The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked, and Found

"Black Sam" Bellamy was a greedy pirate captain, always searching for larger and faster ships. He lucked into sighting the Whydah--a slave ship known for its size and speed, "loaded with a fortune in gold [and] silver"--on its February 1717 return trip from Jamaica to England. Bellamy captured the vessel and transformed it into the most feared pirate ship of its day. But in April of that same year, during a devastating storm off the coast of Cape Cod, the Whydah sank; it lay on the ocean floor for 267 years until a team of treasure hunters and marine archaeologists found it in 1984. The excavation continues to this day, but the discoveries so far have been invaluable in helping reconstruct our knowledge of the "golden age" of piracy: "a period of unrestrained murder, robbery, and kidnapping on the high seas" that paradoxically also boasted a "spirit of democracy and equality." Sandler enlivens the historical narrative by fleshing out the biographical details of the cast of characters, sharing (and occasionally debunking) various myths and legends, providing an overview of the relevant social and economic factors of the day, and spotlighting the work of excavating the shipwreck site. Useful photographs, maps, and sidebars are interspersed throughout, while source notes, bibliography, and index are appended. jonathan hunt