People: Whydah's Pilot

The pirate ship of Black Sam Bellamy, former slaver Whydah, has become the stuff of legend thanks to the hard work of Barry Clifford and his team of treasure hunters/archaeologists. More is known about life aboard an early 18th century freebooter because of the recovered artifacts from that ship alone than arguably from any other source. What we don’t know, to my mind unfortunately, is much about the individuals who lived and died aboard her.


One exception is a man who went a pirating under Black Sam and became pilot of the Whydah after she was taken by Bellamy. Though we know very little about John Julian, what we do know speaks to how remarkably different pirate society was from the society it grew up in – and rebelled against.

National Geographic online says that Julian was part African and part Mosquito Indian. Philip Gosse, who does not mention Julian by name, says that the pilot of Whydah was “half Carib”. Which is true is lost to history but I have my own theory about Julian’s background. The future pilot probably met Bellamy while he was working in the wrecking or wracking trade, pulling up treasure from sunken Spanish galleons off the coasts of Florida that Cuba. Many South and Central American natives were employed in this trade because of their remarkable diving abilities. Particularly sought after were Guayqueries from the Island of Margarita off Venezuela, where pearl diving had long been a job these enslaved natives were tasked with. While Julian could have been Mosquito or Carib, it may be that he was an escaped slave from Margarita and therefore potentially Guayqueries. Just a thought.

What ever his origins, Julian clearly had a talent for piloting as he was the go-to pilot on each of Bellamy’s successively larger flagships. By the time Bellamy was captaining Whydah, it is certain that Julian was particularly capable as a navigator. Bellamy, who according to Gosse had a bit of a socialist bent, made it a habit to free any slaves he encountered aboard a prize. NatGeo estimates that his Whydah crew was comprised of 30 to 50 African or partially African men. John Julian was not an exception aboard Whydah.

The short but merry life of pirating came to an abrupt end for Julian and his mates when Whydah wrecked off Wellfleet, Massachusetts in a gale. Julian and ship’s carpenter Davis were the only two men to make it to shore, although Gosse counts the survivors’ number as six. Davis would hang in Boston but what became of Julian remains unknown.

A tantalizing theory proposed by NatGeo is that John Julian was sold into bondage. They go so far as to speculate that he was in fact the “Julian the Indian” recorded as a slave to John Quincy of Massachusetts. As a curious aside, this is the John Quincy who was father to the staunch abolitionist Abigail Adams. She in turn passed her hatred for slavery on to her son, future U.S. President John Quincy (pronounced Quin-zee) Adams.

NatGeo goes on to say that Julian was an “unruly slave” and eventual sold by Quincy. Julian made several attempts to escape his new master and was killed by a slave catcher while the man was trying to bring him back from one of these.

Whether or not that was actually the case, Julian’s life aboard Whydah was probably one of the best times for him. Thankfully the memory of that life, however speculative, remains as a glimpse of the freedom a man could find during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Header: Bellamy taking the Whydah via fieldmuseum.org

Home Ports: Saint Mary's Island

Just north and east of the island of Madagascar is a small group of islets that are perfectly situated. Perfectly, that is, for a pirate looking to score some of the fattest prices in the 18th century world. The islets sit on the edge of the Indian Ocean and just south of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia. Using any of them as a port, a clever pirate could take a fat East Indiaman returning to England or Holland one evening and then cruise north the following day to snatch the treasure galley of some Ottoman pasha. All this and home in time for supper. Or so the rumors that circulated in places like the West Indies and the Guinea coast said.

Ile Sainte-Marie is the largest islet of the group in question. As piracy became a target of aggressive persecution by the various European powers in the early 18th century, the men who plied the sweet trade turned their eyes to the wealth of the East and set sail for Africa. They found Sainte-Mary quite to their liking. Not only was it abundant in fruits and game, its native people were friendly – particularly when they found that most of the pirates had not come to enslave them – and the island was surrounded by shallow cays and inlets. These were perfect for hiding from aggressors, evaluating a prize or simply pulling a ship up on her keel and giving her a good careening. It seems, at least on the face of it, a veritable pirate paradise.

This idea caught the imagination of European writers and one in particular, the man who fancied himself Captain Charles Johnson, devoted a good deal of paper to writings on the piratical community he call Libertalia. Johnson, the author of A General History of Pyrates, has come down to us as either an eye witness authority on piracy or a complete crank. It just depends on who is commenting on his work. The idea of Libertalia, which is often reputed to have been based on Ile Sainte-Marie, has caught the imagination of many moderns because of its very modern take on community. Whether or not it actually existed is the point that must be questioned.

