Whydah pistol

Some of the bones had been broken, likely when the ship capsized, crushing its passengers. Discovered embedded in a concretion, the anonymous pirate died with a pistol in his hand and metal—likely gold—stashed in his pocket, Clifford told the Times. The only authenticated pirate wreck in the world, the Whydah boasts a storied history. The bodies of crew members eventually washed up on the beach, but another 43—including Bellamy—seemingly went down with the ship.

Originally a British slave ship , the vessel was captured by Bellamy in early The New England Historical Society notes that the captain treated all crew members equally, allowing them to vote on significant decisions. Artifacts previously recovered from the wreck include 15, coins; weapons such as a three-pound,. They would have weighed around 50 pounds, he believed, light enough for one man to carry, and the pistols were packed onto the top of the chest in case of trouble.

Those same primary source materials indicate there may be as much as 4. That includes gold dust used in transactions when the Whydah was a slaver before it was captured by Bellamy. Whydah divers have recovered over smaller concretions and 14 massive ones that weigh 3, to 9. They sit under the sand on the hardpan bottom, typically among the glacial erratics, stones that were dragged across the landscape and left behind during the last Ice Age.

The concretions are X-rayed to give researchers an idea of what they contain. Sometimes it is something that may not be a precious metal, but the preserved remains of a pirate trapped in the chaotic debris of a shipwreck. Barry Clifford and a team of historical researchers and divers found the wreck in For 23 years, Macort, himself a diver who works the wreck in summers, has been looking at a huge piece of concreted sand that only recently yielded the remains of a pirate. Another concretion held the remains of John King, a boy estimated to be between 8 and 11 years old who was drawn to the pirate life and became trapped under cannons following the sinking.