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Samuel Bellamy

English pirate captain, put in Benjamin Hornigold's place by his company in 1716, who took the ship Whydah Gally from Captain Lawrence Prince and was very likely drowned in her wreck before any court could weigh him.

BornNot establishedDiedNot establishedAlso writtenCapt. Samuel Bellamy (the form the 1717 Boston trial print gives); Bellame (Cyprian Southack's salvage note on his chart, 1717); Captain Bellamy (Johnson, General History, second volume, 1728; no forename given)

Abijah Savage, master of the Bonetta, swore at Antigua on 30 November 1716 that Samuel Bellamy had taken his sloop, and set down what Bellamy said aboard her.2

The name, and the man behind it

At the Boston trial of his crew he was Capt. Samuel Bellamy, commander of the ship the court spelled Whido. Cyprian Southack wrote the name Bellame across his chart of the coast. Those are the two spellings the period has left.7,8

He was English. Which part of England is disputed. A Devon parish claims his birth, about 1689; Plymouth claims him too. Bellamy himself, standing on a stranger's deck off the Virgin Islands in November 1716, said London.9,10,2

What he commanded

On 9 November 1716, between St Thomas and St Croix, he overhauled Abijah Savage's Bonetta in a sloop of eight guns called the Mary Anne, the Frenchman Louis de Boure in the Postillion keeping company with him. He was a captain already. One of his own men swore at Boston how he came by the command: Benjamin Hornigold would not take English shipping, the company divided over it, and the majority put Bellamy in his place. That quarrel and that vote have a room of their own in the Bellamy Collection.2,3

Before the Whydah he had the galley Sultana, and he gave her to Captain Lawrence Prince when he took the bigger ship from him. Where he took her is disputed: the popular accounts say the Windward Passage, while Lieutenant Governor Bennett of Bermuda wrote to London on 30 July 1717 that Prince was taken as he turned through the Bahama Islands homeward from Jamaica.11,4

His last taking was a small one. On the morning of 26 April 1717, between St George's Bank and Nantucket Shoals, his people took the pink Mary Anne, out of Boston for New York with a cargo of Madeira wine. The name repeats: the sloop he commanded in 1716 and the wine pink he took on his last morning were both Mary Anne. It was men taken off her, not off the Whydah, who were hanged at Charlestown Ferry on 15 November.12,1

Drowned, and never weighed

Thomas Davis, the carpenter, one of the two men off the Whydah who reached the beach alive, swore at Boston that one hundred and forty-four in all were lost. Bellamy was not one of the two, and his body was never identified. That he drowned is very likely.6,14

Southack, sent to the wreck by Governor Shute, buried the drowned, a hundred and two of them, the count he wrote in his own hand on the chart. The total lost was put elsewhere at between a hundred and forty-two and a hundred and forty-four, and Cotton Mather's pamphlet of that year said only above one hundred.15

No court ever weighed him. Every verdict the case produced belongs to one of his men. The wreck itself has its own record here.13

The search for his body is now other people's work. A leg bone raised from the site and tested in 2018 against a living Bellamy descendant turned out to be another man's, of eastern Mediterranean ancestry. Six more skeletons came out of concretions in 2021. None of that analysis has been published in a peer-reviewed study, and the wreck has so far given back no bone that is his.5,16

The gentle pirate

Davis swore that the riches on board were laid together in one heap, and the even division of plunder his legend turns on goes back no further than that.6,17

Johnson printed the speech everyone knows in the Bellamy chapter of his second volume, in 1728, eleven years after the wreck; his first volume of 1724 had mentioned Bellamy once, in a list of commanders at Providence. The text runs: "I am a free Prince, and I have as much Authority to make War on the whole World, as he who has a hundred Sail of Ships at Sea, and an Army of 100,000 Men in the Field; and this my Conscience tells me." The clause about conscience is usually dropped when the speech is quoted. The captain he names has no forename, and the words are this Bellamy's only by report.18,19

Maria Hallett of Eastham is Cape Cod folklore, and its developed literary form is Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land of 1934. The Collection weighs the gentle pirate against the sworn examinations at length.20

The surviving record gives him no parish entry anyone has read for this page, no trial, no identified body and nothing in his own hand. The one sentence in which he says something about himself reaches us through a master he had just robbed.

