Re: whydah wreck
Whydah said:
Robert, I can't wait to see what's in the lead plugged cannon.... Have talked with Barry on a few ocasions about this. I think the last time we talked about it was in the Summer of 2009, he said something about waiting till 2017 for the 300th aniversary of the sinking..... Hope that it get's teivised. I know that they have peeked at the inside and it seemed to hold Diamonds and Gold inside of the cannon. I would suspect that Cannon belonged to Sam Bellamy himself. He must have used it as his personal treasure chest, what's your thought's on this? Oh one last thing, I also have talked with Ken (Kinkor) about what he thought that the ring (TEYE BA) & (WFS) stand for ? I told him I had an idea that may be WFS stood for Whydah Fighting Ship ? I hear that the old Vast Explorer may be towed to New Bedford and demolished
? Any truth to this?
![Barry Clifford & Jim "Pistol O'cannon" Cunningham - Aboard the R/V Vast Explorer](https://www.treasurenet.com/attachments/jim-and-barry-clifford-3-copy-webp.626412/ "Barry Clifford & Jim "Pistol O'cannon" Cunningham - Aboard the R/V Vast Explorer")
Actually, the old
Vast Explorer (i.e.
Vast Explorer II) was sold a number of years ago and was eventually taken possession of (if I'm not mistaken) by the city of Provincetown. It sunk in Cape Cod Bay during a storm in 2011. The current, and far superior, vessel bears the name
Research Vessel Vast Explorer without the "III" suffix.
As to the TEYE BA gold ring, we're still doing research on it. There are a few possible leads which will only be made public when sufficiently confirmed.
As to the provenance of the treasure cannon...
My speculation is this. Pirate ships of the time had very strict regulations, usually written right into the ship's Articles, about stealing treasure
from other crew mates or dealing deceitfully with it, with very severe penalties. Bellamy's ship was no exception. According to the testimony of the survivors, the quartermaster divided the treasure evenly and offered the crew access to it after consulting him first. There seemed to be a very organized yet liberal system onboard Bellamy's ship. Considering this, one might wonder if any of the crew would actually tempt fate by not only hiding some of the treasure from the rest of the crew but also disabling a perfectly good (and very large and heavy) cannon - and hope that everyone was too dumb to find out about it. And Bellamy himself was apparently much liked by his crew... would
he risk their allegiance and his captaincy by smuggling the treasure without his crew's knowledge? And even if the crew consented to such a thing, what purpose would it serve to shove a handful of loot into a cannon and seal it considering that they had 5 tons of other treasure onboard?
On the other hand, Bellamy was stock-piling cannons on the ship, amassing more than 60 on the Whydah alone before the ship wrecked. Many were confiscated from captured ships and stored below as balast. Could it be that this cannon was actually being used as a type of safety deposit box sent as a tribute from a Caribbean island governor to a king, or possibly as a payment from a king or corporation to a Caribbean governor or plantation owner when it was intercepted by Bellamy? And could it be that the crew brought this cannon aboard and placed it down below while unaware of what was inside of it? And if the crew had discovered that the cannon was plugged, mightn't they have either opened it to see what was inside or else tossed it overboard as defective and useless?
So it seems that there are at least three possibilities: either the crew brought the cannon aboard while totally oblivious to its secrets, or, there was a traitor aboard who stupidly risked his life by disabling a cannon and stuffing it with treasure that he kept hidden from the crew, or, Bellamy and/or his crew agreed to create this treasure cannon because -
fill in the blank.
(I should note that our historians do not concure with my speculation).
