The pirates on board the pink drank plentifully of the wine on board and took turns at the helm. As she was leaky all hands were forced to pump hard and in consequence damned the vessel and wished they had never seen her. A pirate named Thomas Baker was in command of the company on the pink and told Fitzgerald, the mate, that Captain Bellamy held a commission from King George, and Simon van Vorst, one of his men, said, “Yes, and we will stretch it to the World’s end.”
At this time there were about fifty forced men on board the pirate vessels “over whom they kept a watchful eye, and no Man was suffered to write a word, but what was nailed up to the Mast. The names of the forced men were put in the Watch Bill and fared as others. They might have had what money they wanted from the Quartermaster, who kept a Book for that purpose.”[92] It was common report on board that they had with them about £20,000, in gold and silver.
About ten o’clock in the evening it came on very thick weather. The wind blew from the east, it lightened and rained hard and the vessels soon lost sight of each other. Fitzgerald, the mate, was then at the helm and suddenly found that the pink was among the breakers. All hands tried to trim the head sail but before they could do it the vessel ran ashore opposite to Slutts-bush, at the back of Stage Harbor, on the south side of Cape Cod in what is now the town of Orleans. Baker, the pirate in command, at once ordered the foremast and mizzen mast cut down and the heavy sea soon drove the pink high on shore. Some of the prize crew, fearful of apprehension, then said “For God’s sake let us go down into the Hould and Die together” and later asked Fitzgerald to read to them out of the common prayer book which he did for about an hour. As the pink gave no signs of breaking up everybody remained on board until daybreak when they found it possible on the shore side to jump directly on land. It was a small island called Pochet Island, now a part of the mainland of Orleans. Here they breakfasted on sweetmeats found in a chest, washed down with wine from the cargo. At the time they could see at anchor beyond the bar, the snow and the small sloop, both having ridden out the storm safely. About the middle of the morning they worked off shore.
At ten o’clock in the forenoon two men, John Cole and William Smith, came out to the island in a canoe and carried them all to the mainland where they went to Cole’s house and stayed for a short time, “looking very dejected.” Cole afterwards testified that they asked the way to Rhode Island and seemed in great haste to be off.
News of the wreck traveled swiftly and soon reached the ears of Joseph Doane of Eastham, a justice of the peace and representative to the Great and General Court. Fitzgerald testified at the trial of the pirates that Mackconachy, the cook on the pink, had bravely denounced the seven pirates as soon as they reached the house of John Cole. At any rate, Justice Doane, with a deputy sheriff and posse of men, was soon in pursuit of the fleeing pirates who were overtaken and seized at Eastham tavern and taken to Barnstable gaol.
Meanwhile, the “Whidaw” drove ashore ten miles[93] to the north with a great loss of life. Only two out of the ship’s company of one hundred and forty-six men reached the shore alive,—Thomas Davis, a young Welsh shipwright who had been forced the previous December, and John Julian, an Indian, born on Cape Cod,—these two men, by great endurance and good fortune, not only swam ashore from the bar on which the “Whidaw” was breaking up, but after reaching the shore successfully scaled “the Table Land” and escaped the smother of pounding rollers beneath.
Davis told the judges of the Admiralty Court in Boston that when the thunder-storm broke, the “Whidaw” lost sight of her escorts and like the pink soon found breakers ahead. An anchor was let go but the violence of the sea was so great that the cable was cut and the attempt made to work off shore but she soon drove on the bar. A quarter of an hour after she struck, the mainmast went by the board and in the morning the fine new ship was a tangled mass of wreckage. About sixteen prisoners were drowned including Crumpstey, the master of the pink. “The riches on board were laid together in one head,” testified Davis.
While the condemned pirates were awaiting execution they were taken to the North Meeting House, as an edifying spectacle, and there the Rev. Cotton Mather preached a sermon which was published under the title: “Instructions to the Living from the Condition of the Dead.” In this pamphlet he states that “when it appeared that the wrecked ship was breaking up the pirates murdered their prisoners on board lest they should escape and appear as witnesses. Wounds were afterwards found on their dead bodies washed up by the sea.” Nowhere in the testimony given at the trial is there an allusion to anything of the sort. Davis, the white survivor, testified in great detail and makes no mention of such horrible brutality. That dead bodies may have come ashore battered and mutilated is highly probable. Every great loss of life in a wrecked ship that has broken up and buffeted its victims has exhibited similar horrors.
Another tale that has survived relates to the supposed heroism of the captain of the Irish pink. The “Boston News-Letter” of April 29-May 6, 1717, prints news of the wreck and states that “The Pyrates being free with the Liquor that the Captive had, got themselves Drunk and asleep, and the Captive master in the Night, thought it a fit opportunity to run her ashore on the back side of Eastham.” Nearly eighty years later a citizen of Wellfleet wrote a short history of the town with an account of the pirate wreck, in which he doubtless perpetuated the local traditions. He relates that Bellamy’s entire fleet was “cast on the shore of what is now Wellfleet, being led to the shore by the captain of a snow, which was made a prize on the day before: who had the promise of the snow as a present, if he would pilot the fleet into Cape Cod harbor; the captain, suspecting that the pirate would not keep his promise, and that instead of clearing his ship, as was his pretence, his intentions were to plunder the inhabitants of Provincetown. The night being dark, a lantern was hung in the shrouds of the snow, the captain of which, instead of piloting where he was ordered, approached so near the land, that the pirate’s large ship which followed him struck on the outer bar; the snow being less, struck much nearer the shore. The fleet was put in confusion; a violent storm arose; and the whole fleet was shipwrecked on the shore. Many in the smaller vessels got safe on shore. Those that were executed, were the pirates put on board a prize schooner before the storm.... At times to this day [1793], there are King William and Queen Mary coppers picked up, and pieces of silver, called cob money. The violence of the seas moves the sands upon the outer bar; so that at times the iron caboose of the ship, at low ebb, has been seen.”[94]
