"Expedition Whydah" by Barry Clifford

The Wall Street Journal reviews Expedition Whydah!

"Let’s see—pirates, treasure, shipwreck, Cape Cod: Yep, it’s the recipe for perfect summer reading, and it’s all true.Growing up on the Cape in the 1950’s Barry Clifford listened as his Uncle Bill told tales of Black Sam Bellamy, an 18^th-century pirate who, while attempting to collect his lover, Maria Hallet, was shipwrecked and drowned with the other men on board the Whydah near Eastham, Mass…Mr. Clifford never forgot those stories…After his uncle died from cancer, nostalgia spurred Mr. Clifford to look for the wreck. When he discovered the Whydah in 1984, it was the first documented pirate ship ever found.

Ironically, the Whydah’s captain didn’t plan on becoming a pirate. Indeed, like Mr. Clifford, Bellamy wanted to get rich by raising silver and gold from sunken ships. On July 31, 1715, a Spanish fleet of 11 ships was caught in a hurricane on the east coast of Florida. Hundreds of people died, but many more survived and set about bringing up treasure from the wrecked ships. Word of the bonanza quickly spread and everyone who had a ship headed for the area.

Bellamy was an unemployed seaman who had recently arrived from England to live with relatives on the Cape. He managed to borrow money, buy a ship and hire a crew of 30, and head for the sunken fleet. Alas, by the time he arrived off of Florida, the site was picked clean. Rather than return home poorer than when they left, Bellamy and his men “went on the account” or turned pirate. They captured the slave ship Whydah, a much better vessel than their own, and transferred their flag to her.

Expedition Whydah is told at a leisurely, comfortable page. Accounts of the modern search for the Whydah are interspersed with a history of Bellamy’s piratical adventures. The book offers much interesting recent information on pirates (as opposed to “shiver me timbers” lore) and provides a balanced look at the modern-day controversies of archaeology and race that eventually intruded on Mr. Clifford’s successful search. The book is well designed and charmingly illustrated…