First launched in 1715 from London, England, the Whydah was a three-masted ship of galley-style design measuring in length, rated at 300 tons burden, and could travel at speeds up to . Christened Whydah after the West African slave trading kingdom of Ouidah, the vessel was configured as a heavily armed trading and transport ship for use in the Atlantic slave trade, carrying goods from England to exchange for slaves in West Africa. It would then travel to the Caribbean to trade the slaves for precious metals, sugar, indigo, and medicinal ingredients, which would then be transported back to England. Captained by the English pirate "Black Sam" Bellamy, the Whydah, on April 26, 1717, sailed into a violent storm dangerously close to Cape Cod and was eventually driven onto the shoals at Wellfleet, Massachusetts. At midnight she hit a sandbar in of water some from the coast of what is now Marconi Beach. Pummelled by -an-hour winds and 30 to waves, the main mast snapped, pulling the ship into some of water where she violently capsized, taking Bellamy, all but two of his 145 men, and over 4.5 tons of gold, silver and jewels with it. After years of exhaustive searching, it was in 1984 that world headlines were made when American archeological explorer Barry Clifford found the only solidly-identified pirate shipwreck ever discovered, the Whydah. Two-hundred thousand artifacts and sunken treasures were discovered in the shipwreck as well.
