Wreck may hold $800M

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 8

Wreck may hold $800M

NZPA-Reuter Wellfleet Divers have found a wreck that may be the remains of a pirate ship holding about $BO6 million in gold, silver and other treasure, says a Massachusetts state Government official. An archaeology team led by Barry Clifford found on Friday what might be the wreck of eighteenth-century pirate Sam Bellamy’s ship Whidah under eight metres of water half-a-kilometre off the Cape Cod National Seashore.

“Everything’s right, the coins, the items they’ve brought up,” said Robert Cahill, of the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources, yesterday. “I have no doubt he’s found it, and I’m not one to say that easily.” Mr Cahill said the first recovered items included coins, cannon-balls and a piece of a rifle buried be- . neath the ocean floor. No wooden remains of the ship had been found. But Jeff Bradley, a mem-

ber of the archaeological team, said much testing remained before he would unreservedly assert that the find was the pirate ship since "the Outer Cape is the site of hundreds of wrecks.” Astronomical estimates of the cargo’s value come from trial evidence of two survivors of the 1717 shipwreck, believed to have killed Bellamy and 144 others. The two said that Bellamy had accumulated 180 bags of silver weighing 50 pounds each and a chest

holding “a prince’s ransom” in jewels. Bellamy had ravaged several ships in West Indian waters. Some historians believe Bellamy was headed north to establish a pirate camp when a storm in April drove the Whidah, a former slave ship, nearly ashore. Messrs Cahill and Bradley said two years would be needed for a full salvage job to be completed in the area’s rough waters. The state of Massachusetts would collect 25 per cent of whatever is found.