Libertalia according to Johnson’s book was the brainchild of a merchant seaman turned pirate named James Misson. In his vision, which was spurred on by his association with a “lewd Priest” from Rome named Giacomo Caraccioli, the Frenchman saw all men as brothers, no organized religion as valid, and slavery as the cruelest of human ills. His pirate utopia was established under a white flag and Libertalia’s motto was “For God and Liberty”. The pirates cruising out of Ile Saint-Marie called themselves Liberi and shared all goods and prizes in common. They routinely set any slaves they came upon free and so their numbers were increased rapidly by the grateful Africans joining up right away. According to Johnson’s description, Libertalia lasted 25 years and welcomed such famous and infamous captains as Thomas Tew, Christopher Condent, Henry Avery and William Kidd. The end of Libertalia is as egalitarian as its founding was revolutionary. Eventually the pirates grew weary of their lives at sea and settled down with the local girls to farm land where “… no hedge bounded any particular man’s property…” and the fruits of their labors were “… carried into the Common Treasury”.

No one would deny that the idea of Libertalia is delightful. Of course, we would all like to imagine the lion lying down with the lamb and beating swords into plowshares. The reality, however, is that Johnson chose unwisely in his fantasy populace. Pirates, though in many ways more democratic than the societies they preyed upon, were also ruthless brigands who were far from altruistic. Slaves were more often than not prizes to be sold, other pirate crews could be a threat to the amount of loot each individual might get, and the last thing these sailors were cut out for was farming. In many cases, getting away from the drudgery of agriculture was why they went to sea in the first place. Then, too, there’s the harsh fact that to take a prize or prizes, some killing will probably have to be done and that seems a poor way to treat a brother.

Ile Sainte-Marie was certainly a pirate base during the heyday of the “pirate round” from approximately 1690 to 1725. There can be no doubt that men like Tew, Edward England, Avery and Kidd at least touched at the island and several shipwrecks dating from the era have been found in the waters around Sainte-Marie. One in particular, sunk in Baie des Forbans not far from the island’s capital, is thought by the explorer Barry Clifford (of Whydah fame) to be Christopher Condent’s Flying Dragon. There is also the old cemetery that overlooks the bay (pictured above) known as le Cimitere des Pirates where modern residents continue to leave offerings for their freebooting ancestors. That seems to me a far more factual legacy than any pirate utopia could ever be.

People: The Romantic Rover

Samuel Bellamy has come down to general history as the pirate who took a slave ship, lost it in a nor'easter off Cape Cod and drown along with all but two of his men. His story begins and ends there, overshadowed by the tale of treasure hunter Barry Clifford who found the wreck of Bellamy's Whydah and the vast trove of artifacts therein in 1984.

Of course history is easy both to over-simplify and embellish upon. Both things seem to have happened to Black Sam. There is the story as above, and then there is the yarn of the dashing young rover, a virtual bad boy hero from a romance novel, who went off to seek his fortune at any cost for the love of an aristocratic maid.

Sam Bellamy's origins are murky at best. He appears to have been born in the place that spawned so many English seafarers: Devonshire. It's a safe bet that at some point in his youth he signed aboard a merchant bound for the Caribbean and his seafaring days began. While working the islands, Sam learned of the wracking (or wrecking) trade, possibly from his friend and future associate Paul Williams.

The trade involved salvaging sunken ships and the vessels most favored by the wrackers were Spanish treasure ships lost on their way to Havana or Spain. Pearl divers, usually natives from the islands off Venezuela but sometimes Africans who were either free or runaway slaves, were employed to swim down and pick up anything of value - plate, small arms, jewels, coin, etc. The work was hard and dangerous; pirates were not averse to taking the hard earned treasure from wrackers, at gunpoint if need be.

This may or may not have happened in Bellamy's case. Some accounts say that Charles Vane took Bellamy's cargo, turning him pirate in the process. This has a certain logic to it since Vane and Benjamin Hornigold were known to sail together at times. What we do know is that by 1715 Bellamy and his friend Williams were aboard Hornigold's pirate ship.

Hornigold, like Morgan before him, was an English patriot and refused to take British ships. This rankled with some of his crew and they parted company with him, quite civilly in fact. Hornigold sailed off with 26 men and Bellamy was elected Captain of a remaining sloop. He set off in partnership with French pirate Oliver Le Bouche. (As a personal aside, I've heard it suggested that "Le Bouche" was in fact an alias for Beluche and that Oliver was a relative of my own famous ancestor, Renato Beluche. I don't buy it for a minute, but it's a nice story).

Bellamy captured several ships up and down the American coast. At least two were slavers returning from Africa or Jamaica including the brig Sultana, whose command Bellamy turned over to Paul Williams. Aboard Sultana was a young carpenter named Davis. Bellamy had no carpenter and he pressed the man into service. The story goes that Davis was promised his freedom when the next prize was found, but the crew would not allow a good carpenter to leave and so he stayed on.

Bellamy and Le Bouche parted company amicably in early 1717 and shortly thereafter Bellamy came across his greatest score to date. Off the coast of Jamaica he encountered Whydah, an 18 gun merchant and slaver with a compliment of about 45 men. She was headed either for New England or England with a dazzling cargo of gold, ivory, sugar and indigo. She also carried cash from the sale of slaves in the amount of close to 20,000 pounds (well over three million modern American dollars). Her captain, Lawrence Price, packed on all sail and tried to run.

Bellamy and his crew worked three hard days, chasing Whydah in all weather, until they finally overcame her. Impressed with Price's seaworthiness (and doubtless feeling flush with such an enormous prize), Bellamy gave the slaver's captain 20 pounds and Sultana and sent he and most of his crew off on their way.

