Samuel Bellamy
Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox pirate Captain Samuel Bellamy (Template:C. 23 February 1689 – 26 April 1717), erroneously known as "Black Sam" Bellamy, was an English sailor turned pirate during the early 18th century. He is best known as one of the wealthiest pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy. Though his known career as a pirate captain lasted little more than a year, he and his crew captured at least 53 ships.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Posthumously called "Black Sam" in Cape Cod folklore - supposedly because he eschewed the fashionable powdered wig in favor of tying back his long black hair with a simple band - Bellamy became known for his mercy and generosity toward those he captured on his raids. This legend earned him another nickname, the "Prince of Pirates". He likened himself to Robin Hood, with his crew calling themselves "Robin Hood's Men".<ref name="Johnson - A General History Vol 2">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="NatGeo" />
Bellamy was born in England in 1689, and began sailing for the British Royal Navy as a teenager. After traveling to Cape Cod around 1715, he then went south to the Florida coast in an effort to locate a sunken treasure fleet. From there he made his way to the Bahamas, sailing under Benjamin Hornigold and his second-in-command, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach. After Hornigold and Teach were voted out of command, Bellamy took a captured vessel as his own, before capturing a state-of-the-art slave trade ship, the Whydah Gally, in the early spring of 1717. Two months later, the vessel was caught in a nor'easter storm off the coast of Massachusetts and sank, taking Bellamy and most of his crew down with it. The remains of the Whydah Gally were discovered in 1984, making it the first fully authenticated Golden Age pirate ship discovered in North America.<ref name="Clifford-EW">Template:Cite book</ref>
Early life
Bellamy may have been born in 1689 in the parish of Hittisleigh on Dartmoor in Devon, Kingdom of England, the youngest of six known children of Stephen and Elizabeth Bellamy.<ref name="Woodard">Template:Cite book</ref> Alternately, a sailor captured by Bellamy testified in 1716 that Bellamy "declared himself to be an Englishman born in London."<ref name="Brooks-Savage">Template:Cite web</ref> Elizabeth died soon after, and was buried on 23 February 1689, three weeks before Samuel's baptism on 18 March. The future pirate became a sailor at a young age; in his late teens, he joined the Royal Navy and fought in several battles. Though it has been speculated that he may have had a wife and child, there is no definite historical proof of this.
Bellamy traveled to Cape Cod around 1715, allegedly to seek some of his relatives there. According to an abundance of local lore on the subject, it is believed that he took up an affair with a local beauty, Goody Hallett — the "Witch of Wellfleet".<ref name="museum">Template:Cite web</ref> Professor Elizabeth Reynard, in her 1934 book The Narrow Land, gave her the name "Maria", and though there is no evidence of her bearing that name, it has nevertheless become a popular name for her. Other modern authors have called her "Mariah" and "Mary". Her age and marital status remain subjects of much debate. Some stories depict her as a young lady between 16 and 25, while others depict her as a very old woman.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In some stories, her parents liked Bellamy, but did not think a poor self-confident sailor was husband material; circumstantial evidence indicates that she may have already been married, confirming some stories that it was Bellamy's intent to seek his fortune and then return, not to marry her, but to take her away.<ref name="NatGeo">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
He left Cape Cod in early 1716 with a group of men to seek the vast treasures of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet, which had wrecked the previous summer in a hurricane off the east coast of Florida. Wealthy jeweler Palgraves Williams,<ref name="DowEdmonds1923">Template:Cite book</ref> son of Rhode Island Attorney General John Williams, joined Bellamy and funded their expedition. After Bellamy left the Cape, Hallett was found to be pregnant by Bellamy. It is saidTemplate:By whom that she gave birth to a son and hid the child in a barn for warmth while she foraged for food, and when she returned she found that the child had choked to death on the straw. Some legends say that it was the barn of the notable Knowles family; others claim it was that of Justice Joseph Doane, who had banished Hallett. In either case, she was arrested for the child's murder and imprisoned in the Old Jail of Barnstable, Massachusetts (the oldest wooden jail house in the United States; said to be haunted by her). Her sentence was relatively short, but she was exiled from the town. Afterwards, she waited for Bellamy in Eastham.<ref name="NatGeo" />
Career
The treasure hunters apparently met with little success, as they soon turned to piracy in the crew of pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold, who commanded the Marianne with his first mate, Edward Teach, who would soon gain fame as the pirate "Blackbeard".<ref name="DowEdmonds1923" />
In the summer of 1716, the crew became irritated by Hornigold's unwillingness to attack ships of England, his home country. By a majority vote of the crew, Hornigold was deposed as captain of the Marianne and left the vessel with his loyal followers, including Teach. The remaining 90-man crew then elected Bellamy as captain.
