Born in Devonshire, England, in 1689, Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy traveled to America and for a time settled in Massachusetts. Various legends tell of him falling in love with a young girl by the name of Maria Hallett. In 1715, Bellamy heard of a Spanish treasure ship that had sunk off the coast of Florida, and he and a friend decided to salvage the ship. They sailed for Florida, but were unsuccessful in their salvage efforts. Not wanting to return to Maria without some form of riches, Bellamy joined a pirate crew on a ship called the Mary Anne, captained by Benjamin Hornigold. When the crew of the Mary Anne voted to attack ships of all nations, which was contrary to Hornigold's beliefs, he was summarily deposed and Bellamy became captain. Within a year, Samuel Bellamy had established a base at Trellis Bay on Beef Island in the British Virgin Islands, and had plundered more than fifty ships in the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean. Bellamy was additionally referred to by the descriptive nicknames “Black” Bellamy or “Black Sam,” because he grew his black hair long and tied it back with a black ribbon.

In late 1716, the British navy sent ships to the Caribbean to capture Bellamy and Blackbeard. Both men evaded capture, and Blackbeard drove the navy out of the area, but Bellamy decided that perhaps it would be wiser to leave the area altogether. As he was departing from the Caribbean, heading back to New England and his love, Maria, he spied an English slave ship called the Whydah Gally. The Whydah had already taken her cargo of slaves from Africa and traded them in the Caribbean for goods including sugar, indigo, ivory, coins, and weapons. Bellamy and his crew captured the slave ship and took all its booty as their own, then continued to sail north along the Atlantic coast.

In late April of 1717, the Whydah struck a sandbar along the coast of Cape Cod during a violent storm. The ship sank, and Bellamy and most of his crew of approximately 140 pirates were killed. The few who survived were captured and tried in Boston, where 7 were hanged and 2 were released after it was decided that they'd not been willing participants in Bellamy's piracy. In 1984, the Whydah became the first known pirate ship in United States waters to be salvaged (see Chapter 19).