Movies - Samuel Bellamy

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Samuel Bellamy, aka "Black Sam" Bellamy or "John Bellamy", was a formidable pirate in the early eighteenth century. He is most famous because the wreckage of his ship was discovered off Cape Cod in 1984. The ship, (along with the two ships escorting her) the Whydah Gally, was the largest pirate prize ever captured at the time it sank in 1717. The treasure held indigo, gold, and over 30,000 pounds sterling. After taking the Whydah in the Carribbean and giving the original Whydah crew their ship, the Sultana, the pirates turned to sail for New England and died in a fierce storm to which the ship succumbed. The discovery of the wreck was made in July of 1984 by a diving crew led and funded by Barry Clifford. The treasure hunter founded a museum on the shore of Provincetown, Massachusetts which is dedicated to Samuel Bellamy and houses many artifacts which were brought from the actual wreck, including the ship's bell. There were only two known survivors of the 146 pirates on the ship. Sam was not one of them. The Whydah is named for a trading post on the Ivory Coast.

In his earlier piratical career, Samuel Bellamy had sailed with such nautical luminaries as Benjamin Hornigold and Edward Teach, who was also known as Blackbeard. ----

The following text is excerpted from Appendix C of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone, which is a Free text.

:Daniel Defoe, writing under the pen name Captain Charles Johnson¹, wrote what became the first standard historical text on pirates, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. According to Patrick Pringle's Jolly Roger, pirate recruitment was most effective among the unemployed, escaped bondsmen, and transported criminals. The high seas made for an instantaneous levelling of class inequalities. Defoe relates that a pirate named Captain Bellamy made this speech to the captain of a merchant vessel he had taken as a prize. The captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates.

:"I am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?"

:When the captain replied that his conscience would not let him break the laws of God and man, the pirate Bellamy continued:

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