This story was originally published in March 2024.
While people generally associate buried pirate treasure with Caribbean islands and frayed old maps with X marking the spot, Maine also has its fair share of tales of fortunes stashed away for safekeeping — only for the locations to go to the grave with their plundering owners.
The story of the first known pirate in Maine starts in 1631, when a man named Dixie Bull came to Boston from England. Bull acquired a ship and began sailing the Maine coast, trading furs with the Wabanaki people. In 1632, Bull was reportedly attacked by a group of French sailors in Penobscot Bay, who took his ship and all his goods.
Furious, Bull got another ship, assembled a crew and embarked on a career in piracy. He raided ports up and down the coast of Maine, including the lucrative trading settlement of Pemaquid, from which he stole thousands of pounds worth of goods and coinage. The legend states that Bull buried some treasure on both Damariscove Island — now part of Boothbay Harbor — and on Cushing Island in Casco Bay.
A folk song collected by Fannie Hardy Eckstrom in her 1927 book “Minstrelsy of Maine” relates a story that Bull was killed in a fight with a brave Pemaquid fisherman. The historical record, however, shows that Bull most likely returned to England sometime after 1632, where his name was registered in 1648 as a skinner and fur trader.
Around 60 years later, during the Golden Age of Piracy, another famous pirate would supposedly lurk in the nooks and crannies of Maine’s coastline — though it’s unlikely he actually left any treasure in his wake.
Captain Kidd, aka Scotsman William Kidd, is best known for terrorizing the Caribbean throughout the 1690s, under the auspices of a royal charter allowing him to sail as a privateer tasked with routing out piracy in British colonies. While he claimed to be operating above board, Kidd was actually keeping much of the booty from the pirate ships he captured for himself.
The stories about Kidd’s time in Maine are not well-supported by verifiable history. One story claims that sometime in 1698 or 1699, Kidd sailed to Maine to hide out in a hidden cove along the Sheepscot River, near the modern town of Wiscasset. While there, he deposited some treasure for safekeeping.
Another story goes that a young Maine man named Samuel Trask joined Kidd’s crew, and sometime before 1699, Trask was tasked by Kidd with hiding some of his treasure on Folly Island — today called Davis Island, in the town of Edgecomb. Trask reportedly lived to a very old age and died in 1789, and could not remember where he buried the treasure. Kidd himself was arrested in Boston in July 1699, and hanged in London in May 1701. Neither of those stories are likely true, but it’s much more fun to believe that they are.
Another figure in the Golden Age of Piracy who made his way to Maine is Samuel Bellamy, known as Black Sam, the “Robin Hood of the seas,” due to his reputation for fairness and generosity. The British-born Bellamy sailed with the Royal Navy and then moved to America in 1715, intending to head south with his friend Paulsgrave Williams and seek treasures from the wrecked Spanish fleet off the coast of Florida.
Bellamy and Williams turned to piracy, serving alongside Edward Teach — better known as Blackbeard — on Capt. Benjamin Hornigold’s ship. By 1716, a mutiny forced Hornigold and Teach off the ship and the crew elected Bellamy captain. In February 1717, Bellamy captured the Whydah, a slave ship laden with a fortune in gold and goods after its former crew sold more than 300 human beings into bondage in the Caribbean.
Black Sam sailed the Whydah north, eventually reaching New England, where it is known that he and his crew hid in a cove near the mouth of the Machias River. They even supposedly built a wooden fort there, as well as a series of underground chambers to hold treasure, with some stories even claiming the pair meant to eventually create a “pirate kingdom” in Maine where retired pirates could live out their days in peace.
In early April 1717, Bellamy went off alone on the Whydah to do more raiding in southern New England. On April 26, while on her way back to Maine, the Whydah encountered a massive storm and sank off the coast of Cape Cod, taking Bellamy and nearly all the crew with it.
Then, 167 years later, a diving crew discovered the wreck of the Whydah in 1984, which contained multiple tons of treasure, including gold, silver, ivory and between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds sterling — worth between $5.5 and $8.2 million in 2024.
If Bellamy’s legendary treasure vault in Machias does exist, it likely lies somewhere south of the bridge that carries Route 1 over the Machias River, and north of what is now Machiasport.
When the Whydah wreck was discovered in 1984, it sparked renewed interest in the Bellamy-Machias connection. Despite local searching along the banks of the river, however, no evidence of the fort or the underground chambers have been found — yet, anyway.
