He was called Black Sam because he did not use the powdered wigs that were the fashion of the day, but instead, tied back his long black hair with a black velvet ribbon
Samuel Bellamy, the youngest of six children, was born in 1689 in Hittisleigh, Devonshire; his father was Stephen Bellamy and his mother was Elizabeth Bellamy who unfortunately became ill while birthing him and died before he was christened. In his teens Bellamy joined the Royal Navy and fought in several battles.
Later he sailed to Cape Cod, where he met and fell in love with a young girl called Maria Hallett who lived in Eastham, Massachusetts. Local lore has it that while her parent liked the young sailor well enough they would not allow the couple to marry as they felt that he had no prospects. In an effort to prove his worth Bellamy persuaded an older friend Paulsgrave Williams to finance a treasure hunting expedition and they left Cape Cod determined to join those that were salvaging treasure from the Spanish Plate Fleet that had sunk in a hurricane off the coast of Florida on the 31st of July 1715.
The expedition was not the success that they expected, the Spaniards had already recovered most of the easy to get at treasure and their salvage fleet was still at work. In addition the news of the disaster having spread far and wide, the area was swamped with others seeking to make their fortunes. With their hopes of easy riches shattered, but unwilling to return penniless, the pair looked around and coming to a decision, joined with the pirate Jennings and others as they plundered the camps of the salvage divers.
After parting with Jennings and co, they next joined the crew of the Mary Anne captained by Benjamin Hornigold whose first mate was Edward Teach. Later when the crew, who were unhappy with Hornigold because of his refusal to attack English ships, deposed him, they chose Bellamy to be the new captain of the Mary Anne and Williams to be Quartermaster. After parting company with Hornigold and Teach, Bellamy had within a year had established a base in Trellis Bay on Beef Island in the British Virgin Islands and had sallied out from there to plunder more than fifty ships. One of the first vessels he captured was the Sultana and after handing over command of the Mary Anne to Williams, he made the Sultana his new flagship.
With the authorities well aware of his presence in the area Bellamy decided it was time to move on and it was then that he came across the prize that was to make him famous. After a three day chase he caught up with and boarded the vessel. She was a 300 ton English slave ship called the Whydah and she had just finished the second leg of the Atlantic Slave trade. This was her second such voyage and she was fully loaded with a fortune in gold and other valuable goods. True to the reputation he had gained as being The Prince of Pirates, Bellamy gave the Sultana to the ex captain of the Whydah and let him go.
After taking time out to remodel his new flagship – he upgraded her from eighteen to twenty-eight guns – Bellamy told the crew it was time to go home. The Whydah, the Mary Anne and one of the captured ships formed a small flotilla and set off northwards. As they neared Cape Cod, Williams told Bellamy that he wished to visit his mother and sisters at Rhode Island, and the two agreed to meet later near Maine. The Whydah with the other ship as an escort continued on towards Cape Cod; no doubt Bellamy was planning to visit his lover and show her family how well he had done. If that was his plan, he was doomed never to carry it out.
On the 26th of April 1717 the two ships were caught in a violent storm and were driven apart by the seventy miles an hour winds and the mountainous seas with waves running thirty foot high. Bellamy fought the storm for four days and three nights, all the time trying to steer her into deeper waters, but try as he might the Whydah was forced shoreward. Eventually she was driven onto a sandbank only five-hundred feet from the shore where she was pounded continually by the waves. Then at midnight the masts snapped, fell overboard and dragged the heavily laden ship into thirty foot of water where she turned turtle, broke apart and sank, taking Bellamy and his crew down with her.
One-hundred and three bodies were washed ashore and buried by the coroner, forty-three men were unaccounted for, and three managed to reach the shore alive. The other pirate ship was also wrecked several miles to the south with only six men surviving. All nine of the survivors were arrested and taken to Boston where they were prosecuted for piracy. Six were found guilty and hanged, one was sent into slavery and two of them as forced men were released. Of the two who were released, one slid quietly into history, while the other, a Welsh carpenter by the name of Thomas Davis, who survived the wreck of the Whydah, told the stories that became a major source of information on the life and death of Samuel Bellamy.
