The Whydah Gally Treasure

The Whydah Gally was built for cruelty. Commissioned in 1715 by Sir Humphrey Morice, a British parliamentarian and major slave trader, it was named after the port of Ouidah in Dahomey, now Benin. The triangular trade fueled its voyages—goods south to Africa, enslaved souls west to the Caribbean, and gold, sugar, and rum back to England.

The Whydah was fast, fortified with 18 cannons (expandable to 28), and designed to haul 300 tons. Captain Lawrence Prince commanded its maiden voyage in 1716, filling its hold with 500 captives. Those who perished mid-journey were discarded at sea—inventory shrinkage, as the trade saw it. Heading homeward, the Whydah met an adversary greater than war or weather: Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy.

Bellamy wasn’t born a pirate. A Devon boy turned Royal Navy sailor, he left England to seek fortune in the New World. Cape Cod gave him two things: a lover, Mariah “Goody” Hallett, and a hunger for wealth to win her family’s favor. He chased Spanish treasure lost to a hurricane but instead found, and took to, the pirate life under Benjamin Hornigold and first mate Edward Teach—soon to be famously feared as the pirate Blackbeard.

Hornigold’s refusal to attack British ships led to a mutiny. The crew elected Bellamy captain, ousting Hornigold and Teach. Black Sam approached piracy with democratic zeal, commanding a mixed crew of freedmen, fugitives, and adventure-seekers. They raided ships by vote, splitting the spoils equally. Bellamy became the Robin Hood of the Seas—feared yet fair.

In 1717, Black Sam caught sight of the Whydah. One warning shot, and Captain Prince surrendered. Bellamy traded him his Sultana for the Whydah and refitted his new flagship with 28 cannons. He set course for New England, longing to return to Goody Hallett—not as a poor sailor, but as a king of the sea.

The Cape Cod coast had other plans. A nor’easter—whether by chance or cosmic treachery—drove the Whydah onto a sandbar near Wellfleet at midnight, April 26, 1717. The ship shattered in minutes, taking Bellamy and 144 souls with it. Only two men survived.

Hearing of the shipwreck, Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Samuel Shute dispatched Captain Cyprian Southack, a local salvager and cartographer, to recover “Money, Bullion, Treasure, Goods and Merchandizes taken out of the said Ship.” Though Southack did salvage some nearly worthless items from the ship, little of the massive treasure hoard was recovered. Southack wrote in his account of his findings, that, “The riches, with the guns, would be buried in the sand.” With that, the exact location of the Whydah, its riches, and its guns were lost, and over the centuries came to be thought of as nothing more than legend.

Then, in 1984, treasure hunter Barry Clifford followed Southack’s 1717 map to its resting place. Over 200,000 artifacts valued in excess of $400 million have since been recovered, including the ship’s bell, silver, weapons, and a child’s shoe—believed to belong to a ten-year-old boy who is rumored to have, over his mother’s objections, chosen the pirate’s life. Clifford has kept the treasure largely intact and on display for public viewing.

The Whydah Gally—a ship built for chains—became one of the most infamous pirate vessels in history, and the only fully authenticated Golden Age pirate shipwreck ever discovered. But the sea, as always, first took its due.