The Gentle Pirate, Tested

Bellamy's crew were tried at the Court of Admiralty in Boston in the autumn of 1717, and the trial was printed at Boston the year after. It opens on what the men held aboard the last prize swore was said to them, and that is some distance from the mercy reputation.

On the morning of 26 April 1717, off the Cape, the company took its last prize, the pink Mary Anne of Dublin, a wine ship last from Boston, and carried her master and five men onto the Whydah. The men held aboard swore what was said to them. The cook, Alexander Mackconachy, deposed that Thomas Baker threatened to shoot him through the head and said he should never go ashore to tell his story. The carpenter Thomas Davis, when he sought the release Bellamy had earlier promised him, was answered by the company in a violent manner that they would sooner shoot him or whip him to death at the mast.

The reputation the room tests rests on an earlier capture. Somewhere on her homeward passage from Jamaica, in February or March 1717, a late-February date being written 1716/17 in the Old Style, Bellamy took the Whydah Gally from Captain Lawrence Prince after a chase, with little exchange of fire, and made her his flagship. Very likely

a Ship of 300 Ton called the Whido with 18 Guns mounted, and 50 Men bound from Jamaica to London laden with Sugar, Indigo, Jesuits Bark and some Silver and Gold.

By the survivors' account Prince, having offered little resistance, was given the galley Sultana and a sum of money reported at about twenty pounds, and released with his men. That release is the strongest single prop of the mercy reputation. Thomas South was taken from a Jamaica vessel and compelled aboard against his will, and the court found both South and Davis to have been forced men.

The company took a long run of prizes, and what became of each was gone over at the trial. The often repeated total of fifty three ships is an aggregate of uncertain origin, set against about a dozen prizes actually named.

• The ship of Captain Kingston, taken to leeward of Havana in concert with Hornigold and Levasseur, and returned. Highly probable.
• Two Spanish brigantines off Cape Corrientes. Highly probable.
• A French ship off St Croix. Highly probable.
• The ship of Captain Richards, made into the galley Sultana under Bellamy. Highly probable.
• The St Michael, a Bristol ship out of Ireland whose master was James Williams and whose crew were in part impressed. Highly probable.
• The ship of Captain Tosor. Highly probable.
• The Whydah Gally, taken from Captain Prince and made the flagship. Highly probable.
• A Scotch vessel off the Virginia capes, taken and sunk. Highly probable.
• Set apart: the round total of fifty three ships, an aggregate of uncertain origin with no cited muster, against about a dozen prizes actually named. Probable.

Against the one act of generosity stand several sworn acts of intimidation, coercion and destruction of property, and no surviving deposition has the company killing a captive. What the Boston court proved, it proved against the convicted men, and only for the acts in their own indictments, and not against Bellamy, who was six months drowned before it sat.

The arithmetic of how a company divided what it took is written into the division of prize shares, and the articles a crew signed have their own gallery. What the Bellamy company adds is a sworn ledger of coercion set beside one release. The Robin Hood picture is held for the last room, where each printed telling is dated and weighed.