Samuel Bellamy - Biography

Biography

Bellamy was probably the youngest of six known children born to Stephen and Elizabeth Bellamy in the parish of Hittisleigh in Devonshire, England 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. The future pirate became a sailor at a young age and traveled to Cape Cod, where, according to local lore, he took up an affair with a local girl named Maria Hallett—the "Witch of Wellfleet".

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 soon turned to piracy in the crew of pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold, who commanded the Mary Anne (or Marianne) with his first mate Edward "Blackbeard" Teach.

In the summer of 1716, the crew became irritated by Hornigold's unwillingness to attack ships of England, his home country. Hornigold was deposed as captain of the Mary Anne, and the crew elected Bellamy in his place.

Upon capturing a second ship, the Sultana, Bellamy assigned his friend Paul Williams as captain of the Mary Anne and made the Sultana his flagship. However, Bellamy's greatest capture was to come in the spring of 1717, when he and his crew chased down and boarded the Whydah Gally (pronounced "WIH-duh"). The Whydah, a 300-ton English slave ship, had just finished the second leg of the Atlantic slave trade on its second voyage and was loaded with a fortune in gold and precious trade goods. True to his reputation for generosity, Bellamy gave the Sultana to Captain Lawrence Prince of the captured Whydah, and, outfitting his new flagship as a 28-gun raiding vessel (upgraded from its original 18 guns), set sail northwards along the eastern coast of New England.

Bellamy was well-known to his contemporaries and to later chroniclers, and was a distinctive figure, even among pirates. Pirate recruitment was most effective among the unemployed, escaped bondsmen, and transported criminals. The high seas made for an instant levelling of class distinctions.

Captain Charles Johnson, a pseudonym, wrote what became the first standard historical text on pirates, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates. That source relates the story of the Whydah overtaking a sloop commanded by Captain Beer. Bellamy had wanted to let the captain keep his ship, but his crew had just voted to burn it, and the captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates. Bellamy is attributed with making this now-famous speech:

"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?"

 

"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."

— Captain Bellamy, quoted by Captain Charles Johnson (1724), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates