Samuel Bellamy

Henry Jennings, who is by 1716 a privateer operating from Jamaica, governed by Lord Archibald Hamilton, evidently owns enough land in Jamaica to live comfortably, thus leaving his motivations for piracy to conjecture.

His first recorded act of piracy had taken place in early 1716 when, with three vessels and one hundred and fifty to three hundred men, Jennings' fleet had ambushed the Spanish salvage camp from the 1715 Treasure Fleet.

After forcing the retreat of around forty soldiers, Jennings had set sail for Jamaica carrying back an estimated three hundred and fifty thousand pesos.

When Jennings encountered Sam Bellamy, he had teamed with him to commit more piracies against the French.

When Bellamy double-crossed him, Jennings' ruthlessness was evidenced in the brutal slaying of more than twenty Frenchmen and Englishmen, and the burning of an innocent Englishman's merchant sloop.

Declared a pirate by the very governor who had commissioned him and originally condoned his actions (taking a cut for himself), Jennings is forced to flee Jamaica and eventually establishes a new base of operations in the uninhabited island New Providence in the Bahamas.

It is within easy reach of the Florida Strait and its busy shipping lanes, which are filled with European vessels crossing the Atlantic.

New Providence's harbor can easily accommodate hundreds of ships, and is too shallow for the Royal Navy's larger vessels to navigate.

Law and order are unheard of; in New Providence, pirates find a welcome respite.

Jennings becomes an unofficial mayor of the growing pirate colony.

Edward Teach, who will later be better known as the pirate Blackbeard, is one of those who has come to enjoy the island's benefits, moving here from Jamaica, and as with most privateers once involved in the War of the Spanish Succession, has become involved in piracy.

He had in about 1716 joined the crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold, a renowned pirate who operates from New Providence's safe waters, and who has placed Teach in charge of a sloop he had taken as a prize.

Hornigold's early life is unrecorded, though it is possible he was born in Norfolk, England, and, if so, he might have first served at sea aboard ships whose home port was either King's Lynn or Great Yarmouth.

His first documented acts of piracy had been in the winter of 1713-1714, when he had employed periaguas (sailing canoes) and a sloop to menace merchant vessels off the coast of New Providence and its capital, Nassau.

Hornigold by 1717 has at his command a thirty-gun sloop he has named the Ranger, which is likely the most heavily armed ship in the region and allows him to seize other vessels with impunity.

Hornigold and Teach, each captaining a sloop, had set out in early 1717 for the mainland, seizing three merchant ships in quick succession, one carrying one hundred and twenty barrels of flour bound for Havana, another a Bermudan sloop with a cargo of spirits and the third a Portuguese ship traveling from Madeira to Charleston, South Carolina, with a cargo of white wine.

Teach and his quartermaster, William Howard, may at this time have struggled to control their crews.

The pirate Samuel Bellamy's greatest capture comes in the spring of 1717, when he and his crew chase down and board the Whydah Gally.

A three hundred-ton English slave ship, The Whydah had just finished the second leg of the Atlantic slave trade on its second voyage and is loaded with a fortune in gold and precious trade goods.

True to his reputation for generosity, Bellamy gives the Sultana to Captain Lawrence Prince of the captured Whydah, and, outfitting his new flagship as a twenty-eight-gun raiding vessel (upgraded from its original eighteen guns), sets sail northwards along the eastern coast of New England.

As the Whydah and the Mary Anne approach Cape Cod, Williams tells Bellamy that he wishes to visit his family in Rhode Island, and the two agree to meet again near Maine.

If Bellamy intended to revisit his lover Maria Hallett, he failed.

The Whydah is swept up in a violent Nor'easter storm off Cape Cod at midnight, and is driven onto the sand bar shoals in sixteen feet of water some five hundred feet from the coast of what is now Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

At fifteen minutes past midnight, the masts snap and draw the heavily loaded ship into thirty feet of water, where she capsizes and quickly sinks, taking Bellamy and all but three of the Whydah's one hundred and forty-nine-man crew with her.

One hundred and three bodies are known to have washed ashore and are buried by the town coroner, leaving forty-three bodies unaccounted for.

The Mary Anne is also wrecked that night several miles south of the Whydah, leaving six more survivors.

All nine castaways from the two ships are captured and prosecuted for piracy in Boston.

At the time of its sinking, the Whydah is the largest pirate prize ever captured, and the treasure in its hold includes huge quantities of indigo, ivory, gold, and over thirty thousand pounds sterling (approximately four and a half to five tons).

Bellamy was probably the youngest of six known children born to Stephen and Elizabeth Bellamy in the parish of Hittisleigh in Devonshire in 1689.

Elizabeth died in childbirth and was buried on February 23, 1689, three weeks before her infant son Samuel's baptism on March 18.

Becoming a sailor at a young age, Bellamy had traveled to Cape Cod, where, according to local lore, he took up an affair with a local girl named Maria Hallett.

He soon left Cape Cod—allegedly to support Hallett—by salvaging treasure from the Spanish Plate Fleet sunk off the coast of Florida, accompanied by his friend and financier Paul (or Palgrave, Paulgrave, Paulsgrave) Williams.

The treasure hunters apparently met with little success, as they had soon turned to piracy in the crew of pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold, who commands the Mary Anne (or Marianne) with his first mate Edward "Blackbeard" Teach.

Bellamy, irritated by Hornigold's unwillingness to attack ships of England, his home country, had in the summer of 1716 challenged Hornigold for the position of captain.

Hornigold had been deposed as captain of the Mary Anne and Bellamy had been elected by the crew in his place.

Upon capturing a second ship, the Sultana, Bellamy had assigned his friend Paul Williams as captain of the Mary Anne and made the Sultana his flagship.

Six of the castaways from the Whydah and the Mary Anne are hanged in October 1717 (King George's pardon of all pirates, issued the previous month in September, arriving in Boston three weeks too late).

Two are set free, the court believing their testimony that they had been forced into piracy.

The last, a Native American from the Mosquito tribe in Central America, John Jullian, is believed to have been sold into slavery to John Adams, Sr., the father of U.S. President John Adams and grandfather of U.S. President John Quincy Adams.

Another vessel has been captured by October and added to the small pirate fleet.

The sloops Robert of Philadelphia and Good Intent of Dublin are stopped on October 22, 1717, and their cargo holds emptied.

Hornigold, as a former British privateer, attacks only England's enemies in the War of the Spanish Succession, but for his crew, the sight of British-flagged vessels filled with valuable cargo passing by unharmed becomes too much, and in November 1717 a vote is taken among the combined crews to attack any vessel they choose.

Hornigold opposes the decision and is replaced as captain.

Whether Teach has any involvement in this decision is unknown, but Hornigold quickly retires from piracy.

With a token crew, he takes Ranger and one of the sloops, leaving Teach with Revenge and the remaining sloop.

The two never meet again.

Hornigold continues piracy operations from Nassau until December 1717, when word arrives of a general pardon for pirates offered by the King through Woodes Rogers.