Death
Just two months after acquiring the Whydah, as she and the Mary Anne approached Cape Cod, Williams told Bellamy that he wished to visit his family in Rhode Island, and the two agreed to meet again near Maine.
If Bellamy intended to revisit his lover Maria Hallett, he failed. The Whydah was swept up in a violent Nor'easter storm off Cape Cod at midnight, and was driven onto the sand bar shoals in 16 feet of water some 500 feet from the coast of what is now Wellfleet, Massachusetts. At 15 minutes past midnight, the masts snapped and drew the heavily-loaded ship into 30 feet of water where she capsized and quickly sank, taking Bellamy and all but two of the Whydah's 145-man crew with her.
One hundred and three bodies were known to have washed ashore and were buried by the town coroner, leaving 43 bodies unaccounted for. The Mary Anne was also wrecked that night several miles south of the Whydah, leaving seven more survivors. All nine survivors from the two ships were captured and prosecuted for piracy in Boston, and six were hanged in October 1717 (King George's pardon of all pirates, issued the previous month in September, having arrived in Boston three weeks too late). Two were 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 Julian, 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.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Bellamy
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