The Whydah

by Martin W. Sandler

  Everything of any significance that took place on the Whydah was decided by a vote of the crew. The captain was elected and could be removed by another vote at any point except during battle. At that time, the captain’s word was law, and anyone who defied him could immediately be put to death by the quartermaster.

  Nowhere was the spirit of democracy more in evidence than in the distribution of booty. Racial or ethnic differences among the pirates did not affect the division of the plunder; everything was shared equally. Among the Whydah’s crew were African Americans, Africans, Native Americans, Europeans, white Americans, and people of mixed backgrounds, and all of them received the same share of the loot.

  This spirit of democracy and equality extended to where those aboard the Whydah slept. The only person with his own quarters was Captain Bellamy. But he was expected to share the cabin and even his food and drink with the crew. Typically, the pirates slept in hammocks — but only if there were enough hammocks for everyone. If there were not, everybody slept on the deck.

  For men who could be incredibly cruel and violent, pirates went well out of their way to take care of their own. Men on the Whydah and other pirate ships who lost eyes or limbs in battle were allowed to remain on the ship for as long as they wished. As one historian has noted, “Many a peg leg clomped over the pirates’ decks, earning a half share of plunder as a cook, no matter how little he knew of the culinary arts.” The pirates even had early forms of workers’ compensation and life insurance. A man who lost a leg on the job received five hundred Spanish pieces of eight. Someone who lost an eye received one hundred. And if a pirate was killed, his family was paid to help compensate for his loss.

  Many of the men who chose piracy regarded themselves as true Robin Hoods, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, and standing in open defiance of all those in authority. Unless they were privateers, acting in the employ of a government, what they were doing was illegal, and they knew that if they were caught, they would end their days swinging from a rope. But it was a life that most chose happily. “In an honest [occupation],” declared pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts, “there is thin rations, low wages and hard labor; in [piracy, there is] plenty . . . pleasure and ease, liberty and power. . . . A merry life and a short one shall be my motto.”

  THE MORE HE SAILED IT, the more Bellamy loved the Whydah. The pirate Alonzo Batilla had called it the fastest ship in the West Indies. Bellamy agreed. And it was not only fast; it was also the most maneuverable ship he had ever handled.

  According to Bellamy’s log, in February 1717 the Whydah, accompanied only by the Marianne, began its life as a pirate ship by steering “away for the Capes of Virginia, being 180 men in company.” They soon reached busy shipping lanes and began capturing and looting one prize ship after another. Then, almost without warning, their luck ran out. For four days and three nights, they were forced to battle one of the most violent storms Bellamy had ever encountered. In his book A General History of the Pyrates, Daniel Defoe, the author of the fictional classic Robinson Crusoe, provided a description of the historic storm. Put into modern English, Defoe’s account reads: “The storm increased at twilight with the heavens covered with sheets of lightning. The terrible sound of the roaring winds could only be equaled by the continual clap of thunder, loud enough to frighten the Supreme Being who commands the sea and the winds. . . .

  This map shows Sam Bellamy’s voyage from the Caribbean to Cape Cod. It also indicates the area off the coast of the colony of Virginia where the Whydah battled a four-day storm.

  “The men of the Whydah and the Marianne shouted curses and oaths at the wind and the lightning. Bellamy lamented that the heaving decks would not allow him to fire off his cannons in response to the deafening thunder.

  “In the meantime, the wind, amazingly blowing from every direction, increased, and soon the Whydah’s mainmast broke in half, and crew members were forced to cut it away. The waves pried two men from the wheel and would have washed them overboard had it not been for the netting that ran along the sides of the ship.”

  After four days of never knowing whether the next moment would be their last, the pirates felt the storm break almost as abruptly as it had started. But the tempest had left its mark. The decks of both ships were more than ankle-deep in water, and for the better part of a week, the pumps had to be manned day and night. Temporary masts had to be fashioned and raised to replace those lost in the storm, particularly on the Whydah. They were called jury masts, and their use gave rise to the term jury-rigged, an expression used today to indicate building something in a makeshift way. And on both vessels, carpenter Tom Davis and his assistants worked feverishly to plug the many leaks caused by the battering waves.

  But the pirates had survived, and miraculously, none of their booty had been lost or damaged. The tensions of the past four days were over. Even though there was still much to do, it was time to celebrate. As was common on pirate ships, the crew decided to put on a skit. Several of the pirates suggested they act out one of the crew’s favorite short plays, The Royal Pyrate, a drama about Alexander the Great. At the height of the skit, with the audience totally caught up in the drama, the pirate playing the role of Alexander captured the pirate playing the hero and ordered that he be hanged. At this point, one of the Whydah’s gunners, so immersed in what was going on that he forgot it was only playacting, mounted the stage and rushed to the pirate’s defense. He grabbed a hand grenade, lit its fuse, and threw it at the actors. At the same time, other members of the audience, also engrossed in the drama, grabbed their cutlasses and charged the performers.

  Before Bellamy could put a halt to the chaos, the pirate playing Alexander had lost an arm, the pirate whom Alexander had captured had suffered a broken leg from the burst of the grenade, and the pirate who had severed Alexander’s limb lay dead on the makeshift stage. When order was restored, both the gunner who had first attacked Alexander and all those who had rushed the stage were clapped into irons for a day. And, brandishing his own sword, Bellamy declared that The Royal Pyrate would never again be performed on the Whydah.

  Once all of the repairs were made, the Whydah sailed on. The weather was still not good, and as a dense fog settled in, Bellamy lost sight of Williams and the Marianne. The two captains had agreed to spend the next ten days or so seeking prize ships off the Virginia coast, and when the fog finally lifted, Bellamy found himself in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the Americas. Fortunately, there were no naval vessels on the prowl for pirate ships in the area, and at eight o’clock on the morning of April 17, 1717, the Whydah’s lookout spotted the merchant ship Agnes, bound from Barbados to Virginia. According to its log, the Agnes was laden “with Rum, Sugar and Molasses & Sundry European Goods.” After Bellamy and his crew overtook the merchant vessel, forced it to surrender, and boarded it, “the greatest part of the Cargo was plundered by the Pyrates, [and] carry’d on board their Ship.”

  For the Whydah, taking the Agnes was just the beginning of a remarkable day. In the next several hours, Bellamy and his crew captured and plundered three more merchant ships — the Leith, the Endeavor, and the Ann. Eight members of the Leith voluntarily joined Bellamy’s crew. The Agnes had taken damage and was leaking so badly that, according to the final entries in that ship’s log, Bellamy transferred its crew to the Leith and the Endeavor before sending carpenter Tom Davis and his assistants aboard the Agnes, where they “cut away the Masts and bored a hole in the bottom of the Vessel, and so destroyed her.”

  Bellamy then made the Ann’s captain and his crew join the Agnes’s aboard the Leith and the Endeavor and allowed them to sail away. But Bellamy had decided to make the Ann part of his growing pirate fleet. Putting his quartermaster, Richard Noland, in charge of that vessel, he transferred eighteen of his crew to join those members of the Ann’s crew who had decided to become pirates.

  When all the transferring of cargo and men was finally completed, the Whydah sailed on, and within a few days, the Marianne
was spotted. During a brief reunion, Bellamy and Williams decided to head for the waters off Rhode Island, which were bound to be filled with cargo-carrying ships at this time of year. They were just nearing Block Island, off the Rhode Island coast, when the Marianne’s lookout spied a merchant vessel. It surrendered quickly. On discovering that it was out of Boston, Williams had one of his men row its captain, a man known only as Captain Beer, over to the Whydah.

  The cargo from Beer’s ship was split between the Whydah and the Marianne. Bellamy and Williams wanted to give Beer back his ship once the captured goods had been transferred, but first they had to put the question to a vote of the crew. From the moment Beer came aboard the Whydah, many of the pirates were put off by the arrogance of this man who was, in fact, their prisoner. Almost every man voted to sink his ship. It was up to Bellamy to give Beer the bad news.

