User:Hswsofun

Sam Bellamy was an honest merchant sailor who came to Cape Cod in the spring of 1715 and fell in love with a young Eastham girl, Maria Hallett. Sam was strong, bold, and handsome, and Maria loved him dearly. Maria's parents found young Sam likable enough, but they wanted more for their daughter than a penniless sailor could provide, and they forbade the lovers to wed.

One autumn day came news of the shipwreck of an entire Spanish treasure fleet off the Florida coast. Sam saw his chance to make both a fortune and a marriage. He bid Maria farewell and, together with a few other stouthearted men, set off to salvage some of the tons of silver resting on the bottom of the sea. But luck was bad, and they found nothing. Sam could not bear the thought of returning empty-handed, so he turned pirate, learning his trade from an aging Benjamin Hornigold. Immediately, he was enormously successful, and he and his crew took more than fifty ships within the year.

In February 1717, Bellamy spied his dream ship, the Whydah, on the horizon. The Whydah was fast, and the chase lasted three days. After a token battle, "Black Sam," as he was sometimes called, easily captured the ship. He and his crew transferred their booty and cannon to their prize, donated their old ship to the defeated captain and crew, and set a course northward.

The romance between Sam and Maria had caused a great scandal in Eastham, and Maria had been banished to the cliffs of what is now Wellfleet. There she made a meager living by weaving cloth, and she became a medicine woman, or, as some said, a witch. But the good folk of Eastham who scorned her by day nonetheless crept to her cabin by night to be cured of their ills. It was also by night that Maria walked the cliffs, watching the running lights of passing ships, hoping that one might be carrying her lover back home to her.

The big ship had come from the south with a fleet of lesser pirate vessels trailing in its wake. It was laden with plunder: gold dust and ivory from Guinea; sugar and indigo from Jamaica; expensive goods hijacked from the English; thousands of gold doubloons and silver pieces of eight; and priceless East Indian gems, including a ruby the size of a hen's egg and worth a queen's ransom.

As the fleet was cruising northward along the coast of Cape Cod in the late afternoon of April 26, 1717, fog began to roll in. By 10 p.m., a storm was on top of the fleet.

At about 11:45 p.m., the Whydah's lookout spotted breakers ahead and screamed a warning. But it was too late. The crew tried to claw its way offshore against the wind, but with no luck. Suddenly, the great ship lurched as it ran aground, stern first. Within fifteen minutes, the mainmast had toppled and thirty-foot breakers had pushed the ship off the sandbar and into deeper water, where it quickly capsized and broke up.

On that same dark April night, with thundering surf and a howling wind, Maria was walking the cliffs. She heard the dying screams of drowning men (only two would survive) and the last clang of a storm-tossed bell. Then her grief-wracked wails drowned out the wind itself, for she recognized her beloved Sam's voice among the dying.