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A pirate ship sat off Wellfleet
The Ship and the Hunter
The treasure hunter was Barry Clifford, who had located the only recovered pirate ship. It had sunk in 1717 and then lay on the bottom for roughly 250 years, hiding in plain sight right off the beaches of Cape Cod. Clifford was the best friend from childhood of the father of a boy named Chris Begg, so the ship's story was part of that family's life.
The School Article
In his senior year at Barnstable High School, that boy had a favorite teacher, Mick Carlin, who taught journalism. Work that was good enough got published in the school newspaper, so he wrote about the pirate ship, and his piece ran.
Found Treasure
The assignment started a love of research. It showed him that working with something long enough can lead to an insight or a treasure, the way it did for Clifford. Decades later, the same boy runs a fund that holds nine companies, and he thinks of each one as a found treasure: an exceptional business that was being ignored.
Why did the ship sink off Cape Cod?
The Whydah Gally went down in a violent spring storm on April 26 and 27, 1717. Under Captain Samuel Bellamy, it was driven onto the sandbars off Wellfleet, and more than a hundred of its crew were lost. Historical records name only two survivors. The ship had been built in London as a slave ship and was captured by Bellamy's crew off the Bahamas earlier that year.
Why did the wreck stay hidden so long?
The wreck lay roughly 1,500 feet offshore in about fifteen feet of water, but shifting sandbars buried it under sand. Clifford's search combined old documents with underwater surveys of the seabed. Divers identified the ship in 1985 when they recovered a bronze bell inscribed with the ship's name and the year 1716.
Why are pirate shipwrecks so rare?
Pirates usually kept a ship only until they found a better one, and many vessels were burned, abandoned, or broken up for parts. Few went to the bottom with their cargo intact. The Whydah is the first pirate shipwreck whose identity has been verified through recovered artifacts. The site has yielded gold and silver coins, cannon, and personal belongings.
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