  Explaining that under the pirates’ Articles, he could not overturn a vote of his crew, Bellamy told Beer, “I’m sorry they won’t let you have your [ship] again, for I scorn to do anyone mischief when it is not for my advantage. . . . We must sink her.” An angry Captain Beer was taken aback. He could not fathom how the captain of a ship could be overruled by his crew. “Surely you and Captain Williams command your crew, and not the other way around?” he exclaimed. “Or perhaps you are no captain at all, but merely a thief obeying your fellow thieves.”

  Beer’s words touched a nerve in Bellamy. Questioning a pirate’s right to challenge authority went against everything Bellamy and every pirate he admired stood for. Grabbing Beer by the collar, Bellamy shouted, “Damn you, you are a sneaking puppy — and so are all those who submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage to defend what they get by their knavery. . . . Damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: they rob the poor under the cover of law, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better [become] one of us, than sneak after . . . those villains for employment?”

  It was a remarkable way of Bellamy inviting Beer to join the ranks of the pirates. And for a few moments, Beer seemed to be giving it serious consideration. But he could not bring himself to do it. Looking Bellamy in the eye, he stated, “I cannot break the laws of God and man, as you have. You say you’re clever, and courageous, but I swear to you now that you’ll die by the force of the sea, by the hands of men, or by the hand of God.”

  Beer’s words were more than a refusal to join the pirates. They were Beer’s way of telling Bellamy that he did not have as much power as a pirate captain as he believed he had. For this, the captain of the Whydah had a ready answer. “You are a devilish rascal. . . . I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of one hundred thousand men in the field; and this my conscience tells me.”

  Having said his piece, Bellamy was done with Captain Beer. He dismissed him and had one of his men row him to Block Island and leave him there to find his way back to his home in Newport, Rhode Island. Meanwhile, Bellamy was preparing to sail the Whydah to Maine to plunder more prizes before putting the ship ashore to have its bottom scraped and cleaned and to make other necessary repairs. Williams had his own plans. His mother, his sister, and his niece lived on Block Island. Williams would remain anchored there for several days while he visited with them. Then he would sail the Marianne to a predetermined spot in Maine, where he would rejoin Bellamy and the Whydah and they would, he was certain, resume their pattern of pursuing and capturing every cargo-carrying vessel that fell within their sights.

  WHEN IT CAME TO ATTACKING an enemy ship, pirates wanted to get as close to their target as possible. The reason was simple. Their goal was to rob whatever treasure or goods the vessel under attack was carrying or to capture both the cargo and the vessel itself. Firing their heavy cannons at their prey risked sinking it, which defeated the pirates’ purposes. Thus, when there wasn’t a quick surrender, almost all pirate attacks were conducted through fierce hand-to-hand combat on the deck of the targeted ship.

  Members of a pirate crew took turns serving as the ship’s lookout. Once they spotted a potential target, great care was taken to make sure that it was unlikely to overcome them and would yield a great reward. Spyglasses were used to determine what kind of ship it was, what national flag it was flying, what kind of cargo it appeared to be carrying, where it might have been, where it could be headed, and how heavily armed it was apt to be. Since some lightly armed merchant vessels had fake gun ports painted on their sides to deceive pirates, it was not always easy to determine how much of a fight a targeted ship might put up. It was not unusual for a pirate ship to follow potential prey for hours or even days before deciding whether or not to attack.

  As was the pirate way, once the pirates had gathered all the information they could through observation, the decision to attack or withdraw was made by a vote of the entire crew. If, as was almost always the case, the decision was to attack, the pirates went out of their way to terrify their target. They hoisted their Jolly Roger. The musicians produced loud, horrendous noises, and the crew began to “vapor,” as they called their practice of dancing around madly, chanting and shouting war cries while waving their muskets, rifles, and cutlasses. If they spotted the vessel’s captain, they targeted him for special verbal abuse. “You dog! . . . You speckled-shirted dog!” pirate Captain John Russel shouted at Captain George Roberts of the merchant ship Dolphin. “I will drub you, you dog,” continued Russel, “within an inch of your life — and that inch too!”

