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Summary: Natl. Geo Adventure Magazine:"Readers will (be) exhilarated
Review: "Readers drawn into the dangerous straits of this quest will find themselves exhilarated as the pirate ship at last yields up her secrets."- Lawrence Norfolk, National Geographic's Adventure Magazine
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Summary: A captivating must-read
Review: A captivating account of the demise of infamous pirate Black Sam Bellamy and his treasure-laden ship, the Whydah and . . . an equally compelling story of one man's obsessive quest to recover the wreck and its riches more than 250 years later.Barry Clifford with the help of co-author Paul Perry tells of Clifford's dogged hunt for the sunken ship overcoming bureaucratic, financial and legal obstacles along the way. Repeated flashbacks to the early 1700s and the escapades of the legendary pirates provides a fascinating counterpoint to the author's modern-day battles. While meticulously researched, providing a fascinating and informative glimpse of the pirate's life (I learned so many new facts) the book is also eminently easy to read. Illustrations and photographs make it a complete work. A "must-buy" for anyone either interested in the exploits of rogue buccaneers of the early 18th century or the adventures of a late 20th century swashbuckling entrepreneur.
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Summary: Extremely disappointing, Is it the truth??
Review: After reading Barry Cliffords first book about The Whyday Shipwreck Project, "The Pirate Prince" readers were informed all about his wonderful efforts in finding the Pirate Shipwreck. However when reading a book by author Stephen Kiesling "Walking the plank, A true adventure among pirates," readers were well informed about the real truth about Barry Clifford and his so called efforts in finding the Whydah shipwreck. Now after reading Barry Cliffords new book,"Expedition Whydah" which should be classed as a fictional comic,after learning the truth in Stephen Kiesling book "Walking the Plank" Never believe everything you read, especially when Barry Clifford is involved. Purchase Walking the plank first, then purchase Expedition Whydah You'll think two different Pirate ships have been recovered
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Summary: If you read one book this year, this is it!
Review: Awesome book. Any lover of non-fiction will find this book impossible to put down. It has everything: the adventure of underwater treasure salvage and a "you are there" history of pirates. One of the great things about this book is that it's written in a story format--you walk hand-in-hand with the author as he sets out to undertake the great task of his life: find and salvage the first sunken pirate ship. At the same time, the authors treat us to a detailed account of the pirate Bellamy. This is a perfect fusion of myth and reality. An excellent research job. But unlike some non-fiction books, this is very readable. Excellently written. The authors take you on the adventure with them. You're right by their side! After reading it, I wanted to search for treasure too.
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Summary: A great combination of mystery, adventure and history.
Review: Barry Clifford and Paul Perry have written an absorbing account of the world's first excavation of a pirate ship -- the 'Whydah', wrecked off the tip of Cape Cod in a gale in 1717. Clifford's efforts to first locate and then recover her treasures from a sandy grave is an engrossing tale seamlessly combining mystery, adventure and even history. Indeed, "Expedition Whydah" is filled with fascinating historic background details of piracy as a career and a way of life in the late 17th and early 18th century. I had no idea, for instance, that privateers such as Edward Teach (the infamous 'Blackbeard') and others were given financial backing by none other than the likes of Queen Elizabeth I as an investment opportunity. At one point early in the account, Clifford says that if he'd known at the outset what was going to happen in terms of legal battles, financial wrangling, disloyalty of friends during his quest to unearth the wreck....he would have marked the site of the Whydah on his chart and called it a day. We can only be glad he persevered. The treasures and artifacts that Clifford and his crew recovered are priceless. The book is, in its own way, another kind of treasure as the authors not only recount the discovery of the wreck of the Whydah, but also recreate what it must have been like to stand on the pitching deck of the pirate vessel that stormy April night nearly three centuries ago.
