Between 1715 and 1717, Samuel Bellamy rose from penniless obscurity to become the wealthiest pirate in history, capturing at least fifty ships before dying in a shipwreck near Cape Cod. Dubbing himself the “Robin Hood of the Seas” and gaining a reputation for generosity and clemency, he preferred to take other vessels through terrifying shows of power rather than through bloody battles. Bellamy, called “Black Sam” because he wore his black hair in a ponytail rather than adopting the powdered wigs of his era, fought alongside or against many of the legendary pirates of his day, including Henry Jennings, Benjamin Hornigold, Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch, Charles Vane, and Paulsgrave Williams.
Historians believe that Bellamy was born to farmers on March 18, 1689, in Hittisleigh, Devon, one of five children. Landless peasants had few prospects in that era, and like many young men, Bellamy went to sea as a ship’s boy. Exactly when and where he first went to sea is unknown. He would have been thirteen at the onset of the War of Spanish Succession (1702–1712), when both the English navy and merchant vessels were so desperate for men to serve in their crews that jobs were easily had, and often men and boys were kidnapped or “pressed” into service.
After the war’s end, as the need for English sailors diminished, Bellamy made his way to the American colonies. He ended up in Eastham on Cape Cod by 1714, where he began a friendship with his future fellow pirate Paulsgrave Williams, and according to local legend, began a love affair with a local girl, Mary (or Maria) Hallett.
According to legend, Mary Hallett met Samuel Bellamy in early 1715. After falling in love the pair planned to marry, but Mary’s wealthy parents refused to sanction her marriage to a poor seaman. Bellamy returned to the sea to gain riches enough to marry. After he departed, Mary discovered she carried his child. When the child died (conflicting legends say this was either an accident or that the baby was stillborn), Mary was accused of its murder—even witchcraft in some accounts—and jailed. She eventually escaped from captivity and lived alone on the beaches of Billingsgate, waiting for Bellamy’s return. Historians have discovered in Eastham records a Mary Hallett, daughter of John Hallett, a prosperous farmer, who would have been slightly older than the teenaged Mary/Maria of legend.
While the historical background for the legend of Mary is uncertain, Bellamy’s friendship with Paulsgrave (or Palsgrave) Williams is well documented, as the two went south together to seek their fortunes. In July 1715, ten Spanish treasure ships carrying a cargo worth millions were destroyed in a hurricane off the coast of Florida, drawing to the area scores of sailors, privateers, and pirates all hoping to salvage the treasure. Bellamy and Williams went to Florida to join these “wreckers.” The timing of the wreck was fortuitous, coinciding with and spurring on an increase in piracy.
The end of the War of Spanish Succession lessened the need for sailors. Many former seamen found themselves unemployed, and some turned to piracy. At the same time, rapid colonization of the Americas meant that ships laden with valuable goods continually sailed back and forth across the Atlantic, and no nation had a naval fleet substantial enough to protect their merchant vessels and shipping lanes. The volume of shipping, number of unemployed men, and lack of control of the high seas all contributed to a surge in piracy, leading to a “Golden Age of Piracy” from about 1715 to 1725. In the minds of many people of that day, pirates were folk heroes. Serving on a pirate ship was in most ways preferable to serving in the navy or on a merchant ship. Pirate ships tended to make decisions democratically and share loot equally. Slaves who escaped to pirate ships became crew members on an equal basis (Woodard 2007).
Like Bellamy and Williams, many men went to the coast of Florida to salvage treasure from the Spanish wrecks; few were successful. Driven off by larger Spanish and English ships, Bellamy and Williams changed plans, went further south to Honduras, recruited other men, and started small-scale piracy using periaguas, easily maneuvered sailing canoes popular with pirates. Their first known success was a Dutch ship robbed in the Bay of Honduras. Next, they hijacked an English ship and tried to sail it to Cuba, but were scared off by the arrival of privateer Henry Jennings’s sloops. (Privateers were mercenaries hired by governments to raid and loot their enemies’ ships in an official capacity.) Jennings—with future pirate captain Charles Vane among his crew—had been operating out of New Providence in Nassau, much to the annoyance of both privateer-turned-pirate Benjamin Hornigold, who had founded the pirate gang operating on Nassau, and Thomas Walker, the colony’s ostensible governor. At first sight, Bellamy and Williams assumed that Jennings was some sort of British official, but observing his interaction with their lost prize, they realized that he was more likely a privateer.
