Febuary '06 - Samuel Bellamy

Samuel Bellamy’s name is not among the names of the most notorious pirates, such as Calico Jack Rackham or William Kidd or Anne Bonny. Though, he was a pirate as well, and not a unsuccessful one.

Few details can be found about his life, though there are some. Mostly they concern the reason of engaging in piracy and the life as a pirate.
They say that the young guy was an English sailor, who travelled to the new world colonies to seek his fortune. He found a wealthy sponsor to finance an expedition to the South, to search for sunken Spanish treasure. This proved to be unsuccessful, and Bellamy returned home empty-handed, and married.

He soon however, left his wife and family behind in a town near Canterbury to sail the seas once more. As many notorious pirates before him, Bellamy served as an apprentice with Benjamin Hornigold, who was known for his generosity to prisoners, and reluctance to plunder English ships. Bellamy was elected as captain when Hornigold was deposed.

Samuel Bellamy (aka Black Bellamy) proved to be a rather successful pirate, mainly in the West Indies. He was known to entertain his crew with eloquent orations, of which he considered himself quite the master. He was concerned for the well-being of his prisoners, but he favored his crew’s well-being above all else, not to evoke any sinister feelings among them. So, he was a respected Captain and there were no attempts of mutiny aboard the ship he captained.

His growing carrier came to an abrupt end in April 1717, off Cape Cod, when his fleet was hit by an intense storm, completely capsizing and destroying his ship, the Whydah. He faced the death of a sailor, dying in the depth of ‘Davy John’s Locker’. He wasn’t caught and hung by the Navy, and in this, his fate is slightly different from the fate of most of the notorious pirates.

picture source: sieben-meere.de