The Reference
The Wreck & Fleet
The fleet: Bellamy's four ships on April 26, 1717
| Ship | Role | Captain | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whydah | Flagship, 28+ guns | Sam Bellamy | WRECKED at Wellfleet · 2 survivors of 146 aboard |
| Marianne | 10-gun sloop (Hornigold's old ship) | Paulsgrave Williams | Survived · Williams at Block Island visiting family |
| Anne Galley | Captured consort | Richard Noland (former quartermaster) | Separated from fleet; survived |
| Mary Anne (pink) | Prize captured the same day, April 26, loaded with Madeira wine | Bellamy's prize crew of 7 | Also wrecked April 26, south of Whydah · all 10 aboard survived (shallow wreck) |
The "7 additional survivors from a sloop" often referenced are the Mary Anne's prize crew (7 pirates Bellamy had put aboard that afternoon) plus 3 original crew, of whom all 10 made it ashore when she wrecked in shallower water.
What we can do with this in class
Four ships in one storm. Two survived. Williams was at Block Island visiting family, so his sloop got out. The Anne Galley got separated and survived. The Mary Anne wrecked too but in shallower water, so all 10 aboard walked off. Bellamy's Whydah took the worst of the wind on a lee shore at Wellfleet, with the 16-year-old pilot John Julian aboard (that he was at the wheel that night is period-plausible inference: "pilot" is what the record documents) and no way to know their east-west position. Two of 146 survived. The wreck wasn't one event: it was four parallel outcomes in the same storm.
The other reason the wreck happened on this coast: Hanna's "hostile shore" framing.
Mark G. Hanna (Pirate Nests, 2015; Piracy in Colonial North America, 2020) adds a money-and-politics explanation alongside the navigational one. Through the 1690s and into the early 1700s, ports from Newport to Boston to Charleston quietly tolerated and profited from "their" pirates: fencing prizes, refitting ships, looking the other way. Then the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended the war, the new Piracy Acts arrived, and royal officials began enforcing them in the colonies. By April 1717 Bellamy was attacking the very New England coast that, fifteen years earlier, would have welcomed him as a supplier of contraband and silver. The wreck happened not just because the longitude problem was unsolved, but because the towns that once welcomed pirates had turned against them. The same Cape Cod that had previously been a market was now a hostile shore, and the surviving crew were tried in a Boston that had only just decided pirates were the enemy.
Primary-source spotlight: the survivors' own depositions
🖨 Try it: read one of these depositions like a historian →
Thomas Davis on the wreck (Trials, p. 318)
"The Ship being at an Anchor, they cut their Cables and ran a shoar, in a quarter of an hour after the Ship struck, the Main-mast was carried by the board, and in the Morning She was beat to pieces. About Sixteen Prisoners drown'd, Crumpstey Mast of the Pink being one, and One hundred and forty-four in all."
Two things in this quote rewrite the popular story. (1) The Whydah was anchored when the storm hit. Bellamy's crew deliberately cut their own cables to try to beach her, rather than being driven uncontrolled onto the bar. (2) Captain Andrew Crumpstey of the Mary Anne was aboard the Whydah and drowned, primary confirmation, ending earlier ambiguity about his fate.
Peter Cornelius Hoof on the treasure (Trials, p. 319)
"The money taken in the Whido, which was reported to Amount to 20000 or 30000 Pounds, was counted over in the Cabin, and put up in bags, Fifty pounds to every Man's share, there being 180 Men on Board… Their Money was kept in Chests between Decks without any guard, but none was to take any without the Quarter Masters leave."
- £20,000–30,000 sterling: Hoof's eyewitness figure, counted out in the cabin; the one treasure number that comes from someone who actually saw it. You'll also see “4½ tons of gold and silver” repeated everywhere online. That’s a modern retelling, not the 1717 record. A separate colonial document says Bellamy had grabbed roughly 400,000 pieces of eight from two Jamaica-bound ships just before the wreck. Only about 10% of the estimated treasure has been found since 1984.
- £50 per man, even share: primary-source confirmation of Bellamy's flat distribution. The pirate-democracy claim has at least this much documentary support.
- 180 men aboard at division vs. 146 at the wreck: the gap is prize-crew attrition, men placed on captured vessels in the weeks before the storm.
- Treasure stored in chests between decks, unguarded, but governed by the Quartermaster's authority, not by force.
James Dunavan on the Mary Anne pirates and the Common Prayer Book (Trials)
"…the Pinks Company could not see the Shoar till they were among the Breakers… the Prisoners at the Bar or some of them… Cryed out saying, For God's sake let us go down into the Hould & Die together. And the whole pinks Company tarry'd on Board her all that Night: And in their Distress the Prisoners ask'd the Deponent to Read to them the Common-Prayer Book…"
Two notable additions. (1) The Mary Anne pirates, facing storm, shore, and certain capture, asked to die in the hold together, then asked their captives to read them Anglican prayer through the night. Useful for any session on what pirates actually believed about death and dying. (2) The deposition lists three vessels visible before grounding ("the Pirate Ship, Snow and Sloop"). Bellamy's fleet at the moment of the storm was at least four vessels (Whydah + Anne Galley snow + Mary Anne pink + Fisher sloop), corroborating the four-ships table above.