What the evidence does not settle

Birth year

  • He was probably born about 1689Likely
  • A Devon parish carries one identification and Plymouth is given elsewhere
  • Bellamy gave London as his birthplace at sea in November 1716

Physical remains

  • A tested 2018 leg bone did not match a descendantVery likely
  • The 2021 wreck skeletons remain unpublished in peer reviewVery likely
  • His death is placed in the wreck of the Whydah

The free prince speech

  • The free prince speech may belong to Charles BellamyUnverified

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. Survivors of Samuel Bellamy's company, taken from the consort Mary Anne rather than from the Whydah herself, whose only two survivors were not among them, were tried at a Court of Admiralty in Boston in October 1717; six were convicted and hanged at Charlestown Ferry, Boston, on 15 November 1717 (Van Vorst, Brown, Baker, Quintor, Hoof and Shuan). Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record: The printed record of the Boston Court of Admiralty, 1717 (executions 15 November 1717)
  2. The sloop Bonetta of Antigua, Abijah Savage commander, was overhauled and plundered between St Thomas and St Croix on 9 November 1716 by two pirate sloops, Samuel Bellamy commanding the Mary Anne and Louis de Boure the Postillion, each of 8 guns and 80 to 90 men, Bellamy declaring himself to be an Englishman born in London; the identification of de Boure with Olivier Levasseur, called La Buse, is not verified and is not asserted. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. State paper via calendar: Deposition of Abijah Savage, enclosure to Governor Hamilton to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Antigua, 14 December 1716, CSP Colonial vol 29 entry 425 (C.O. 152, 11. Nos. 45, 45 i.-vi.)
  3. Benjamin Hornigold lost the command of his pirate company in 1716 and Samuel Bellamy was put in his place by the majority of the men. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Trial pamphlet: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy (Boston, 1718), appendix of examinations taken 6 May 1717
  4. Samuel Bellamy took the ship afterwards known as the Whydah from a Captain Prince and lost her on the Massachusetts shore in April 1717. Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda, writing to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 30 July 1717, reports "The ship that Bellamy had called the Widdaw, which he took from one Capt. Prince belonging to Bristol as he was turning through the Bohama Islands from Jamaica bound home", and that on 27 April a pirate ship of 26 guns commanded by Bellamy took a vessel bound from Madeira to New England near Cape Cod, after which both crews got drunk and "ran their own vessell on shoar att a place called Nossetts Bay to the Southward of the Cape, on board her were 120 men, two whereof were only saved". Peter Heywood at Jamaica had already reported the same news on 3 July 1717 as "Bellamy with his ship and Company's perishing on ye shoals off of Cape Codd". The despatch places the capture in the Bahama Islands rather than the Windward Passage, dates the loss to 27 rather than 26 April, and makes Prince a Bristol man; the commissioning of the ship in London by Humphry Morice in 1715, her burthen of three hundred tuns, and Morice's offices at the Bank of England are not touched by it. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. State papers and official correspondence: Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Bermuda, 30 July 1717, calendared as no. 677 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 29, 1716 to 1717 (July 1717, 17 to 31; pp. 344 to 364), C.O. 37, 10. No. 5, read at British History Online; and Peter Heywood, commander in chief of Jamaica, to the same, 3 July 1717, calendared as no. 629 in the same volume (pp. 336 to 344), C.O. 137, 12. No. 97. Bennett prefaces his account "From Boston in New England I am advised", so his report is an official relay of New England news rather than direct testimony.
  5. The Whydah Gally, Samuel Bellamy's flagship, was driven ashore off Wellfleet on Cape Cod on 26 April 1717 and located in 1984 by Barry Clifford, with a bronze ship's bell recovered in 1985, reported as inscribed THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716, carrying the site's identification; some 200,000 pieces have been raised since, including nearly 400 pieces of Akan goldwork and some 200 brass manillas of the kind used as West African trade currency, and the site has yielded human remains, a femur tested in 2018 against a descendant of Bellamy indicating a man of eastern Mediterranean ancestry and so excluding Bellamy, with the remains of six individuals reported from within large concretions in 2021. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Museum institutional history, popular science journalism and museum-affiliated news reporting: Whydah Pirate Museum, "Whydah Gally History and Our Mission" (Confirmed for the loss of 26 April 1717 and the 1984 location); Roff Smith, "We're still finding treasure from this 'golden age' pirate shipwreck", National Geographic, 12 September 2025, for the bell inscription and the artefact, goldwork and manilla counts; Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 February 2021, for the six individuals and the 2018 femur comparison. The counts and the bell lettering are custodian-originated or secondary and are Probable
  6. Thomas Davis, ship's carpenter and one of two survivors of the Whydah, deposed at Boston that the ship lay at anchor when she was lost on the outer shore of Cape Cod on the night of 26 April 1717, that "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", that "One hundred and forty-four in all" were lost including about sixteen prisoners, and that "The riches on board were laid together in one heap." Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record containing sworn depositions: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy, Justiciary Court of Admiralty, Boston, 1717, printed 1718, Evans N01688
