The voyage
The Whydah Gally
A slaver, a flagship, a wreck
The Whydah Gally was a slave ship, one of the largest of her kind in 1717. In February of that year, a 28-year-old pirate named Sam Bellamy captured her off the Bahamas. Ten weeks later, on the night of April 26, she ran aground off Wellfleet in a midnight nor'easter and split apart. Of the 146 people on board, 144 drowned in less than fifteen minutes.
The wreck stayed buried under Cape Cod sand for 267 years. In 1984, Barry Clifford found her using a chart drawn in 1717. The Whydah is the first authenticated Golden Age pirate shipwreck ever recovered. Every coin, every bone, every piece of silver in the museum comes from someone who actually lived this story.
These pages hold the people, the timeline, the maps, and the artifacts — and they mark which claims are documented, contested, or mythologized. A new map of the voyage is coming. Until then, start with the flythrough or keep reading down the page.
Holding the hard parts at the same time
The Whydah's crew were escaping real brutality and they stole for a living. The Ship's Articles were democratic and they were a mutiny. A Member of Parliament funded the ship as a slaver in the first place. None of these things cancel each other out. The job is to hold all of them at once, without glorifying piracy and without flattening it into a costume.
"Why would a person choose piracy in 1717, and how would they want you to tell their story?"
Driving question
"Why would a person choose piracy in 1717, and how would they want you to tell their story?"
Four supporting questions (one per week)
- How do people use maps and navigation to exercise power, in 1717 and today?
- What do Atlantic trade routes tell us about who benefits and who suffers from global commerce, then and now?
- How does geography shape the choices people can make, from 18th-century piracy to modern chokepoints like Suez, Malacca, and Panama?
- Whose stories get mapped, and whose get buried, across time?
Three threads running through the whole unit
- Cartography and navigation. Maps are the tool. We learn to read and make them first. The Whydah story holds together on cartography too: Cyprian Southack's 1717 salvage map is what Barry Clifford used in 1984 to find the wreck.
- The Whydah's Atlantic world. The ship's journey carries everything else: trade, slavery, piracy, the wreck, the recovery.
- Modern Oceans. Suez, Bab-el-Mandeb, Panama, Malacca, container shipping, the Houthi attacks. Same chokepoint logic as 1717, different water.
- Running through all three: a social justice lens: whose stories get told, whose get buried. Not a separate pillar; the constant theme across cartography, the Atlantic world, and modern oceans.
Voyage Journal + final project
Students kept a Voyage Journal across the whole unit: one entry per session, 16+ artifacts by Week 5 (maps, writing, analysis cards, sketches, character notes). The final project was a new piece built from that Journal: each student picked a perspective and a format (12 options), and cited at least 3–4 Journal entries as source material.
See the archived project menu for the formats, and Student story maps for the Map Studio work archived after the Showcase.
Field trips (as run — contingent for any re-run)
- Day 6 — Field Trip 1 (as run Wed Jul 15): Real Pirates Salem + Salem Maritime NHS rotation. Two-section swap. Curator-led at Real Pirates if staffing allows.
- Day 7 — Field Trip 2 (as run Thu Jul 16): Kayaking / life-at-sea day, with a short pre-paddle brief on the Why Piracy page.
- Day 11 — Field Trip 3 (as run Thu Jul 23): Georges Island / Boston Harbor Islands — harbor gateway to the city where the Whydah story ended. See the Salem Connection page.
Live: the same Atlantic, right now
For the 3D flythrough and live maps, head to the Maps & Flythrough page. For latitude, longitude, and how flat maps lie, see Navigation & Projections.
Play the coast
Whydah’s Voyage is the replayable coast campaign — missions, ports, bosses, the nor’easter. Parrot Flip is the parlor game — flick a pirate macaw and land it on its feet.
Timeline: the Whydah's story
See this on the globe. The same story, flown out across the Atlantic in a 19-stop 3D tour. Open the flythrough →
Feb 23, 1689
Sam Bellamy born: Hittisleigh, Devonshire, England Solid
Youngest of six; mother Elizabeth died in childbirth three weeks before his baptism on March 18.
1701
John Julian born Solid
Half-Miskito Indian from the Mosquito Coast (modern Nicaragua/Honduras). Later mislabeled as "Cape Cod Indian"; identification revised by Expedition Whydah research.
1704
French establish fortified trading post at Ouidah Solid
European slave-trading infrastructure consolidates at what becomes the second-largest Atlantic slave port.
1707
Scilly Isles disaster Solid
A Royal Navy fleet misjudges its east-west position and wrecks on the Scilly Isles (small rocky islands off southwestern England). Over 1,000 dead. Triggers the 1714 Longitude Act and Britain's hunt for a longitude solution. Context for why navigation was genuinely dangerous in the Whydah era.
1713–14
War of Spanish Succession ends Solid
Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt. Royal Navy demobilization and end of privateering contracts leave thousands of sailors unemployed, concentrated in the Caribbean. Single biggest push factor into Golden Age piracy.
