The Wreck That Waited 260 Years

In 1715, Sir Humphrey Morice, described as 'the foremost London slave merchant of his day', commissioned a square-rigged, three-masted galley in London. Named Whydah Gally after the West African slave-trading Kingdom of Whydah, she measured 110 feet long, rated at 300 tuns burthen, and could reach speeds of 13 knots. Armed with 18 six-pound cannons, expandable to 28 in wartime, she was built for the brutal machinery of the Atlantic slave trade: a heavily armed transport designed to carry goods to Africa, human beings across the ocean, and profits back to England.

Her maiden voyage began in early 1716. She sailed down the West African coast through what is now Gambia and Senegal to Nigeria and Benin, near the port that gave her her name. She departed Africa carrying an estimated 500 enslaved people, along with gold, Akan jewelry, and ivory. In the Caribbean, that human cargo and the goods aboard were traded for precious metals, sugar, indigo, rum, logwood, pimento, ginger, and medicinal ingredients — the final leg of a voyage meant to return to England laden with wealth.

That return voyage never happened as planned. In late February 1717, under Captain Lawrence Prince, Whydah Gally was navigating the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola when pirates led by Samuel Bellamy caught up with her. Bellamy commanded two vessels at the time, the 26-gun Sultana and the 10-gun sloop Marianne, captained by his friend Paulsgrave Williams. After a three-day chase, Prince surrendered near the Bahamas following only a token exchange of cannon fire.

Bellamy chose Whydah Gally as his new flagship. Some of her original crew stayed aboard and joined the pirates — among the freed African slaves, displaced English sailors, Native Americans, and social outcasts who found the high seas a rare leveler of class. In gesture toward Prince's peaceful surrender, Bellamy gave him the Sultana along with £20 in silver and gold, equivalent to roughly £3,600 today. Bellamy's men then fitted Whydah Gally with 10 more cannons and stripped her top deck of the pilot's cabin and slave barricade, lightening her for pirate work. Some 150 of Bellamy's crew were assigned to man her.

The pirates sailed north along the American coastline, raiding vessels as they went, aiming for the coast of Maine. A storm damaged the ship and snapped a mast; repairs were patched together, with more substantial work possibly done near Block Island or Rhode Island. At some point Bellamy loaded more than 30 additional cannons below decks, possibly as ballast — two of which, recovered in 2009 by underwater explorer Barry Clifford, weighed 800 and 1,500 pounds.