Samuel Bellamy

Captain Samuel Bellamy (c. February 23, 1689 – April 26, 1717), aka Black Sam, the Prince of Pirates, was an English pirate who operated in the early 18th century. Bellamy and his crew captured 53 ships in a pirate career that lasted little more than a year, but in this time established Bellamy as the richest pirate in recorded history. Bellamy and his crew called themselves 'Robin Hood's Men'. Bellamy became known for his mercy, his most widely used monicker Black Sam came from his choice to not wear a powdered wig, as was fashionable, instead simply tying his long black hair back with a band. Bellamy was well-known to his contemporaries and chroniclers as a distinctive figure, a tall, strong, well mannered and very tidy man. He liked expensive clothes, especially black coats. His favourite weapons were four duelling pistols that he always carried in his sash. Bellamy's Jolly Roger, the Death's head and bones across, is the most famous pirate flag in history.

Bellamy was the youngest of six known children born to Stephen and Elizabeth Bellamy in the parish of Hittisleigh in Devonshire, England, in 1689. his mother died soon after, and was buried on 23rd of February, 1689, three weeks before Samuel's baptism on 18th of March. In his late teens, Bellamy joined the Royal Navy, and fought in several battles in the early 18th Century. Leaving a wife and child in England, Bellamy moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he allegedly took up with a  beautiful 15 year old named Maria Hallett. A short time later Bellamy left on a salvage voyage, hoping to recover treasure from the Spanish plate fleet sunk off the coast of Florida, accompanied by his friend and financier Palgraves Williams. While Bellamy was at sea, Hallett gave birth to his child, who survived only a short time. The scandal eventually led to Hallett being jailed, her sentence was relatively short, but Hallett was exiled from the town. The salvage voyage apparently met with little success, as they soon turned to piracy in the crew of pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold, who commanded the Mary Anne with his first mate, a then-unknown Edward Teach. In the summer of 1716, there was unrest within the crew surrounding Hornigold's reluctance to attack English ships, and by a majority vote of the crew, Hornigold was deposed as captain of the Mary Anne and Bellamy replaced him. Hornigold left the vessel with those loyal to him, including Teach. 

Once embarked upon his pirate career, Bellamy soon captured a second ship, the Sultana, which was converted into a galley, and with approval of the crew, Bellamy assigned his friend Palsgrave Williams as its commander. In the spring of 1717, Bellamy captured his greatest prize in the form of the Whydah Gally in the strait known as the Windward Passage. Captained by Dutch buccaneer Laurens Prins, the 300-ton, 18 gun Whydah Gally was a slave ship on its maiden voyage from England, having recently sold 312 slaves and was loaded with gold, ivory, medicine, dyes and other precious goods.
Bellamy chased the Whydah Gally for three days before coming within range. After a single shot, Captain Prins surrendered the Whydah Gally by lowering her flag. True to his reputation for generosity, Bellamy allowed Prins and his crew to take the Sultana in exchange. Removing the captain's quarters and upgrading the ship to 28 guns, Bellamy turned his new flagship northwards along the eastern coast of the Carolinas and on to New England.
Bellamy was known for being an ideologue, and believing strongly in what piracy stood for. He is reported to have said to the captain of a sloop he captured:

"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?"

Just two months after acquiring the Whydah Gally, as she and the Mary Anne approached Cape Cod, Williams told Bellamy that he wished to visit his family in Rhode Island, and the two agreed to meet up again near Maine. If Bellamy intended to return to his lover Maria Hallett, he failed. The Whydah Gally was swept up in a violent storm off Cape Cod at midnight, and was driven onto the sand bar shoals in 16 feet of water some 500 feet from the coast of what is now Wellfleet, Massachusetts. At 15 minutes past midnight, the masts snapped and drew the heavily-loaded ship into 30 feet of water where she capsized and quickly sank, taking Bellamy and 143 men with her, only two survived.
The same storm wrecked the Mary Anne that night several miles south of the Whydah Gally, leaving seven survivors. All nine survivors from the two ships were captured and prosecuted for piracy in Boston, and six were hanged in October of 1717 for piracy, two were acquitted, the court believing their testimony that they had been forced into piracy. The last, a Native American from the Miskito tribe in Central America, John Julian, is believed to have been sold into slavery to John Quincy, the grandfather of U.S. President John Quincy Adams.

In July 1984, the wreck of the Whydah Gally was found, making it the first authenticated pirate shipwreck discovered in North America. At the time of its sinking, Bellamy's ship was the largest pirate prize ever captured, and the treasure in its hold amassed roughly 4.5 to 5 tons, including huge quantities of indigo, ivory, gold, and 20,000 to 30,000 pounds sterling, divided into 180 sacks of 50-pound (23 kg) each.