Now captaining Whydah as his flagship, Bellamy and his flotilla of three other ships hit a storm off the coast of Virginia. They were blown considerably north and Bellamy decided to make for the then relatively unpopulated island of Cape Cod to find safe harbor and careen his vessels. On the way, his took the sloop Mary Anne which was full of Madeira wine. His men settled in to drinking up the prize as they continued northward. It would be the last party they ever enjoyed.

On a late spring evening in 1717, Bellamy's ships were struck by a raging storm. All the ships were lost. Whydah grounded near Wellfleet, was slammed by the surf and capsized with surprising speed. Only two of her men made it to shore: John Julian, a navigator from the original Whydah crew and hapless Davis, Sultana's carpenter.

The few men - nine in all - who staggered up to the beach from the pirate fleet were quickly arrested. All but Davis, who managed to prove he had been forced into service, were hanged in Massachusetts the same year. Until Clifford discovered the Whydah wreck in 1984, locals on Cape Cod would search the beach after storms, picking up coins, silverware and even silver plate that washed up from the wreck. Found out more about the ongoing study of the ship and her cargo here.

And Bellamy's romantic connection? Well, the story goes that young, handsome Sam was taking his prize north for more than just careening. In 1715 he'd left his love, Maria Hallett of Eastham, Massachusetts, to seek his fortune and prove himself worthy of her hand. Her father, a wealthy merchant, would not allow them to marry until Sam could provide for his daughter. Once his ship had come in, so to say, he turned toward Eastham and the promise of marriage. But fate had other plans and lovely Maria died young, probably of a broken heart. Or so they say.

Header picture: coins from the Whydah wreck
Lower right: Taking the Whydah by Don Maitz from his 2006 Pirate Calendar

History: Black Sam Bellamy's Whydah

My husband had the good fortune to hear Barry Clifford speak yesterday. Barry is the man who led the initial discovery of one of the most intact pirate wrecks found to date and who is still leading the salvage operation off Cape Cod. He told the crowd, among other things, that his crew most probably has yet to uncover the majority of the "treasure" involved despite the vast amount they have already hauled up. In this case, of course, treasure means not only actual coins, gold and cetera but everyday objects - from clay pipes to cannons - that are invaluable to our knowledge of 18th century sailing, slave ships and piracy.


This got me thinking about the last Captain of Whydah - Black Sam Bellamy - and how ironic it is that his ship should be the focus of this enormous salvage operation. Its one of those serendipitous coincidences that makes history so fascinating.

Samuel Bellamy was born in Devonshire, England and, although little is known of his youth, it is probably safe to say that he went to sea as a boy or very young man. At some point he made his way to the Caribbean and the general consensus among historians is that by 1715 he was working off the coast of Florida in what was known as the "wracking trade". These operations generally worked out of Port Royal, Jamaica and involved hiring pearl divers who had escaped from the pearl farms in Venezuela. The men, who could hold their breath for extended periods, were taken aboard ship to the last known position of a wreck - a Spanish treasure galleon in Bellamy's case - and the salvage of valuables began.

Bellamy fell out with the commander of the operation and turned to piracy. The same year he was aboard Benjamin Hornigold's sloop Mary Anne along with another historical legend - Edward Teach. Hornigold wasn't aggressive enough for Bellamy and the future Blackbeard, however, and by August of 1716 Teach had his own ship and Bellamy had been elected Captain of Mary Anne.

Bellamy liked to trade up as far as ships were concerned and, as he took larger prizes, he moved in to them and either abandon his prior flagship or turned it over to a subordinate. Eventually, he had a small pirate squadron in tow. In February of 1717, Bellamy and his crew took Whydah, an 18 gun English slaver commanded by Lawrence Price. She was on the third leg of the slave triangle and carrying all the spoils of her miserable business back to England. Along with hard coin that would amount to approximately three million in modern dollars, she also carried ivory, sugar, indigo and gold dust. Quite a haul indeed.

Sam moved right in to Whydah and - after generously giving Captain Price and his crew his previous ship and even some cash to see them home - he turned for Virginia. A storm blew Whydah north again but it was nothing like what they would encounter off the coast of Cape Cod. The evening of May 17, 1717 a hard nor'easter struck New England. Bellamy's pirate squadron was decimated including his treasure laden Whydah. She struck a sand bar and began to break apart, finally capsizing in the heavy surf. All but two of her 145 souls, including Bellamy, drown. The smaller ships suffered a similar fate with only five other pirates surviving. Six of the seven were hanged in Boston later that year.

Barry Clifford - himself in the "wracking trade" - discovered the wreck of Whydah in 1984. Much of what has been returned to land so far is on display at Provincetown in Cape Cod. More information about the National Geographic field museum is at this terrific site. Be sure you have a little time to really check it out. There's a lot to see and read.

Clifford and Bellamy. Two treasure hunters separated by 250 years. One wonders how the conversation would go if they could sit down over a jug of rum. I'd like to be a fly on that wall.