  7. The printed record of the Boston trial of the Whydah survivors names him as Capt. Samuel Bellamy and gives him the command of the ship it prints as the Whido. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy &c., Boston Court of Admiralty, October 1717 (Evans/TCP N01688)
  8. Cyprian Southack's salvage note, written across his chart of the New England coast in 1717, spells the name Bellame. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Period map annotation: Annotation on Cyprian Southack's chart (later in The New England Coasting Pilot)
  9. Samuel Bellamy was English, the English locality being given two ways in the sources, as Devon and as Plymouth. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Calendared deposition and modern scholarship: Deposition of Abijah Savage at Antigua 30 November 1716, CO 152/11 No. 45 iii, calendared as CSP Colonial vol 29 item 425.iii; The Wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod, Historical Journal (Winter 2006); Black Sam Bellamy, The Pirate Who Fought Smart (New England Historical Society)
  10. Bellamy was probably born about 1689, while accounts give Plymouth and the Devon parish records themselves have not been read. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Modern scholarship: The Wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod, Historical Journal (Winter 2006), for Plymouth; the Devon parish records themselves were not read
  11. Bellamy used the galley Sultana as his flagship before he took the Whydah, and gave the Sultana to Captain Lawrence Prince in exchange, the Sultana's own capture being thinly documented. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed trial record: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy (Evans/TCP N01688)
  12. The pink Mary Anne, laden with Madeira wine and bound from Boston to New York, was taken on the morning of 26 April 1717 between St George's Bank and Nantucket Shoals. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy (Evans/TCP N01688), on the sworn testimony of Fitzgerald and Mackconachy
  13. Samuel Bellamy was never tried and no court adjudicated his personal guilt for any act. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy (Boston), Evans/TCP N01688
  14. Bellamy drowned in the wreck of the Whydah and his body was not identified among those washed ashore, no source recording a positive identification either way. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period map annotation and modern scholarship: Annotation on Cyprian Southack's chart (later in The New England Coasting Pilot); The Wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod, Historical Journal (Winter 2006)
  15. Cyprian Southack, sent by Governor Shute to salvage the wreck, buried a hundred and two drowned men by the count in his own chart annotation, while the total lost is given elsewhere as between a hundred and forty-two and a hundred and forty-four and Cotton Mather's account of 1717 speaks only of above one hundred pirates cast away. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Period map annotation and period pamphlet: Annotation on Cyprian Southack's chart (later in The New England Coasting Pilot); The Wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod, Historical Journal (Winter 2006); X Marks the Spot: Searching for Pirate Treasure on Cape Cod (Leventhal Map and Education Center); Instructions to the Living from the Condition of the Dead, Cotton Mather's pamphlet, Boston, John Allen for Nicholas Boone, 1717
  16. The DNA work on the human remains recovered from the Whydah site has not been published in a peer-reviewed study. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Archaeological reporting: Six skeletons in concretions, recovered and announced 2021, with ongoing DNA analysis; the 2018 DNA test of a leg bone against a Bellamy descendant (WBUR, 25 May 2018); John King remains, an 11-inch fibula in a shoe with silk stocking, tentatively identified 2006; no peer-reviewed study was located
  17. Bellamy is said to have divided plunder evenly among his men. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Journalism and period narrative: The Last of Sam Bellamy's Pirate Crew (Provincetown Independent); A General History of the Pyrates
  18. The speech beginning "I am a free Prince" belongs to the Bellamy chapter of the second volume of Johnson's history, published in 1728, the first volume of 1724 mentioning Bellamy once in a list of commanders at Providence, and Johnson's text runs on through the clause "an Army of 100,000 Men in the Field; and this my Conscience tells me; but there is no arguing with such sniveling Puppies", which is commonly cut short when the speech is quoted. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period narrative: Johnson, The History of the Pyrates, vol. II (Gutenberg ebook 57005), at lines 6180 to 6203; "Black Men Under the Black Flag", in C. R. Pennell, ed., Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, pp. 195 to 210, which quotes the passage with the conscience clause intact
  19. That the free prince speech is Samuel Bellamy's is reported and not yet checked against the record: Johnson names only a Captain Bellamy, without a forename. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, which gives only "Captain Bellamy"
  20. The romance with Maria, or Goody, Hallett of Eastham is Cape Cod folklore with no contemporary documentary proof, its developed literary form traceable to Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land of 1934. Speculative An inference, not a finding. Modern scholarship: Black Sam Bellamy, The Pirate Who Fought Smart (New England Historical Society); The Wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod, Historical Journal (Winter 2006); Reynard's book itself was not read