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Summary: Treasure Hunter
Review: Barry Clifford discovered the only wrecked pirate ship ever found, then recovered much of the gold, jewels, and silver aboard the vessel as well as important historical artifacts. As a small boy, Clifford had listened to tales of the pirate ship WHYDAH and its master Black Sam Bellamy told to him by his uncle. Although he grew into adulthood and became a successful marine salvager, thoughts of the WHYDAH and her ill-fated crew, as well as all the treasure rumored to have gone down aboard her, wouldn't leave Clifford's mind at rest. For years he assembled information and research regarding the ship's activities, the sailors and captain aboard her, and the loot WHYDAH had seized. Gradually, as he exhausted all the knowledge that was to be gleaned from histories, journals, and survey maps, Clifford eliminated conflicting data and re-interpreted facts and figures until he was certain he knew where the ship had gone down, taking the captain and most of the crew with her. Armed with his facts and figures, Clifford journeyed to Denver and sold shares in the venture to raise a quarter million dollars investment capital to start searching for the wreck. Within months, he had located the first of the treasure, and the real fighting began with the state agency that tried to take a lion's share of the recovered assets. Barry Clifford was a marine salvager by trade and became an expert in piracy by interest. In addition to two non-fiction novels, EXPEDITION WHYDAH and THE LOST FLEET: THE DISCOVERY OF A SUNKEN ARMADA FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY, Clifford also established the Whydah Learning Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He's gleaned a lot of support from historical preservation societies and boards. Although Clifford's narration of his own book in audio form comes across as less polished than probably could have been done by a professional voice, the dramatic tension involved in the story keeps the listener intent on the tale. In fact, the laconic, laidback way Clifford narrates his story sounds like a guy sitting across the table spinning his story over a cup of coffee. The choice Clifford made to overlap his own findings with the history of the pirates aboard WHYDAH drives the dramatic tension of both stories. Separating those events by putting them in different sections of the book would have diluted both, and made them too episodic. Clifford was making history as he was uncovering it. Even in the abridged form offered in the audiobook, Clifford conveys tons of material relating to the work involved in claiming, finding, and bringing up a significant historical find-especially one laden with gold, silver, and jewels. The history of piracy and the pirates on board WHYDAH when it went down are spooned into the narrative in just the right amounts to keep revealing new details while still leaving the listener for more. EXPEDITION WHYDAH is an excellent audiobook to listen to in the car. The bits and pieces that are presented episodically lend themselves to the start and stop of a workday drive. In addition, Clifford's details on the expedition and piracy in general bring a lot of intensity to armchair explorers.
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Summary: Treasure Hunter
Review: Barry Clifford discovered the only wrecked pirate ship ever found, then recovered much of the gold, jewels, and silver aboard the vessel as well as important historical artifacts. As a small boy, Clifford had listened to tales of the pirate ship WHYDAH and its master Black Sam Bellamy told to him by his uncle. Although he grew into adulthood and became a successful marine salvager, thoughts of the WHYDAH and her ill-fated crew, as well as all the treasure rumored to have gone down aboard her, wouldn't leave Clifford's mind at rest. For years he assembled information and research regarding the ship's activities, the sailors and captain aboard her, and the loot WHYDAH had seized. Gradually, as he exhausted all the knowledge that was to be gleaned from histories, journals, and survey maps, Clifford eliminated conflicting data and re-interpreted facts and figures until he was certain he knew where the ship had gone down, taking the captain and most of the crew with her. Armed with his facts and figures, Clifford journeyed to Denver and sold shares in the venture to raise a quarter million dollars investment capital to start searching for the wreck. Within months, he had located the first of the treasure, and the real fighting began with the state agency that tried to take a lion's share of the recovered assets. Barry Clifford was a marine salvager by trade and became an expert in piracy by interest. In addition to two non-fiction novels, EXPEDITION WHYDAH and THE LOST FLEET: THE DISCOVERY OF A SUNKEN ARMADA FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY, Clifford also established the Whydah Learning Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He's gleaned a lot of support from historical preservation societies and boards. Although Clifford's narration of his own book in audio form comes across as less polished than probably could have been done by a professional voice, the dramatic tension involved in the story keeps the listener intent on the tale. In fact, the laconic, laidback way Clifford narrates his story sounds like a guy sitting across the table spinning his story over a cup of coffee. The choice Clifford made to overlap his own findings with the history of the pirates aboard WHYDAH drives the dramatic tension of both stories. Separating those events by putting them in different sections of the book would have diluted both, and made them too episodic. Clifford was making history as he was uncovering it. Even in the abridged form offered in the audiobook, Clifford conveys tons of material relating to the work involved in claiming, finding, and bringing up a significant historical find-especially one laden with gold, silver, and jewels. The history of piracy and the pirates on board WHYDAH when it went down are spooned into the narrative in just the right amounts to keep revealing new details while still leaving the listener for more. EXPEDITION WHYDAH is an excellent audiobook to listen to in the car. The bits and pieces that are presented episodically lend themselves to the start and stop of a workday drive. In addition, Clifford's details on the expedition and piracy in general bring a lot of intensity to armchair explorers.
