Samuel Bellamy

Samuel Bellamy — "Black Sam" for the long dark hair he wore tied back rather than powdered — was the wealthiest pirate of the Golden Age by many reckonings, and among the shortest-lived. In a career of barely more than a year he and his crews are said to have taken over fifty vessels. His men called him the "Robin Hood of the sea"; he called them his "company," and meant it.

From Cape Cod to the account

Born in Devon, England, Bellamy crossed to New England and, by legend, courted a young woman named Maria Hallett at Eastham on Cape Cod. Lacking the fortune to marry her, he went south to seek Spanish wreck-treasure off Florida, found none, and instead fell in with the pirates Benjamin Hornigold and the Frenchman Olivier La Buse. When Hornigold's crew tired of his refusal to attack English ships, they voted him out and elected Bellamy in his place.

A commonwealth afloat

Bellamy governed by consent and argument rather than fear. The historian Charles Johnson records a speech he is supposed to have made to a captured merchant captain who declined to join him — a scornful defense of the pirate's trade against the "hen-hearted" men who submit to law made by the rich. Whether the words are verbatim or embellished, they capture the egalitarian streak that made him beloved by his crews.

The Whydah

In February 1717, in the Windward Passage, Bellamy captured the Whydah Gally, a swift three-masted slave galley on the last leg of her triangular voyage. He made her his flagship, mounting additional guns, and turned north along the American coast taking prizes as he went.

Lost off Wellfleet

On the night of 26 April 1717 the Whydah was caught in a fierce nor'easter off Cape Cod and driven onto the bar at Wellfleet, where she broke apart in the surf. One hundred and forty-four men drowned; only two survived. Bellamy was not among them. He was twenty-eight. In 1984 the wreck became the first fully authenticated pirate ship ever recovered.

Related: Whydah Gally · Nassau