Laura Nelson - The Whydah Pirates Speak, Volume 2

LAURA NELSON

The Whydah Pirates Speak, Volume 2

First published by Postillion LLC 2019

Copyright 2019 by Laura Nelson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Laura Nelson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Laura Nelson has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

First edition

ISBN: 9781096132448

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy.

Find out more at reedsy.com

As before, this book is dedicated to the pirates and prisoners who died in the wreck of the Whydah Galley.

But especially for Peter and Louis.

Visit my blog The Whydah Pirates Speak at: PeterCorneliusHoof@blogspot.com

On Facebook, visit

@TheWhydahPiratesSpeak,

@PeterCorneliusHoof, and

@LouisLabous

As before, this book is dedicated to the pirates and prisoners who died in the wreck of the Whydah Galley.

But especially for Peter and Louis.

V isit my blog The Whydah Pirates Speak at: PeterCorneliusHoof@blogspot.com

On Facebook, visit @TheWhydahPiratesSpeak, @PeterCorneliusHoof, and @LouisLabous

Contents

Foreword

I dont remember thinking much about pirates when I was growing up. I know I watched a couple Errol Flynn movies at one point, but that was about it. My siblings and I never even played at being pirates.

Despite this non-interest in pirates, I felt myself strangely compelled to visit the Real Pirates exhibit when it came to Denver, Colorado, in 2011. Walking through the exhibit was a totally fascinating experience for me. I came out of it with a new field of interest in my life.

Researching and eventually writing about some of the men who sailed on the Whydah Galley has been a wondrous journey for me. So much information has been out there waiting for someone to bring it out into the light where people could learn about the reality of what it might have been like to be a pirate in the age of wooden sail.

I hope these fully researched and documented articles are as engaging for people to read as they were for me to write.

In this volume I included several folklore stories about the Whydah Galley and some of the men who sailed as pirates on her. Personally, I find comparing fact and legend to be illuminating.

Thanks must go out to people like Bonnie Cormier of Eastham Library for research assistance; Cindy Vallar who maintains the web site Pirates and Privateers for her help with research and letting me publish my articles on her blog; and finally to Baylus Brooks, author of Quest for Blackbeard , for his translations of documents from the French and thus bringing to light a whole trove of new information about Olivier Levasseur and events that happened after he parted from Sam Bellamy.

Thanks also goes out to Pam Fortner of Pamfortner.com for photographing the canvas for the cover.

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Of special note, I preserved the spellings from the original documents to give you the feel of how things were written in this period.

I hope everyone enjoys reading these articles and stories as much as I did writing and compiling them!

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Acknowledgement

Original cover art by S Raphael Vinci of @RaphaelVinciArtWork Cover design by Heath OCampo

iv

Tales of Piracy: How Six Pirates Were

Captured and Killed

A pril 26th, 1717, started out as a typical day in the life of the band of pirates led by Samuel Bellamy aboard their ship the Whydah . Like most pirates of their day, they expected to spend it hunting down

s hips to plunder. They might even arrive at a safe port where they could trade some of their stolen loot for rum and women, frivolously spent in a tavern or brothel. Unfortunately for them, fate had something entirely different in mind.

Bellamy had been in command of the Whydah since March. He had started out as a treasure hunter in Florida, diving for sunken Spanish silver. He acquired a couple of periaguas (canoes) and plundered a few ships, then hooked up with Benjamin Hornigold, who provided him an opportunity to learn the craft of high seas piracy. When the crew rebelled because Hornigold wouldnt attack English ships, Bellamy was elected captain, and his career took off. By the time the Whydah and the majority of her crew were lost on a shipwreck off Cape Cod in April of 1717, he had plundered about 50 ships and collected tens of thousands of dollars in treasure and coins.

That day, the pirates sailed northward along the Eastern seaboard of the American colonies, reportedly headed for Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Some accounts say that Bellamy wanted to reconnect with his lover, Maria Hallett. Others say he was headed towards a tavern he knew about in the area a place where he could trade some of their goods for cash and other necessities. Around 4 to 6 in the morning, between Nantucket Shoals and St Georges

THE WHYDAH PIRATES SPEAK, VOLUME 2

Banks, they crossed paths with a ship called the Mary Anne . Ordering the captain of the pink to strike her colors, Bellamy sent seven members of his crew over to her in a boat to take charge of her as a prize ship. 1

Of the seven men sent aboard the Mary Anne - Hendrik Quintor, Peter Cornelius Hoof, John Shuan, John Brown, Thomas South, Thomas Baker, and Simon Van Vorst - Baker came aboard with his sword drawn, while South and Shuan came aboard unarmed. They chose muskets, pistols, and cutlasses for arms. The captain of the Mary Anne , Crumpstey, was ordered to go aboard the Whydah with his ships papers and five members of his crew. Once on board the Whydah the crew of the Mary Anne were promptly held as prisoners. A perusal of her papers revealed that she was carrying a cargo of 7,000 gallons of Madeira wine.