It's been said that the Golden Age of Pirates began following the defeat of King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when droves of Jacobites fled England in search of greener pastures. Among those was a penniless sailor from Devonshire named Samuel Bellamy. In 1715, he found himself in the Massachusetts Bay Colony fishing village of Cape Cod, a shoe-shaped peninsula that juts out into the chilly waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. There he would meet a beautiful young lass by the name of Maria Hallett, better known in New England folklore as the 'Witch of Wellfleet'. Smitten by love but lacking the resources to win her over, he set sail for the Caribbean in search of recently sunken treasure from Spain's plate fleet. He vowed to return a rich man.
Back in Bellamy's native England, the Whydah, a three-masted slave galley owned by Sir Humphrey Morice, put off from London on its maiden voyage and sailed toward the Guinea coast of west Africa. It's objective was to pick up as many enslaved Africans as possible and transport them to the Caribbean where the survivors would be sold for the most desired trade goods of the day. On the return leg of its journey through the Windward Passage, which is the narrow straight separating Cuba and the island of Hispianola, the Whydah would be captured by none other than Samuel Bellamy whose recent foray into piracy came after failing to strike it rich in treasure hunting. Black Sam Bellamy, as he was now called, would transform the Whydah into his flagship and go on to capture more than fifty merchant vessels, each containing untold riches in gold and silver and other precious goods.
As promised, Sam Bellamy returned to Cape Cod in April of 1717, presumably in search of Hallett, but instead of reconnecting with her, the Whydah got caught up in a violent nor'easter and sunk 500 feet off the coast of present-day Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Only two would survive the ordeal ... they were later tried and executed in Boston for being pirates.
The exact whereabouts of the Whydah would remain a mystery for more than two and a half centuries, that is until local adventurer, Barry Clifford, discovered the remains of the wrecked ship in 1984 with a team of other like-minded adventurers including perhaps Cape Cod's most famous golden boy, John F. Kennedy Jr. who would tragically lose his own life in these same icy waters in 1999.
Not far from where the Whydah went down, fifteen hundred feet or so from the Marconi Wireless Station where the first transatlantic telegraphs were sent out, breaking waves lap the eroding shoreline, now a part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Seagulls soar up over the whitecaps and crow as they encircle the sandy cliffs. And unbeknownst to all the inhabitants and visitors of this mystical hamlet by the sea, another chapter in Cape Cod's history is waiting to be told .....
