Samuel Bellamy

 Samuel Bellamy was a young English sailor who traveled to the new world colonies to seek his fortune.  Bellamy served as an apprentice with Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew included Edward Teach (Blackbeard).  In August 1716, the crew disbanded due to Bellamy’s reluctance to attack English ships.  Bellamy and Blackbeard decided to split up and go their own way, and Bellamy was made captain of the Mary Anne, Hornigold’s sloop.

Bellamy proved to be a most successful pirate, mainly in the West Indies, but he also sailed the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and as for north as Cape Cod.  He captured several ships during the period of 1716 and 1717. One of the captured ships, the Sultana, was now his flagship and he turned the Mary Anne over to his quartermaster, Paul Williams.  Bellamy and Williams sailed with a third ship commanded by a French pirate, Olivier La Bouche, but lost contact with La Bouche during a storm in 1717.

In the same year, Bellamy and Williams captured a British slave vessel, the Whydah, returning home.  Bellamy made the Whydah his new flagship, and converted it from a slaver to a very well equipped pirate ship with 28 guns.  It is rumored that Bellamy turned over his former ship, the Sultana to the captain of the captured Whydah and let him sail home.

In the spring of 1717, Bellamy and Williams sailed northward to the New England coast.  Their pirate career came to an abrupt end in May of 1717, off Cape Cod, the Whydah hit a sandbar and capsized.  All but two of the 146 crew members were drowned including Bellamy.  The Whydah was found in 1984 and many items on the wreck are on display in the museum in Provincetown on Cape Cod.  More information about Samuel Bellamy is available in the excellent sources listed below.

 

Sources:

The History of Pirates by Angus Konstam, The Lyons Press, 1999, 2002.

A Biography of Samuel Bellamy, www.piratesinfo.com/cpi_A_Biography_of_Samuel_Bellamy_522.asp, Copyright © 1996 – 2008, Krzysztof Wilczynski, All rights reserved.