Famous Pirate Shipwrecks: There is only one confirmed pirate shipwreck ever discovered, The Whydah Galley. On April 26, 1717, the Whydah encountered a furious storm near Cape Cod.
The vessel drifted into Wellfleet, Massachusetts and swiftly broke apart. Thomas Davis, one of the few living members of Bellamy’s crew, even testified. He states, “In a quarter of an hour after the ship struck, the Mainmast was carried by the board, and in the Morning she was beaten to pieces.”
Famous Pirate Shipwrecks
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Come morning, a number of pirate corpses piled on the shoreline. Subsequently, dozens of Cape Cod’s nefarious wreckers (locally identified as “moon-cussers”) were already pillaging the remains. Upon hearing of the wreckage, then-governor Samuel Shute asked Cyprian Southack, a local cartographer and salvager, for a favor.
He was to retrieve “Money, Bullion, Treasure, Goods, and Merchandizes taken out of the said Ship.”When Southack reached the setting of the pirate shipwreck on May 3, he discovered that the ship’s remnants were spread out along the shoreline.
Black Swan
The “Black Swan” is located in waters where a number of Colonial period ships are believed to have sunk. There is no apparent hull of a shipwreck or other sufficient evidence at the site to conclusively identify a vessel from which the treasure may have originated.
The leading hypothesis suggests the treasure discovered at the “Black Swan” site may be associated with the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish vessel that had been assigned to transport mail, private passengers and consignments of merchant goods and other cargoes at the time of its sinking in 1804.
The 1660 Jupiter Historic Shipwreck
A King’s messenger ship laden with gold & silver treasures from the new world hither too lost is now being recovered in just 10 feet of gin clear water right in front of a public beach – just south of Jupiter Inlet in Florida!
Tortugas
The “Tortugas” excavation would become the world’s first deep-ocean remotely-operated archaeological excavation of a famous Pirate Shipwrecks site. Nearly 17,000 artifacts – some as small as seeds and pearls – were recovered from the site during the 1990-1991 excavation seasons.
Research suggests the “Tortugas” wreck is likely the remains of the Nuestra Senora de la Consolacion, one of the Spanish vessels sailing with the 1622 Tierra Firme treasure fleet bound for Spain loaded with the wealth of the New World.
Queen Anne’s Revenge
Believed to be discovered 1996 off the coast of North Carolina (Beaufort Inlet). Blackbeard’s ship ran aground in 1717.
More Info On- Famous Pirate Ports, Ships, Treasure
