7. Whydah: A Pirate Ship Identified by Its Bell
Pirate stories are full of invented maps and conveniently buried treasure. The Whydah offers something sturdier: a wreck whose identity was confirmed by an inscribed ship’s bell. The vessel sank in a storm off Cape Cod on April 26, 1717, only months after Samuel Bellamy’s pirates captured it.
Located in 1984, the site yielded the bell the following year. Its name and date helped connect the scattered remains to a particular ship rather than simply to an unidentified eighteenth-century wreck. Coins, weapons and other recovered objects provide evidence of the material world in which piracy operated.
The Whydah also carried a history that pirate romance can obscure. Before its capture, it had been a slave ship. That earlier role belongs in its story alongside Bellamy and the recovered treasure. A single vessel could pass through different hands and purposes, while remaining tied to the exploitation and violence of the Atlantic economy.
Add Comment