Upon capturing a second ship, the Sultana, it was made into a galley, and with approval of the crew, Bellamy took it as his own and assigned his friend Palsgrave Williams as commander of the Marianne.<ref name="DowEdmonds1923" /> They sailed briefly alongside Olivier Levasseur, who left early in 1717 to raid South America after meeting former pirate John Ham to sell off some of their loot.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Clifford-EW" />
Bellamy's greatest capture came in the spring of 1717, when he spotted the Whydah Gally (pronounced Template:Respell) sailing through the Windward Passage between Hispaniola and Cuba.<ref name="DowEdmonds1923" /> Built in England in 1715 as a state-of-the-art, 300-ton, Template:Convert English slave ship with 18 guns, and with speeds of up to Template:Convert, the Whydah was on its maiden voyage in 1716 and had just finished the second (Africa to Caribbean) leg of the Atlantic slave trade, loaded with a fortune in gold, indigo, Jesuit's bark, ivory and other precious trade goods from the sale of 312 slaves.<ref name="DowEdmonds1923" />Template:Sfnp<ref name="slaveeconomy">Template:Cite web</ref> Bellamy chased the Whydah for three days before getting close enough to fire. After a single shot, Captain Lawrence Prince surrendered the Whydah by lowering its flag. True to his reputation for generosity, Bellamy rewarded Prince's lack of resistance by trading the Sultana for the Whydah.<ref name="DowEdmonds1923" /> Removing the captain's quarters and upgrading the ship to 28 guns, Bellamy turned his new flagship northwards along the eastern coast of the Carolinas and on to New England.
Captain Charles Johnson (possibly a pseudonym) in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates relates the story of the Whydah overtaking a sloop commanded by Captain Beer. Bellamy wanted to let the captain keep his ship, but his crew voted to burn it, and the captain of the merchant vessel declined an invitation to join the pirates. Bellamy is attributed with making this now-famous speech:
Johnson attributes these speeches to "Captain Bellamy" without naming Samuel Bellamy specifically; other writers like Philip Gosse attribute the speeches to Charles Bellamy, a separate pirate unrelated to Samuel Bellamy.<ref name="Gosse - Who's Who">Template:Cite book</ref> They operated at the same time in the same areas and their exploits are often conflated.<ref name="Plunder & Pillage">Template:Cite book</ref>
Death
Just two months after acquiring the Whydah, as she and the Marianne approached Cape Cod, Williams told Bellamy that he wished to visit his family in Rhode Island, and the two agreed to meet up again near Maine. Bellamy and the Whydah captured several other small vessels in the area, including the Anne Galley, to which he appointed his quartermaster Richard Noland as captain.<ref name="Sandler">Template:Cite book</ref>
If Bellamy intended to revisit his lover Maria Hallett, he failed.<ref name="NatGeo" /> The Whydah was swept up in a violent nor'easter storm off Cape Cod at midnight, on 26 April 1717, and was driven onto the sand bar shoals in Template:Convert of water some Template:Convert from the coast of what is now Wellfleet, Massachusetts. At 15 minutes past midnight, the masts snapped and drew the heavily loaded ship into 30 feet (9.1 m) of water, where she capsized and quickly sank, taking Bellamy and all but two of the Whydah's 146-man crew with her.<ref name="Snow">Template:Cite book</ref>
104 bodies were known to have washed ashore and were buried by the town coroner, leaving 42 bodies unaccounted for. The Mary Anne was also wrecked that night several miles south of the Whydah, leaving seven more survivors. All nine survivors from the two ships were captured and prosecuted for piracy in Boston, and six were convicted on 22 October 1717 and hanged on 15 November 1717.<ref>Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents, ed. by John Franklin Jameson (Macmillan, 1923) p.303</ref> (King George's pardon of all pirates, issued on 5 September, supposedly arrived in Boston three weeks too late). Two were set free, the court believing their testimony that they had been forced into piracy. The last, a 16-year-old Miskito from Mosquitia, John Julian, was believed to have been sold into slavery to John Quincy, the great-grandfather of U.S. President John Quincy Adams.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Williams waited for Bellamy to rendezvous; when Bellamy never appeared, Williams realized what had happened, and sailed south to Nassau in the Marianne.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Noland also searched for Bellamy off Maine; failing to find him, he took the Anne Galley south, raiding ships along the way before accepting a pardon in the Bahamas.<ref name="Sandler"/>
