Six skeletons have been recovered from the wreck Captain ‘Black Sam’ Bellamy’s pirate ship, the Whydah, which sank more than 300 years ago in waters off New England in 1717.
The remains were identified in several large concretions – hard, compact masses of stone and sand which form on the seabed – which were examined back on land. The bones were found packed inside, and can be seen on x-rays of the blocks.
The Whydah sank in 1717 with Black Sam, most infamous and successful pirate ever to sail the sea, and 144 crew on board.
The remains were discovered when experts X-rayed several large concretions – solid lumps of rock formed on the seabed over time. Investigators say the remains were discovered at the wreck site of The Whydah, which went down off Wellfleet in 1717.
The Whydah was a state of the art ship built in 1715 in England. It weighed 300 tonnes, was 102 feet long and loaded with 18 cannons and is the world’s only authenticated pirate wreck.
Marie Kesten Zahn, an archaeologist and education coordinator at the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, probes the concretion surrounding a leg bone that was salvaged from the Whydah shipwreck off the coast of Wellfleet on Cape Cod.
‘We hope that modern, cutting-edge technology will help us identify these pirates and reunite them with any descendants who could be out there,’ said underwater explorer Barry Clifford, in the statement.
Casey Sherman, another member of the Whydah research team managed to trace Black Sam’s DNA through a bloodline descendant in England in 2018.
The sample was tested against one of the human bones found in the wreck during an earlier find of remains.
‘That bone was identified as a human male with general ties to the Eastern Mediterranean area,’ Sherman said
Following the completion of their recovery operation the researchers scanned the concretions with X-rays to see what was trapped on the inside. In 2018 the same team had recovered a concretion that contained the skeletal remains of one lost pirate , they were hoping to find something similar this time—and those hopes were not disappointed.
So far, examinations have revealed the entombed bones of six separate individuals, who were among the 40 remaining Whydah crew members whose remains had still yet to be unaccounted for.
Most of the bodies of the men who drowned on that fateful evening in 1717 washed up on shore shortly thereafter. But among the bodies that have never been recovered is that of Captain “Black Sam” Bellamy , who during his brief yet glorious career captured 53 ships and approximately $130 million worth of treasure.
According to Forbes Magazine, Bellamy was the richest of all the legendary pirate captains. But his fortune ran out the night he sailed his unsuspecting crew into the vicious and unforgiving winds of a massive storm (a dreaded nor’easter) that suddenly developed in the treacherous shallow waters off the Cape.
