Whydah Pirate Museum

On April 26, 1717, a ferocious nor’easter slammed the Whydah Gally into the shoals off Cape Cod, taking nearly 150 men and millions in plundered treasure to the bottom — a story the ocean kept secret for nearly 300 years.
In 1984, explorer Barry Clifford changed history, locating the wreck and authenticating the world’s only confirmed pirate shipwreck. The pirates were real. Now you can experience their story.

Samuel Bellamy’s crew were not the swashbuckling fantasies of Hollywood — they were a brotherhood of poor sailors, formerly enslaved men, and political exiles who captured more than 50 merchant ships across the Caribbean and North American coast.
The Whydah began life as a slave transport before Bellamy’s crew seized and transformed it into their flagship — placing them at the center of one of history’s most misunderstood chapters.
When the storm took the ship, only two men survived. The rest — and their treasure — vanished into Cape Cod’s sands, waiting.

The Whydah Pirate Museum houses the largest collection of pirate artifacts ever recovered from a single shipwreck — every gold coin and silver piece a direct connection to the men who sailed her. Touch real 300-year-old pirate coins, step aboard a replica of the Whydah Gally, and watch archaeologists excavate artifacts from the wreck site in our onsite SeaLab. New discoveries arrive every dive season — and so do new exhibits.