The Wreck

One sheet, folded like a book. Cover: your name, "Day 10," the date. Then:

Your teacher also hands out a grid sheet today. That is for the wreck map. It files into your folder with this one.

Close your eyes for ten seconds. Here is where we are.

It is 12:15 in the morning. April 26, 1717. A nor'easter is blowing, a savage spring storm off the Atlantic. Rain like thrown gravel. The wind is shoving our ship toward land in the dark. Sailors call that a lee shore: beach ahead, wind at your back, no room to turn. You can hear the breakers. You cannot see them. There are 146 people aboard.

Draw that on your THE STORM page. The dark. The sea. The ship. The people, if you want them. There is no wrong drawing.

Why draw first? Because today you imagine it before you see one piece of evidence. Then you test your picture against the record. That is how historians work. No screens until your teacher says so.

Bellamy was not sailing one ship that night. He was sailing four.

Same storm. Four different endings. Ours got the worst of it. She struck a sandbar about 500 feet from the beach. The mainmast went over the side. By morning she was in pieces.

Two of the 146 reached the sand alive. Thomas Davis, a Welsh carpenter. John Julian, the pilot, sixteen years old.

Cape Cod woke up to it. A local man, Samuel Harding, took the two survivors in that morning. Then he went down to the beach and hauled away what washed ashore. Whole towns did the same. A week later the governor's mapmaker, Cyprian Southack, crossed the Cape in a whaleboat to take it all back for the Crown. The locals gave him almost nothing. But he marked the wreck on his chart. Remember that chart.

The Whydah is still there. Under the sand, off a beach called Marconi. We know exactly where because of maps. Now you plot it yourself.

1. On your grid sheet, plot the point 41.891 N, 69.957 W. Latitude first. Take your time.
2. Label it: WHYDAH · April 26, 1717. Sketch the Cape Cod coastline around it if you can.
3. Now check yourself. Open the maps tab. Find Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Does your point sit just off that outer shore?
4. Scroll to the live beach cams. That is Marconi Beach right now, this minute. Same sand. The wreck lies out past the surf in that picture.

One more thing, and it is the good part. In 1984 a diver named Barry Clifford found the Whydah. His treasure map was Cyprian Southack's chart from 1717. You just plotted the same coordinates Clifford used. A 267-year-old map found the only proven pirate wreck on Earth.

Fast finishers: Mission 5 is open. Read its briefing first. It has rules today.

Your teacher tells this part out loud. It is short. It is true. Listen, then write.

Now the oldest truth of the day. The wreck lies off Punonakanit land. Wampanoag territory. People lived on that shore for thousands of years before any of these ships, and the Wampanoag are still here today. Yet in everything written down in 1717, the trial, the letters, the maps, their voice is missing. Not lost. Never written down. We say that plainly, because a record with a hole in it is evidence too.

No race on this mission. Some pages you fill quietly.

Our site has a game for Bellamy’s road: Whydah’s Voyage on the games hub. It was built for this unit. It replays the coast run — missions, ports, the nor’easter — and it calls itself true-ish. Today you find out exactly how true.

First, the rule of the day. We just spent the morning with the real people. So the game gets played with respect: you go in as a HISTORIAN, not a player. Winning is not the mission. Catching it is.

1. Open the game. If it offers Continue, take it. You are closer to the storm. If not, start fresh and move with purpose.
2. As you play, make two catches. Catch one thing the game shows that is DOCUMENTED: it is in the real record. Catch one thing that is LEGEND: a story people tell that no record backs up.
3. Proof or it does not count. For each catch, one line on your AFTER page: what it was, and how you know which pile it goes in. Use the People tab and Timeline on the dashboard as your proof shelf.

If the Whydah had not wrecked, would we know any of these people's names?

Sit with it. The storm killed 144 people. The storm is also the only reason anyone wrote their names down. Both things are true.

Pick one person who died in the wreck or stood trial. Write a paragraph about who you imagine they were.

Need a name? The People tab has them. The records give you facts: a home port, an age, a job. Start from the facts. Then imagine the rest, carefully. You practiced telling record from legend an hour ago. Same skill here. This time it is an act of respect.

Your adopted ship is out there tonight. Real water, real weather. Every captain alive has heard of a night like April 26, 1717.

You are down to two people. Today you watched what one night can do to a name.

1. Look at your two. Did today change how you see either one?
2. By Friday, circle ONE. Not final. Circled. Pitch Day is Thursday, July 30. Five class days out.

A circled name is not a cage. It is a heading. You can still adjust later, but from Friday you sail toward someone.