That includes gold dust used in transactions when the Whydah was a slaver before it was captured by Bellamy. Those same primary source materials indicate there may be as much as 4.5 tons of looted treasure on board, Macort said. 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. ![]() Macort said that divers working in a new area closer to shore found three concretions, including the one he was working on, that were alike in size, weighing about 40 pounds each with similar contents: coins, gold, two pistols and wooden fragments that are likely the remains of the chest.įrom primary source research materials, he believes they are the individual chests that each pirate carried with him to store his share of the plunder. ![]() “The African gold has a little bit of a reddish hue from the copper in the sand.” “It’s right from wherever it was made, most likely Africa, or central South America,” Macort said. The gold that divers have been finding in the detritus scattered around the wreck site still seems like it’s come right from the smelter’s hand, immune to the ravages of the Atlantic through the intervening centuries. Noble metals, like gold, are not reactive and don’t corrode. ![]() Pirate Sam Bellamy’s ship Whydah wrecked off Wellfleet in a violent storm on April 26, 1717, breaking into two or three large pieces, scattering its contents onto the sandy ocean bottom. “Sometimes the gold just calls out to you, saying ‘I’m here, get me out of this concretion.’” There’s nothing else like it in the world,” Macort said. “Your eyes lock onto it when you see something that shiny and that yellow.
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