“They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage.” speech attributed to Samuel Bellamy in Captain Johnson’s A History of the Pyrates
Much admired by some, Samuel Bellamy was sometimes referred to as the Robin Hood of the sea, although there is no evidence of him giving to the poor as did the mythic hero of Sherwood Forest. Bellamy is viewed as one of the most successful pirates of his time, although his pirating career lasted little over a year. He is said to have treated captives well in comparison to many of his contemporaries, but was not averse to forcing men to serve in his crew, especially carpenters. He was apparently called Black Sam because he didn’t want to wear a wig, preferring his long black hair to flow free. It is also said he had a preference for black jackets. At the time of his death he was probably the richest pirate in history. Unfortunately for him, his career was cut short by a tragic storm. Like with many other pirates, we don’t know much about his early life. It is thought he was born in about 1689 and grew up in a village near Plymouth, England, not far from where Henry Avery grew up. He was the youngest of six children. His father was a farmer, but Sam didn’t wish to follow in his father’s footsteps, inspired by tales of Avery, preferring to go to sea. A tall, well-built man, he is thought to have started his career at sea in the Royal Navy, serving during the Spanish War of Succession, gaining much experience. After the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht he was possibly out of work and travelled to Cape Cod, Massachusetts where, according to legend, he met Mary Hallett. It is thought he wanted to wed her after making her pregnant but her well-off parents were against it. He swore to make his fortune and return to marry her.
Early career
Sam Bellamy met 40-year-old Paulsgrave Williams, a silversmith and son of Rhode Island Attorney General John Williams, while in New England, who was in search of adventure. They formed a partnership – Bellamy had the experience, Williams the financial backing. Paulsgrave obtained a vessel, in which they sailed south in the hope of salvaging gold and silver from the shipwrecked Spanish treasure fleet, which had gone down in a storm off the coast of Florida. This endeavour met with little success. Early in 1716, the Spanish arrived to drive off treasure hunters, but neither of the two men wanted to return home empty handed, so they resorted to piracy. Starting out with a periagua they sailed to the Gulf of Honduras to recruit more men. While there, they took a Dutch merchant vessel and an English sloop commanded by Captain Young. They then travelled to Cuba in the sloop, towing the periaguas. There they encountered 4 sloops belonging to the privateer Henry Jennings, and, unaware Jennings had turned pirate pirate, gave Young his ship back, escaping into shallow waters in their periaguas. Later they joined Jennings in capturing the French 16-gun, frigate-rigged ship St. Marie, commanded by Captain D’Escoubet, who was possibly a smuggler, which made her fair game to Jennings. Not long later, Jennings sighted and pursued his old rival Benjamin Hornigold, who had just captured another French smuggler, the Marianne, which Jennings had also had his eye on. While Jennings was absent, Bellamy and Williams plundered the St. Marie of 28,500 pieces of eight and fled with the loot. They caught up with Hornigold off the coast of Cuba, becoming welcome additions to his crew. Due to his nautical skills Bellamy was later voted captain of the sloop Marianne. Together with Hornigold he lurked in the Straight of Yucatan for passing French and Spanish shipping. At one point, Hornigold refused to take an English ship, but was overruled by his crew.
Bellamy the pirate captain
In summer 1716, Bellamy parted ways with Hornigold when the latter refused to attack English ships and he was voted as a replacement for Hornigold by his crew on the Marianne with Paulsgrave Williams becoming his quartermaster. He then sailed to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico where he captured several vessels and had one failed encounter with a French frigate. Bellamy spent some time prowling the Virgin Islands, capturing English sloop Bonetta in November 1716, which Bellamy used to help careen his vessels before letting her go with cargo intact. It was on this vessel that the 10-year-old John King joined Bellamy’s crew, declaring that he’d kill himself if not allowed to join the pirates. Bellamy later seized a ship called Sultana off the Dutch island of Saba, which he took as his own, giving the Marianne to Williams.
Bellamy and Williams sailed briefly alongside Olivier Levasseur, who left early in 1717 to raid South America. According to one account, Levasseur was already sailing with Hornigold when Bellamy encountered him, in another he met the French pirate after he had parted ways with Hornigold. Together they took several merchant vessels in the Virgin Islands, including the St. Michael, a British ship sailing from Bristol to Jamaica, as well as occupying and plundering the British colony of Spanish town on Virgin Gorda for about a week. They stopped over in La Blanquilla on the Venezuelan coast to work on their ships after which Lavasseur is thought to have departed. In spring 1717, Bellamy captured the now famous Whydah Gally in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola. He gave the Sultana to the captain of Whydah Gally, Lawrence Prince, in return and upgraded his new ship to 28 guns. He then sailed along the eastern coast of the Carolinas and on to New England, which he knew would be teeming with merchant shipping. On the way, they captured a 3-masted merchant ship Tanner, a British ship transporting sugar under French contract on the north coast of Hispaniola. They took the Tanner’s topmast to replace the damaged one on the Marianne and any valuables they could find before letting her sail on. Captain Johnson wrote that Bellamy captured a sloop commanded by Captain Beer near Chesapeake Bay. Against Bellamy’s wishes, the crew voted to burn it after Beer refused to join them. After that, Williams left to visit his family in Rhode Island. Not long later, Bellamy captured the Agnes, which they released due to its poor condition, and the Anne Galley, which he decided to keep, appointing Richard Nolan as commander with a crew of 28 men. He also captured a two-masted vessel, the Mary Anne of Dublin, after Williams had left.
The fate of Black Sam
Bellamy and Willaims had agreed to meet up again near Maine, which they never did. Neither did Bellamy ever see his sweetheart again. Samuel Bellamy died on 26th April 1717 on the way to New England when Whydah Gally sank in a storm near Massachusetts, some say on his way to visit his true love Mary Gallett. The Whydah was weighed down with 180 fifty-pound sacks of treasure, along with such items as elephant tusks, sugar, molasses, rum, cloth, quinine bark, indigo, and other dry goods. The ship was driven onto sandbar shoals about 500 feet (150m) from the coast. Only two of 146 men on board survived with only 104 bodies being recovered – Bellamy wasn’t among them. The seven men from the Whydah who made up the prize crew of Mary Anne, which was also wrecked, were fortunate enough to survive the storm, only to be later captured and hanged. The wreck was promptly plundered by the locals. The remains of the 300-ton, 18-gun slave ship Whydah Gally were discovered in 1984 by maritime archaeologist Barry Clifford, making it the first fully authenticated pirate ship of the Golden Age to be discovered off North American coast. It was thought that Bellamy’s remains had been found near the wreck of his ship, but DNA tests carried out in February 2018 with a living relatives confirmed that the bones were of an Eastern European man, not Bellamy. Bellamy died as one of the richest pirates, having captured more than 50 ships and amassing a fortune of about £120,000 – the equivalent to £22 million in today’s money. The final resting place of the successful pirate’s body remains unknown to this day.
For more details of Sam Bellamy’s pirating career read the article Sam Bellamy –
From Penniless to the Richest Pirate of All on Cindy Vallar’s Pirates and Privateers website.