SPANISH DOUBLOON
From the original coin found on the beach at Wellfleet, Mass., where Bellamy’s pirate ship was wrecked in 1717 and now in the possession of Charles A. Taylor.
A SPANISH “PIECE OF EIGHT”
From a coin in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society
No longer ago than the year 1900, Capt. Webster Eldridge of Chatham, secured two guns that undoubtedly came from the wreck of the wine ship. The guns of the “Whidaw” should be found where she first struck on the outer bar, as she turned bottom up before she broke up and came ashore.
The “Whidaw” came ashore about twelve o’clock at night. As soon as it was light, Thomas Davis, one of the two survivors, found his way to the house of Samuel Harding, about two miles distant from the wreck, and after telling his story Harding took him on his horse and they went to the shore and began to salvage what had washed up from the ship. They made several trips between the shore and the house. By ten o’clock a dozen others were there busily at work. The next day was Sunday and when Mr. Justice Doane reached the beach that morning he found that everything of value had been carried away. Davis was apprehended by him and a few days later the nine men in Barnstable gaol were placed on horseback and started for Boston under a strong guard and on May 4th they were placed in irons in the stone gaol that then was located where the City Hall Annex now stands.
Meanwhile, Governor Shute saw visions of a great store of pirate gold and so issued a proclamation charging all of His Majesty’s officers and subjects within the Province to use all diligence to seize and apprehend not only escaped pirates but “money, bullion, treasure, goods and merchandizes” from the pirate ship. He also dispatched Capt. Cyprian Southack to the scene of the wreck. Captain Southack had been in command of the “Province Galley” for over nineteen years and afterwards published a chart of the New England coast on which he located the pirate wreck. He hired a small sloop, the “Nathaniel,” John Sole, master, and sailed from Boston on May 1st, at ten o’clock in the morning, only five days after the “Whidaw” had come ashore. The wind was at the south, “a frisking gale,” and he didn’t reach Cape Cod harbor until the afternoon of the next day. There he hired a whale boat and sent two men to Truro where they got horses and at seven o’clock in the evening reached the wreck where a watch was maintained all night.
At four o’clock on the morning of May 3, 1717, the diligent captain started in a whale boat and crossed the Cape by means of the natural canal that existed at that time between Orleans and Eastham, sometimes called “Jeremy’s Drean.” At Truro, he was “much afronted by one Caleb Hopkins, Senr. of Freetown,” and nowhere on the Cape did he find a cordial spirit of coöperation, as may be surmised. He found the “Pepol very Stife and will not [give up] one thing of what they Gott on the Rack.” He wrote to the Governor that “Samuel Harding has a great many Riches that he saved out of the Rack being the first man there and says that the Englishman give him orders to Deliver nothing of the Riches they had saved, so I find the said Harding is as Gilty as the Pirates saved.”
The day after he arrived at Eastham, he posted a notice on the doors of three nearby meeting-houses announcing that he had been authorized by the Governor to discover and take care of the wreck, with power to “go into any house, shop, cellar, warehouse, room or other place and in case of resistance to break open any door, chests, trunks and other packages” and seize any plunder belonging to the wreck. But His Majesty’s “loving subjects” refused to disgorge. “They are very wise and will not tell one nothing of what they got on the Rack,” wrote the complaining captain. The coroner and his jury had ordered the victims of the wreck to be buried and demanded £83, as their due for the cost of burying the sixty-two bodies. Captain Southack claimed that public money should not be wasted in burying outlawed pirates and so the thrifty coroner “putt a stop” on some of the goods from the wreck and secured payment, which “is very hard,” writes the captain.
The fragments of the wrecked ship he found scattered along the shore for a distance of nearly four miles. The anchor of the “Whidaw” could be seen on the bar at low tide but the sea was so rough that it was impossible to go out in the whale boat that he had impressed until nearly a week had gone by and then nothing could be seen for the moving sand made the water thick and muddy. It also rained much of the time. Altogether, a disagreeable experience for the faithful captain! Eventually he was obliged to abandon his attempt to recover “the riches” believed to be buried in the sand on the bar and return to Boston. Fate also played him a scurvy trick by sending along a pirate vessel to capture the sloop “Swan,” Samuel Doggett, master, that had been ordered from Boston to bring back the goods saved from the wreck. After being plundered of stores to the value of £80 she was allowed to go. This happened on the voyage down to the Cape.
Does the sandy bar off Wellfleet still conceal the pirate gold? Who can say? Certainly no large salvage has ever been made. Moreover, there is a possibility that a part of it was carried off by some of the crew who may have escaped from the stranded ship. Captain Williams, the escort of Bellamy, also put in a belated appearance two days after the “Whidaw” was wrecked and came to anchor off shore and sent in a boat. Some salvage may have been effected then.