Ahoy!
This is a very interesting story - from several points of view. There's generally at least two sides to every treasure story - for some reason, this is particularly true when the plunder has been lost at sea.
It's safe to say there's general agreement the pirate ship
Whydah, "Black" Sam Bellamy, master, foundered off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in an April 1717 gale. She went down with all hands - estimated at 144 souls.
Most folks agree that Barry Clifford and his salvage team found the ship's bell - changing the historic spelling of the vessel's name from "
Whidah" to
"Whydah.
From there the stories begin to go their separate ways.
The book you mentioned amounts to a continuation of Barry Clifford's first-hand account of locating and salvaging the wreck. His first book
The Pirate Prince (New York: 1993) is the start of the story. This was published in England as
The Black Ship (London: 1999).
I was stuck trying to remember the name of the book that provides the other side of the story. I turned to David S. Crooks' extraordinary bibliography
Sunken Treasure Books (Privately Printed: 2002) and, of course, there it was:
Walking the Plank; My Adventure Among Pirates by Stephen Kiesling (Ashland, Oregon: 1994). This book deserves far more recognition than it has gotten from people interested in sunken treasures. Remarkably, for a book published by its author in a small run fifteen years ago, copies are readily available for a few dollars. I highly recommend adding this one to your library while you still can!
The
National Geographic Magazine published a very interesting article on this wreck in its May 1999 issue. The NG website is worth checking out:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/main.html.
The unsung hero of this venture is the archaeologist Ken Kinkor. I recommend his book
Real Pirates; The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship (Washington, DC: 2007).
Just for fun, I mention a romance novel written by one of Clifford's crew:
Pirate In My Arms by Danielle Harmon (New York: 1992). Ken told me they all viewed the author in a new light after reading her book! And never underestimate the influence of fiction on yarns about pirate gold. There are some people who still believe Jose Gaspar - "Gasparilla" - was a real Florida sea rover.
Good luck to all,
~The Old Bookaroo
