The sea made Sam Bellamy, the poor son of a Devonshire farmer, a rich man, perhaps the wealthiest pirate in history. And then the sea took his riches — and his life.

Bellamy’s rise from treasure scavenger to pirate captain, capped by the capture of the Whydah Galley in 1717, and its destruction in a howling nor’easter in April of that year, enshrined Bellamy in legend and folklore. Among the folktales that surround Black Sam is the legend that he launched his pirate career for the love of Mary Hallet, who would herself go down in history as The Witch of Wellfleet.

Like many of the men who would become legends during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th Century, Bellamy took to sea young, and is believed to have served in the Royal Navy in the War of Spanish Succession, aka Queen Anne’s War (1702-13). That conflict, which one pirate historian has called “World War 0,” was boom times for seamen, be they navy men or privateers. When it ended, the demand for seamen contracted severely, flinging many hardened, capable sailors out of work. A great parcel of those men continued to ply their trade on their own hook — as pirates.

In July 1715, a world-shaking event occurred. The Spanish Treasure Fleet, en route from the Spanish Main to the home country, ran into a savage hurricane and was wrecked on the coast of Florida. The loss to Spain was the equivalent of a major modern stock market crash. The wrecks drew scavengers from the Bahamas, Jamaica and the American colonies. Among them was Sam Bellamy.

Bellamy had flung up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, an out-of-work seaman with no prospects. Legend has it that the handsome young man caught the eye of one Mary Hallet, a teenaged girl from the village of Eastham. The two engaged in an illicit affair, and when they were discovered by Mary’s father, Sam had to flee. He had no means to support a wife and Mary’s father would not have him as a suitor. Sam vowed to return to Mary a rich man.

Bellamy partnered up with a restless and reckless young man named Paulsgrave Williams, son of a prosperous and well-respected Rhode Island family. Williams had a fine pedigree: On his mother’s side, he was descended from the Plantagenet kings of England. But, like many a respectable scion, Williams had a wild streak that drew him to the shady side of life. He and Bellamy heard about the Spanish wrecks and partnered up with a small boat and headed south to Florida to seek fortune and adventure.

They found neither. The wrecks had been pretty well picked over, and the Spanish had dispatched ships to patrol the area and guard what might be left to salvage. When Spanish warships chased them away from the Florida coast, Williams and Bellamy had a choice. They could have returned to New England. Instead, they headed south, through the Caribbean to the Bay of Honduras, where they traded their small ship for a pair of periaguas — sail-mounted dugout canoes. 

They turned pirate.

They hooked up with a privateer turned pirate, Henry Jennings, and deployed a fine piece of theatrical psy-ops to help him capture a French merchantman Calle the St. Marie. In a scene that Robert E. Howard could have written, Bellamy led the periaguas in a run on the merchantman — with their crew stripped naked and screaming bloody murder, waving cutlasses and brandishing muskets. The French were utterly terrified by this barbarous display, and the shouted command to surrender at once, or face a no-quarter assault. They meekly surrendered.

Then Williams and Bellamy double-crossed Jennings and took off, joining Captain Benjamin Hornigold and his protégé, Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard.

When Hornigold proved reluctant to attack English shipping (he still thought of himself as a legitimate privateer rather than a pirate) most of his crew decided to leave him. They elected Sam Bellamy their captain and set out on a spree of plundering nearly unequalled in pirate history.

The crew took ship after ship, trading up for better, faster and more powerful vessels. The ultimate pirate ship came into their possession when they ran down the state-of-the art Whydah, a two-year-old slaver. Converted from its dark trade, the ship made for Bellamy a frigate-class ship of force, a flagship for a pirate fleet that could, at need, defy the Royal Navy.

Bellamy was, himself, the picture of a dashing pirate captain, favoring a long scarlet cloak and a sash supporting four fine dueling pistols. He tied his long black hair back in a queue fixed with a black satin ribbon.

If Gregory Manchess’ Captain Sam Bellamy strikes a chord of familiarity, perhaps it is because Manchess also depicted Conan of Cimmeria as a pirate in the Del Rey edition of Howard’s tales that featured the frontier/pirate yarn “The Black Stranger.”

For all his great skill and formidable reputation, Sam Bellamy was not a bloodthirsty man. He did not kill if he could avoid it, and he seemed to be driven by a genuine spirit of social rebellion. One of his pirates told a captured crewman, “We are Robin Hood’s men.”

Capturing a sloop commanded by a Captain Beer, Bellamy gave vent to his socio-political views. He had meant to let the captain keep his ship, but his men insisted that it be burned. Since a pirate captain was a leader, but not a commander, Bellamy acquiesced to their wishes. According to Captain Johnson in “A General History of the Pirates,” published in 1724, he told Captain Beer:

“I am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. 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. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?”

Captain Beer protested that his conscience would not allow him to break the law of God and man. Bellamy grew more heated:

“You are a devilish conscience 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 100,000 men in the field; and this my conscience tells me! But there is no arguing with such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at pleasure.”

Bellamy’s reign as a free prince would not last long. He and Williams, who now captained another ship in the growing pirate fleet, headed north to new England. It is believed that Williams meant to visit his family in Rhode Island and perhaps distribute some of the fabulous wealth the pirates had accumulated. They planned to summer on the Maine coast and prey on New England shipping.

And, so legend goes, Bellamy wanted to return to Cape Cod to claim his Mary, who, unbeknownst to him, had borne him a child (some say stillborn).

Some versions of the legend of the Witch of Wellfleet say that Mary had been driven mad by grief and believed that Bellamy had betrayed her. So, she conjured up the wild nor’easter that drove the Whydah onto the rocks off what is now Wellfleet on Cape Cod, breaking the fine ship into pieces and killing all but two of its 146-man crew — including Sam Bellamy.

Such is the legend of the Witch of Wellfleet.

Is any of the story true?

Mary Hallet was a real person who lived in what is now Wellfleet, who died unmarried. But, as historian Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, there’s just no record that indicates that she and Bellamy ever knew each other, much less had a star-crossed affair. But then, the record isn’t everything, is it?

What is incontrovertible fact is that the Whydah was one rich pirate vessel. The story of its discovery and salvage by Barry Clifford is an epic tale all its own, and the recovery of the ship and its artifacts is a great gift to history. Someday, I hope to visit the Whydah Pirate Museum and see it all for myself. And there I will raise a horn to the memory of Captain Black Sam Bellamy, and his short, wild, vivid career as the Prince of Pirates.