Whydah Gally

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The English ship Whydah [ wɪdɑ ] was built in 1716 as slaves vans and transported under the pirate Sam Bellamy the most famous pirate treasure of all time. Was named the Whydah to Ouidah, a transit point for slaves on the West African coast in what is now Benin. The name means " Bird of Paradise".

History

In February 1717 the slave ship was discovered in the Windward Passage of the pirate fleet of Sam Bellamy. After three days of chase, it was surrendered without a fight by Captain Lawrence Prince. The pirates captured precious goods such as rum, cane sugar, molasses, luxury goods, gold and silver to the value of 20,000 to 30,000 pounds sterling. Supposedly was among the confiscated gems, a ruby ​​the size of a hen's egg. The Whydah was still in very good condition, so that Bellamy made ​​her his flagship. His crew, the " Robin Hood's Men" was called, soon numbered more than 150 men, 30 of them escaped slaves. After the pirates hijacked the Jamaican frigate Tanner and sugar, indigo and silver had captured in the value of 5000 livres, there was the greatest pirate treasure of the history reported to date on board the Whydah. Before boarding the ship Bellamy was in fact already been on the prowl for 18 months and had no way to unload his treasures before.

In the night of 26 April 27, 1717, a hurricane threw just 150 meters off Cape Cod, the destinations, the Whydah on a sandbank. Soon after, she fell, only two men survived. One of them was the 23 -year-old ship's carpenter Thomas Davis. He was tried as a pirate in court, but was able to establish that he had participated only under duress. He was acquitted.

On July 20, 1984, the Americans Barry Clifford discovered the first coin of the sunken treasure. Clifford, who grew up with the stories of sailors in Cape Cod, founded after the uplift of about one-sixth of the treasure, the Whydah Museum, with 200,000 items, with a value between 20 and 40 million U.S. dollars. On July 19, 1998 we also discovered the hull of the ship.

Further finds of pirate ships

The Whydah is one of only four shipwrecks in which it is established that it was a pirate ship. In addition to the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of Blackbeard, which was discovered in 1996 by Mark Wilde- Ramsing, also the Speaker of the pirate John Bowen by the historian Patrick Lizé 1980 was discovered off the coast of Mauritius. The last documented pirate wreck found is the 1721 lower Fiery Dragon by William Condon, which was also found by Barry Clifford in 2000 in the harbor of Ile Sainte -Marie off Madagascar.