Jennings commandeered the English ship for himself. While looking for a place to anchor as he raided, he came across a French ship, the St. Marie, anchored in a harbor too narrow for his sloops to enter unaided. Bellamy and Williams, watching Jennings stalk the St. Marie, rowed their periaguas into Jennings’s fleet and joined forces with him, concocting a novel plan to capture the French ship. Bellamy and Williams tied their periaguas to two of Jennings’s sloops, the Barsheba and the Mary. In the great canoes were their men, shirtless, armed, and looking quite wild. The canoes pulled the larger ships through the narrow opening of the bay, then surrounded the St. Marie and began boarding it. The French ship surrendered without a fight.
As Jennings’s men were sorting through the loot on the St. Marie, a boat dispatched by another French ship, the Marianne, arrived, looking to trade. When Jennings heard that the Marianne was anchored nearby, he sailed off to capture her. Jennings approached the Marianne only to find that she had already been taken by his rival Hornigold. As Jennings chased after Hornigold, Bellamy and Williams seized the opportunity to steal the treasure from the St. Marie, loading it into their periaguas and sailing off.
After losing the Marianne and returning to the St. Marie, Jennings learned that Bellamy and Williams had made off with most of her treasure, and cutting his losses, decided to sail home. Bellamy and Williams joined Hornigold’s crew near Cuba, and Hornigold made Bellamy the captain of the Marianne, an impressive accomplishment considering that one of Hornigold’s crew members was Edward Thatch (Teach), already gaining fame as the notorious pirate Blackbeard. Hornigold, Thatch, Bellamy, Williams, and French pirate Olivier La Buse worked together for a few months until Hornigold’s reluctance to raid English ships forced him out of the group, accompanied by Thatch and a few other loyal men. Bellamy became the leader of the remaining pirates.
Bellamy and his men wanted a more impressive ship so that they could capture more heavily armed merchant ships and defend themselves against the British warships being dispatched to quell the pirates. Hunting for suitable prey around the Virgin Islands, Bellamy and his men captured first the St. Michael, then the Sultana, then the ultimate prize, the Whydah. The Whydah was a fast merchant ship with extensive cargo space and eighteen guns with room for more. Using his preferred technique—instilling terror in his prey—Bellamy was able to capture the Whydah without a fight. In keeping with his reputation for generosity, Bellamy gave the Sultana to the Whydah’s captain as consolation.
With the Whydah outfitted for piracy, Bellamy and his crew, accompanied by Williams in the Marianne, decided to spend the spring sailing up the coast of North America, raiding ships, visiting family in New England, before finding an isolated location in Maine where they could find new masts for the Marianne and make other repairs to the ships. Some legends claim that Bellamy also intended to reclaim his lady love, Mary Hallett.
Heading north, the pirates captured the Tanner near Hispaniola and a smaller sloop off the Carolina shore. Off the coast of Virginia, the Marianne and Whydah lost each other in a thick fog. When the fog lifted, Bellamy and the Whydah captured and looted the leaky Agnes, the Ann Galley, and the Endeavor while still off the coast of Virginia. They sank the first, released the third, and took the Ann Galley north with them, capturing yet another vessel, the Mary Anne, around Nantucket and further still the Fisher nearer to Cape Cod.
Bellamy continued north, intending to stop at Eastham on Cape Cod, either to reload with provisions or to keep his promise to Mary Hallett. A fierce storm blew up as Bellamy and his ships drew close to land on April 26, 1717. The Mary Anne ran aground on Pochet Island; amazingly, the crew survived the wreck. The Ann Galley and the Fisher managed to drop anchor before crashing to the shore. Bellamy dropped the Whydah’s anchors, but they were not heavy enough to hold the great ship in place; it broke up against the cliffs below Eastham. Only two men survived; Bellamy and the remainder of his crew of at least 140 died.
Most of the treasure captured by Bellamy and his men had been loaded on the Whydah before the voyage north. Many legends claimed that Bellamy buried treasure somewhere on the Cape before the wreck. The Whydah’s wreck was rediscovered in 1984 by Barry Clifford, although much of the treasure is still reportedly buried on the sea floor.
Katherine D. Walker
See also Hornigold, Benjamin; Outlaw Heroes; Thatch, Edward “Blackbeard”; Vane, Charles
Further Reading
Brunelle, Kathleen. 2010. Bellamy’s Bride: The Search for Maria Hallett of Cape Cod. Charleston, SC: History Press.
Reynard, Elizabeth. 1962. The Narrow Land: Folk Chronicles of Old Cape Cod. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
The Whydah Pirate Museum. 2015. “Whydah Pirates.” http://whydah.com/. Accessed March 11, 2015.
Woodard, Colin. 2007. The Republic of Pirates. New York: Harcourt.
Woolsey, Matt. 2008. “Top-Earning Pirates.” Forbes. September 19. http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/18/top-earning-pirates-biz-logistics-cx_mw_0919piracy.html. Accessed March 13, 2015.