1714
British Longitude Act Solid
Parliament offers £20,000 for a solution to the longitude problem. Harrison begins work ~1730; his H4 wouldn't prove useful until 1761, 44 years after the Whydah wrecked.
1715
Spanish Treasure Fleet wrecks off Florida Solid
Salvage gold rush draws former privateers, sailors, and opportunists, including Paulsgrave Williams and Sam Bellamy, who partner to try to salvage.
~1715
Benjamin Hornigold founds the "Flying Gang" at Nassau Solid
Former privateer organizes pirate hub in the Bahamas after the Spanish Treasure Fleet salvage. Bellamy and Edward "Blackbeard" Teach both sail under him. Shared mentorship.
1715
Whydah commissioned in London Solid
Built as a slave ship. Commissioned by Sir Humphrey Morice, Member of Parliament AND London's foremost slave merchant. 110 ft, 300 tons, three-masted galley, 18 cannons. Named after the West African slave port of Ouidah.
Late 1715 / early 1716
Bellamy and Williams turn to piracy Solid
After their Spanish Treasure Fleet salvage failed, the partnership redirects to piracy in the Caribbean. Williams had the capital; Bellamy had navigational skill.
1716
Whydah sails slaving voyage under Capt. Lawrence Prince Solid
Ship's bell (recovered 1985) bears "The Whydah Gally 1716." 367 captives loaded in West Africa; 312 survive the Middle Passage to Jamaica.
Summer 1716
Hornigold deposed. Bellamy elected captain Solid
Hornigold's crew votes him out of command because he refuses to attack English ships. Bellamy elected captain in his place; Blackbeard also deposed. Literal pirate democracy at work: the crew could remove the captain.
Nov 9, 1716
John King, age 8–11, joins Bellamy's crew Solid
Bellamy captures the sloop Bonetta (Jamaica → Antigua). King, a passenger traveling with his mother, demands to join the pirates, threatens suicide if restrained, and threatens his own mother. Bellamy allows him to stay.
Feb 28, 1717
Bellamy captures the Whydah Solid
Off the Bahamas in the Windward Passage, after a three-day chase. Source: Boston Vice-Admiralty Court testimony, 1717 (primary). Bellamy arms her with 28 guns, stores 30+ more below as ballast.
Summer 1716 – Apr 1717
Bellamy's crews take more than 50 vessels Solid
By the wreck in April 1717, Bellamy's crews had taken 53+ prizes over roughly a year of piracy, through the Caribbean and up the Atlantic coast. Known for releasing crews and typically avoiding gratuitous killing (though not without violence).
April 26, 1717 (day)
Bellamy captures the pink Mary Anne of Dublin Solid
Laden with Madeira wine. The last prize. Seven pirates put aboard as prize crew; she sails with the fleet that evening.
April 26, 1717 (night)
Nor'easter wrecks the Whydah at Wellfleet (41.891°N, 69.957°W) Solid
At Marconi Beach, Wellfleet, Cape Cod. The fleet had been planning to regroup at Damariscove Island, Maine; the storm caught them halfway. 146 souls aboard; only 2 Whydah crew survive: John Julian (pilot, 16) and Thomas Davis (Welsh carpenter). The Mary Anne also wrecks the same night south of the Whydah; all 10 aboard survive (7 pirate prize crew + 3 original crew). Williams aboard the Marianne survives by accident. He had stopped at Block Island to visit family.
May 1717
Cyprian Southack dispatched to salvage Solid
Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute sends Cyprian Southack (1662–1745), cartographer and naval militia commander, to recover what can be recovered for the Crown. Southack sails from Boston on the sloop Nathaniel, arrives at Cape Cod Harbor (Provincetown) May 2, sends two men ahead to the wreck that afternoon, then crosses the Cape by whaleboat through Jeremiah's Gutter (also called Jeremy's Dream, a tidal passage since lost) and reaches the wreck site himself May 3. He posts notices on meetinghouse doors demanding the return of salvaged goods; the locals give up almost nothing. BUT he marks the location on his New England chart.
October 18, 1717
Whydah survivors tried in Boston Solid
Vice-Admiralty Court convenes at the Boston Court House under a commission headed by Governor Samuel Shute. (Judge Samuel Sewall, the 1692 Salem Witch Trial judge, is long linked to these trials in popular accounts, but the primary record, The Trials of Eight Persons (1718), does not name him among the commissioners. The documented Salem connection is Cotton Mather.) 9 total survivors tried; 6 found guilty, 2 acquitted (Davis and South, both proved forced), 1 (Julian) not tried. Defense counsel Robert Auchmuty appointed and resigned in protest after his motions were denied (including a motion to admit Davis's testimony in the Mary Anne pirates' favor); the illiterate pirates then defended themselves. Trial sequencing: 18 Oct convened · 22 Oct six convicted · 30 Oct final adjournment · 15 Nov hangings.
