The Story of the Whydah Galley
Built in London in 1715 as a slave ship, the Whydah Galley was on her maiden voyage when pirates captured her south of the Bahamas in early 1717.
The pirates, led by “Black” Sam Bellamy, recognized the ship’s size, speed, and firepower immediately. They converted it into the flagship of a growing pirate fleet — a multinational crew of nearly 200 men who had spent a year capturing dozens of British, French, Spanish, and Dutch merchant ships throughout the Caribbean. Bellamy’s circle included some of the most notorious pirates of the era — Ben Hornigold, Henry Jennings, Oliver Le Vasseur, and Blackbeard.
On April 26, 1717, while sailing up the North American seaboard, the Whydah was driven into the shoals off modern day Wellfleet, Cape Cod, by one of the most severe nor’easters in New England history. Only two men survived — making it the worst shipwreck ever to occur on the Cape Cod shore. Other vessels in Bellamy’s flotilla were wrecked or seriously damaged in the same storm. Survivors were captured, tried, and hanged.
Shortly after the wreck, Governor Shute of Massachusetts dispatched Captain Cyprian Southack — a noted cartographer and commander of the Bay Colony’s naval militia — to salvage what he could for the Crown. Southack found the ship capsized and broken apart in the surf, its wreckage rapidly swallowed by the shifting sands of the Cape. He recovered little of value, but his journals and reports to the Governor preserved crucial clues to the ship’s location.
Using Southack’s historical records alongside cutting-edge remote-sensing technology, underwater explorer Barry Clifford and the project team discovered the wreck site in 1984. Years of meticulous underwater archaeological excavation followed — recovering cannons, pistols, buttons, buckles, gold, silver, and pieces of eight. The work continues to this day.
The Whydah’s story spans the entire Atlantic world — Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As the first positively identified pirate shipwreck ever discovered, it provides an unmatched window into the material culture of 18th-century piracy and holds a unique place in the history of colonial New England.