Reputation
Captain Samuel Bellamy was well known to his contemporaries and chroniclers as a distinctive figure, a tall, strong, well-mannered and very tidy man. He liked expensive clothes, especially black coats. His favorite weapons were four duelling pistols that he always carried in his sash:
As captain, he led in the democratic style typical of Golden Age pirates. His crew was very fond of him, sometimes even referring to him as "Robin Hood of the Sea" and themselves as "Robin Hood's Men".<ref name="NatGeo" /> Captain Bellamy was also a good tactician. Usually, he had two ships under his control. His flagship was powerful with many cannons and the second one was light but fast, which made a good balance. With coordinated attacks, they managed to capture ships easily without harming them.
Legacy
In July 1984, Bellamy became famous again when the discovery of the wreckage of his flagship Whydah was announced, and would soon become the first authenticated pirate shipwreck ever discovered in North America. At the time of its sinking, the Whydah was the largest pirate prize ever captured, and the treasure in its hold amassed roughly 4.5 to 5 tons, including huge quantities of indigo, ivory, gold, and 20,000 to 30,000 pounds sterling, divided into 180 sacks of Template:Convert each.<ref name="piratetrial">Template:Cite web</ref> The discovery of the wreck was made in 1982 by a diving crew led and funded by underwater explorer Barry Clifford.<ref name="MA-SC" />
The vessel was under just Template:Convert of water and Template:Convert of sand.<ref name="MA-SC">Template:Cite court</ref>
In 1985, Clifford recovered the ship's bell, upon which were the words "THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716", the first incontrovertible evidence of his find. He subsequently founded The Whydah Pirate Museum on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which was later moved to West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, dedicated to Bellamy and the Whydah. It houses many artifacts which were brought from the wreck, including a cannon found to be stuffed with precious stones, gold and artifacts. A portion of the some 200,000 artifacts so far recovered went on a six-year tour around the United States under the sponsorship of the National Geographic Society. From May 2017 through 30 July 2017, it was at the Portland Science Center in Portland, Maine.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2022, Real Pirates opened in Salem, Massachusetts, also displaying information about Bellamy, the Whydah, and artifacts from the wreck.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Suspected remains of Bellamy were found near the wreck of his ship, in February 2018. The bones were near a pistol thought to be his, and DNA tests were carried out with a living relative to confirm.<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref> In May 2018, tests confirmed that the bones were of an Eastern European man, though not Bellamy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In February 2021, Clifford announced six more pirates' bones were discovered in concretements of debris, and will be tested for DNA matches once they are extracted.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In popular culture
- In the manga One Piece, the pirate character Bellamy the Hyena is named after Samuel Bellamy.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
- He appears in Assassin's Creed: Pirates as one of the most notorious and colorful pirates of the era.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
- The Netflix docudrama series The Lost Pirate Kingdom features his pirate career prominently, though with some historical inaccuracies.
- De Chastelaine, Alexander (2022), Black Sam - The Pirate Tale of Sam Bellamy and Mehitable Brown ISBN 9798322095491
- The historical novel If The Tide Turns by Rachel Rueckert explores the relationship between Sam Bellamy and Goody Hallett.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- The musical The Royal Pyrate by Jason Landon Marcus and Chas Libretto, based loosely on the exploits of Sam Bellamy and his relationship with Goody Hallet, premiered in August 2025 at the Waterfront Barge Museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Notes
References
Further reading
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- The Way of the Pirates, "Famous Pirate: Samuel Bellamy, The Romantic Pirate"