November 15, 1717
Six hanged at the Charlestown Ferry gallows Solid
Public execution at the Charlestown Ferry gallows, on the tidal mudflats "within the flux and reflux of the sea" (Admiralty custom). (A "Boston Common / Great Elms" version shows up in some pop retellings. That one is Mythologized; the real gallows stood at the Charlestown Ferry landing.) The six: John Brown (Jamaica), Thomas Baker (Netherlands), Hendrick Quintor (Netherlands by record, Black of Dutch–African descent per Clifford & Kinkor 2007), Peter Cornelius Hoof (Sweden), John Shaun (France), Simon van der Vorst (New York). The Boston records list nationality, not ethnicity. The crew was more racially diverse than the paperwork preserves. Cotton Mather, another Salem Witch Trials figure, ministered to them and took "a long and sad walk" with them from the prison to the place of execution (his diary), then published the execution sermon as "Instructions to the Living, from the Condition of the Dead" (1717), a primary source that survives. Not all six died penitent: Baker and Hoof were "distinguishingly penitent" and Van Vorst and Baker sang a Dutch psalm, but John Brown broke out cursing at the gallows before reading prayers and offering a final warning.
Nov 22, 1718
Blackbeard killed at Ocracoke Solid
Edward Teach, Bellamy's fellow alumnus of Hornigold's Flying Gang, dies in battle against Lt. Robert Maynard's crew off Ocracoke Island, NC, 19 months after Bellamy.
1724
Nathaniel Mist publishes A General History of the Pyrates under the "Captain Charles Johnson" pseudonym Mixed reliability
Source of most pirate lore. Historians now think "Captain Charles Johnson" was really Nathaniel Mist, a London newspaper editor. The book is tricky: it admires the pirates and makes fun of them at the same time, and its famous speeches, including Bellamy's "rob the poor" speech, were almost certainly invented. Treat every quoted speech in it as Mist's writing, not a recording.
1727
Kingdom of Dahomey conquers Ouidah Solid
West African political upheaval at the port that gave the Whydah her name. Dahomey continues the slave trade for another 135+ years.
March 22, 1733
John Julian hanged in Boston Contested
Julian was never tried for piracy, likely because he was Indigenous, and was sold into slavery Solid. He is probably the "Julian the Indian" purchased by John Quincy of Braintree, great-grandfather of President John Quincy Adams. That Julian made repeated escape attempts, was sold to another owner, and was hanged in Boston on March 22, 1733 (about age 32) for killing John Rogers, the man pursuing him after an escape. The identification is probable but not proven Contested. He did not "die in slavery" quietly. The colonial slavery system, not the wreck, is what killed him, 16 years after the storm.
1934
Elizabeth Reynard publishes The Narrow Land Literary, not primary
Coins the name "Maria Hallett" for Bellamy's Cape Cod lover. Folklore study, not historical documentation. Students will encounter the name; important to know where it actually came from.
1984
Barry Clifford finds the wreck Solid
Using Cyprian Southack's 267-year-old map. The first finds lay under about 14 ft (4 m) of water and 5 ft of sand; across the site, artifacts sit under 10–50 ft of sand in roughly 16–30 ft of water. A 1717 cartographer's map found a 1984 discovery. The whole story held together by cartography.
1985
Ship's bell recovered, identity confirmed Solid
Inscription "The Whydah Gally 1716" proves the wreck is the Whydah. First fully authenticated Golden Age pirate shipwreck in North America.
1986
Kenneth Kinkor joins as Project Historian Solid
Compiles Whydah Sourcebook of 17th–18th-century archival records. Establishes ~25%-Black-crew finding. Serves 27 years until his death in 2013.
2006
John King's remains identified Solid
Smithsonian identifies an 11-inch fibula encased in a shoe and silk stocking as belonging to a young boy of King's approximate age. Small silver buckle also attributed to him.
2016
DNA test on a possible Bellamy descendant: no match Solid
A presumed descendant from Devon was tested against recovered remains; the DNA didn't match. Identification of the wreck's individual dead remains an ongoing puzzle.
2018
Possible Bellamy remains found Reported, not confirmed
A femur in a mineral concretion, recovered alongside weapons, a crushed helmet, and an ornate pistol wrapped in ribbon. Announced as a possible Bellamy candidate; identification has not been confirmed.
2021
Six pirate skeletons recovered in concretions Solid
Whydah team partners with the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice (University of New Haven), Tim Palmbach, Claire L. Glynn, David San Pietro, to identify the remains using modern DNA techniques. Casey Sherman obtained DNA from a Bellamy English descendant in 2018; one previously recovered bone showed a male of ~Eastern Mediterranean ancestry. Source: Boston Globe Feb 2021.
Ongoing
Excavation continues Solid
200,000+ artifacts recovered to date; the wreck site is not fully excavated. Real Pirates Salem houses much of the traveling collection.