The Last of Sam Bellamy’s Pirate Crew
It was “The End of Piracy,” wrote Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister, owner of enslaved people, revolutionary, and witch-hunter who is often called the “grandfather of Evangelicalism,” in a pamphlet.
The ship of Black Sam Bellamy had foundered just offshore of Wellfleet that spring, and Mather had given last rites to the last of his crew. Six pirates were executed under Mather’s watchful eye on Nov. 15, , while two were found innocent in Boston courtrooms.
There was a ninth survivor, a year-old Native American named John Julian, who was not given a trial and was likely sold into slavery.
According to court records, those nine were the only pirates out of more than members of Bellamy’s crew to survive the wreck of his recently commandeered slave ship, the Whydah, and the smaller boat it had just captured off Nantucket, the Mary Anne.
Mather’s pamphlet includes a long reconstruction of the conversations he held with the pirates as they rowed across Boston Harbor to be executed in Charlestown. Along with their statements at trial, they are the last words on record from the men of Bellamy’s feared crew.
An April Storm
On the eve
&#;As it Was&#;
Article
By an Old Hydrographer
By Steve Ritchie •
<i>The New England Coasting Pilot</i> was the first folio of sea charts of the coast of North America. The work of an English naval officer, they covered the coastal waters from New York to Cape Breton.
Cyprian Southack, son of a naval officer, was born in London in and arrived at the age of 23 years in Boston, Massachusetts as a naval lieutenant. Here in he married Elizabeth Foy, by whom he had ten children. He became a competent navigator in New England waters and when war broke out between the French and English in he was employed at sea to frustrate enemy vessels approaching the coast. For this work he commanded several vessels, including Mary and William and Mary, reflecting the names of the King and Queen of England.
In he visited London where he kissed His Majesty’s hand and presented King William III with a draft of a chart he planned to make of New England, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the River of Canada and the seas and territories adjoining. In consideration of his past services and for his further encouragement the King ordered that the sum of fifty pounds be paid to
Cyprian Southack collection
- Call number
- MssCol
- Physical description
- linear feet (2 volumes)
- Preferred Citation
- Cyprian Southack collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Manuscripts and Archives Division
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
Collection consists of handwritten transcripts and negative photocopies of historical, biographical, and genealogical material. Papers gatherered by John E. Edmonds, William F. Ganong, and Victor H. Paltsis emphasize Southack's activities as a privateer and cartographer. Transcripts compiled for Frederick L. Gay largely relate to Southack's expeditions against the French settlements in Eastern Canada (), with portions from his coast chart, New York to Cape Breton, concerning navigation, trade, and Indians
For the past thirty years, the South Wellfleet wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship under the command of Captain Sam Bellamy, has provided a steady stream of news. In , the wreck was discovered feet offshore, material was brought to the surface for identification and preservation, and their concretions removed. A small museum was established in Provincetown and, in , a more permanent Whydah Museum in West Yarmouth.
The story of the Whydah running aground on the night of April 26, , during an intense storm, is a Wellfleet legend, often mentioned in early writings about the town. In , the Reverend Levi Whitman said, “At times to this day, there are King William and Queen Mary coppers picked up and pieces of silver called cob money.” When Henry David Thoreau walked the back shore in the mid-nineteenth century, he wrote about the wreck, although the coin he picked up was a French one, dated
This article focuses on the visit of Captain Cyprian Southack to South Wellfleet, then part of Eastham, as the representative of the Massachusetts Colony’s Governor, determined to recover the wreck. This imperial representative and the rule of law ran up against stubborn Cape Codders, cert
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