Envisioning a “Pirate” Nest: Slavery, Piracy, and the Final Voyage of the Whydah

The Whydah Gally wrecked off Cape Cod on April 26, 1717. Its discovery over 250 years later sparked a battle over the public history of the slave ship-turned-pirate ship. Building on my dissertation research, this paper retraces how Samuel Bellamy and his pirates’ seizure of the slave ship Whydah resulted in an increased push to suppress piracy on both sides of the Atlantic. All of the efforts to suppress the pirates who seized the Whydah are inseparable from the Whydah’s history as a slave ship. The new generation of slave traders who facilitated the Whydah’s final voyage strove to ensure that the pirates who captured the ship would be the last of their kind. Stakeholders connected to the Whydah’s slaving voyage used their legal and economic might to call for piracy’s end, while the maritime communities exploiting the labor of the Whydah’s captives no longer depended on pirates to meet their needs. As a result, retracing the Whydah’s path as it sailed and sank illuminates a pivotal crossroads where slavery’s expansion precipitated piracy’s decline.

The opening of the British slave trade in the years following the demise of the Royal African Company’s monopoly facilitated London’s hold on the transatlantic slave trade, which made the Whydah’s voyage possible and would later foster efforts to suppress piracy. The RAC viewed separate traders, such as Whydah financier Humphry Morice, as “pirates.” If Morice was a pirate, he built an extensive pirate nest in London to transform the slave trade. At the same time, Morice and other slave traders spearheaded efforts to suppress the pirates disrupting the slave trade. Morice and his peers capitalized on their business and political connections to rid the Atlantic of piracy and free the sea for slavery.