While many romance novels offer readers stories of a heroine beguiled by a dark and handsome pirate and treasure ships filled with plunder, the character of Black Sam Bellamy, the pirate in the novel Where Once We Loved, was indeed real.
Captain Samuel Bellamy, known as “Black Sam” Bellamy, was an English sailor turned pirate in the early 18th century. He has been called the wealthiest pirate in recorded history. In 1715, Bellamy traveled to Cape Cod allegedly to find some of his relatives living there. According to local lore, he had an affair with a local girl, Goody Hallett, the “Witch of Wellfleet.”
It is said that Goody Hallett’s parents did not think a poor sailor was a suitable husband for their daughter. Not that being a pirate was considered the worst of occupations. Kings and governments often enlisted ship captains as Privateers to plunder enemies’ ships. But to be a man, a sailor, or even a pirate without money, without means, would not be a fitting match for their daughter. Legend tells of Bellamy’s intent to seek his fortune on the high seas and return to take Goody Hallet away.
Soon after Bellamy left the Cape, Goody Hallett was found to be pregnant. She gave birth to a son, concealing the baby in a barn while she foraged for food. However, one day when Goody Hallet returned to the barn she discovered that her child had choked to death from the hay he had been laying in. Goody was arrested for the child’s murder and imprisoned in the Old Jail of Barnstable, Massachusetts (the oldest remaining wooden jailhouse in the United States and a building believed to be still haunted by her. She was eventually exiled from the town, taking shelter in a ramshackle hut at the sea’s edge in neighboring Eastham Town. There she waited for Bellamy’s return, often seen standing on the cliffs above Nauset Beach, scanning the horizon for her lover’s ship.
In the spring of 1717, Bellamy encountered the slave ship Whydah (pronounced WHID-uh) sailing between Cuba and Spain. The Whydah had just finished the second (Africa to the Caribbean) leg of the Atlantic slave trade, homeward bound with a fortune in gold, ivory, and other precious trade goods from the sale of slaves. After a brief chase, seeing he could not outrun Bellamy’s ship, the Whydah’s Captain surrendered by lowering the ship’s flag.
After seizing the Whydah, Bellamy turned his newly captured flagship, its hull bursting with riches, northwards towards the eastern coast of the Carolinas and on to New England. Sadly, Bellamy’s return to his lover Goody Hallett was cut short. The Whydah was caught in a violent nor’easter storm off Cape Cod on the night of April 26,1717. The storm drove the ship onto the sand bar shoals, just 500 feet off Wellfleet, Massachusetts. A little after midnight, the masts snapped and the storm drew the heavily loaded ship into shallow water, where she capsized and soon sank, taking Bellamy and all but two of the Whydah’s crew of 146 men to their deaths.
As for Goody Halley, little is known of her life afterward though local stories claim the townspeople, fearful of the murderess who lived alone far from the town, believed her to be a witch for having caused the death of her child and then living as a recluse at the edge of the sea. Some say she can still be seen on stormy nights, standing watch on the cliffs of WellFleet.
In July 1984, Black Sam Bellamy became famous again when his ship, the Whydah, was found in the waters off Wellfleet, becoming the first authenticated pirate shipwreck ever discovered in North America. At the time of its sinking, the Whydah was the richest prize ever captured with a treasure of roughly five tons of gold, silver, and precious jewels. The wreck was discovered by underwater explorer Barry Clifford.
In 1985, Clifford recovered the ship’s bell, upon which were the words “THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716”, the first incontrovertible evidence of his find. He subsequently founded The Whydah Pirate Museum on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Mass.