  If the prize ship still refused to surrender, the pirates attacked, following a well-established procedure. First, they brought their ship as close to the prize vessel as possible. Next, some crew members lobbed grenades onto the deck of the prize. Some were exploding grenades, designed to cause panic and confusion by setting fires as they landed, and others were smoke grenades, filled with compounds that produced potentially deadly fumes.

  While the grenades were flying, other crew members hurled long lines with grappling irons toward the prize vessel. As soon as the sharp points of the grappling irons buried themselves in the prize’s deck, pirates pulled on the lines, bringing both ships closer. A third group of pirates, heavily armed and made up of the toughest and boldest men, prepared to board the other vessel. Once aboard, they made quick work of taking control of their prize.

  It was a rare occasion when a merchant ship or other vessel dared to challenge a pirate ship. And even though there was competition between pirate captains for booty, and although there were pirate captains who simply did not like each other, it was almost unheard of for one pirate vessel to ignore their time-honored code and attack another.

  WILLIAMS HAD NO WAY of knowing that just after he left his partner, Bellamy would make a decision that remains the greatest mystery in the saga of the Whydah. At first, Bellamy ordered the men at the Whydah’s wheel to skirt Cape Cod and continue northward toward Maine as he and Williams had planned. A few hours later, he abruptly told them to change course and head directly to Cape Cod. For some three hundred years, those intrigued by the story of the Whydah have asked themselves why Sam Bellamy changed his plan.

  Among the most popular theories is that, having made himself the richest of all the pirates, Bellamy decided to return to Maria Hallett to show her parents how wealthy he had become and to carry her off to a Caribbean island as he had promised her. Those who doubt that there ever was a Maria Hallett believe that it was the extraordinary riches carried by the Whydah that suddenly motivated Bellamy to stop looking for prize vessels and head for Cape Cod. With more money in his hold than he or any of his men would ever be able to spend, he had the opportunity to return to a place he loved, sell his enormous cargo, pay his crew members, and let them go off to luxurious retirement.

  Whatever his r
eason for aiming for the Cape, his voyage was interrupted early on April 24, 1717. As he was passing the island of Nantucket, just south of Cape Cod, a crew member spotted a merchant ship off in the distance. Bellamy gave chase, and at 9:30 in the morning, the Whydah caught up to its latest prize vessel.

  Originally out of Dublin, Ireland, and commanded by a Captain Crumpstey, the Mary Anne was a flat-bottomed ship called a pink. Crumpstey briefly entertained thoughts of putting up a fight, even though he had only a small crew, but after seven cutlass-wielding pirates jumped aboard the Mary Anne and threatened mayhem, he told them that his ship was theirs.

  As the seven pirates took Captain Crumpstey to the Whydah to meet with Bellamy, a larger boarding party from the pirate ship rowed toward their prize to begin transferring its cargo to their vessel. Once aboard, they received an enormous and most welcome surprise: the Mary Anne was carrying more than seven thousand gallons of Madeira wine. After having plundered more gold and silver and other treasure than they could ever have imagined, the pirates had stumbled upon the greatest loot of all — all the fine wine they could drink.

  Given its special cargo, Bellamy decided to add the pink to his flotilla, and the Whydah, the Ann, and the Mary Anne, sailing in tandem, continued toward the coast of Cape Cod. But Bellamy had a serious concern. He had lived in Eastham, and he knew that the waters off the Cape were among the most treacherous in the world. As a thick fog was setting in, he put one of his most experienced sailors in the crow’s nest to look for the darker blue water that indicated the deepest spots. He had another pirate take constant soundings to make sure that they would avoid shallow seas.