed to appear, Noland and the men of the Ann began a long series of successful raids on ships all the way from Maine to the Bahamas.

  All of which adds more mystery to the Whydah saga. Montgomery’s actions in leading the Whydah to its tragic end are well documented. So too is the fact that the Ann, captained by Richard Noland, captured a considerable amount of loot from ships sailing in the waters between Maine and the Bahamas in the months following the Whydah’s sinking. But what about Captain Montgomery? Was he still aboard the Ann when these raids were staged? Was he a willing participant or was he a prisoner of Noland and his pirates? We simply don’t know.

  What we do know is that Richard Noland had a unique ending to his career in piracy. In 1718, he abruptly accepted King George I’s offer of a pardon to any pirate. Noland, according to Daniel Defoe, lived out the rest of his life as a model citizen and died peacefully, something extremely rare for someone who had spent most of his life on the account.

  Paulsgrave Williams also ended his days in a much different fashion from most pirates. After spending time with his mother, sister, and niece on Block Island, Williams sailed to the spot in Maine where he and Bellamy had agreed to meet. Two weeks after he arrived at the meeting site, word reached Williams of the wreck of the Whydah.

  Sick at heart, Williams sailed to the pirate haven at New Providence, in the Bahamas. He next appears in the historical record in 1720, serving as an officer aboard a pirate ship commanded by his old friend Olivier LeBous. Three years later, at the age of forty-five, Williams retired from piracy, settled down with a new wife, and began a family. The man who had provided the funds that enabled Sam Bellamy to become his era’s most successful pirate, the man who had accompanied Bellamy on all of his greatest adventures, would, unlike Bellamy, live a long life and die a peaceful death.

  For the nine imprisoned pirates, the seven months they spent awaiting trial in the Boston jail to which they had all been transferred was the worst period of their lives. In the beginning, not a single day went by without their hoping that a
group of their fellow pirates, particularly Paulsgrave Williams and his men, would storm the prison and rescue them. But as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, even the most optimistic of them lost all hope of rescue. The one thing the prisoners learned they could count on was an almost daily visit from one of the most influential religious leaders in the colonies, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather. A scientist and historian as well as a minister, at fifteen he had become the youngest man ever to graduate from Harvard College, and he went on to publish 382 books in his lifetime. Mather took a particular interest in the imprisoned pirates. His constant visits to the jail were made for a single purpose: to get them to confess to their crimes, something they steadfastly refused to do.

  Cotton Mather was not only one of the most influential men in the American colonies, but he was also involved in more endeavors than probably any other person of his time. He was a champion of education for African Americans, worked toward establishing libraries for working people, and helped establish societies to carry out other types of charitable work.

  Finally, on October 18, 1717, seven prisoners were brought to trial. After six months in a dark prison cell, the bright glare of the Boston courtroom practically blinded them. Their long diet of bread and water had left them looking like skeletons. They were still wearing the clothes they had worn on the night they were arrested.

  As they stood nervously waiting for their trial to begin, the thirteen men who would decide their fate filed slowly into the courtroom and took their places at a long table in front of the accused. Included among them were some of the highest-ranking officials of the royal province of Massachusetts Bay, including Samuel Shute, the governor and commander in chief of the province; William Dummer, lieutenant governor of the province; and three members of the King’s Council for the province.