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Summary: Shipwreck Discovery Explodes Myths About Pirates
Review: By Carol Sowers The Arizona Republic May 17, 1999 The National Geographic photographers were frustrated. They were 25 feet underwater off the coast of Cape Cod, silently begging a pirate ship to divulge more of her 282-year-old secrets for their cameras. But the shipwrecked Whydah, generous with her treasures during the last 14 years of prodding and probing, had held back one, a chunk of her soul, her hull. But on July 19, 1998, a diver radioed up the three words that shipwreck explorer Barry Clifford, his crew, and Paradise Valley author Paul Perry had been waiting for: "I've got wood." News of the 60-foot-long piece of metal-clad hull cloaked under 10 feet of sand had transformed that disappointing day into what Perry will forever call "Sweet Sunday." "It was a total fluke the way we found it," Perry said. "It was elating and solemn at the same time. The hull means you found the container, the tomb." Known for his bestselling books on near-death experiences and explorations of the afterlife, Perry became absorbed in Clifford's 15-year obsession over the Whydah, and the world's first excavation of a pirate treasure ship. The $6 million excavation, backed by investors including National Geographic, has brought more than 100,000 artifacts to the surface. Thousands more may be found as the exploration continues. Perry said Clifford hopes to bring up the 60-foot section of hull this summer and put it on display with some of the other artifacts at his Provincetown, Mass., museum or in the National Geographic Society's museum in Washington, D.C. Clifford has vowed never to sell the discoveries that could be worth between $20 million and $40 million. The artifacts - coins, a grinding wheel, pistols, a shoulder bone embedded in a cannon, whimsical shirt buttons - are more important as clues that help "explode the myths about pirates," Perry said. "There is no evidence that a pirate ever made anyone walk the plank," Perry said. Perry, drawn to "extraordinary people who do extraordinary things," joined the Whydah exploration last summer for a book he co-wrote with Clifford, the just-released, Expedition Whydah (pronounced Wi-duh) and the Man Who Found Her. "The story has everything," said Perry, once a local newspaper reporter and editor of Runner's World magazine. "Ghost stories, colonial history, the Kennedy family. It's like the "Lost Dutchman Gold Mine of Cape Cod.' " The mystery, history, and adventure surrounding the long-lost Whydah is explored in the May issue of National Geographic and will be the subject of National Geographic's Explorer program at 8 p.m. May 26 on TBS. And, Perry says, there is talk of a television miniseries or feature-length film. The Whydah is a scriptwriter's dream, creepy stories of ghosts banging through the crew's recovery boat when it reached the excavation site near Wellfleet in Cape Cod. Even a whiff of the Kennedys. John F. Kennedy Jr. worked for a time as a crew member, drawn like others to the irresistible legend of Black Sam Bellamy, the Whydah's captain, and one of the most successful pirates of the era. A poor English seaman, he was a masterful pirate. Between 1715 and 1717, he had captured 50 ships, including the Whydah. Bellamy had heard that the Whydah's captain had just sold 600 West African slaves and that the 100-foot-long three-master would be heavy with gold and silver. He intercepted her in the Caribbean, and raced back toward Cape Cod for a reunion with his pregnant girlfriend. He never made it. Battered by 70 mph winds and 30-foot swells, the Whydah slammed into a sand bar and cracked apart. Two of the 146 crew survived. One fled. The other was hanged for piracy. Clifford, a Cape Cod native, had heard the stories of the dangerous Bellamy and his sunken ship all his life. A professional treasure hunter, he started his search in 1983 and found her a year later. "If it's still there, I could find it," he recounts in the book. One of his earliest discoveries was the ship's bell, inscribed with "The Whydah Gally-1716," proof that the wreckage was the storied slave ship. Last summer, Perry, and his son, Ben, then 14, the crew's dive master, were with the recovery team working off Clifford's Vast Explorer, when the Whydah finally allowed a peek at her hull. When a small chunk of the metal-clad wood was hauled up, "I flipped out," Perry said. His son, Ben, a student of pirate lore, was sure the hull was the ship's powder room. The discoveries on the Whydah give more weight to historians' profiles of pirates - more tycoons than tyrants. Cannons pulled up from the Whydah fired grapeshot, birdshot or small balls, weapons that could detain, but not disable a ship. "They didn't want to destroy a ship because they wanted to use it," Perry said. And he said they didn't want to maim the hijacked ship's crew members because many of them would sign on with the pirates for a share of the loot. "These were businessmen," Perry said. But grim discoveries on the Whydah proved how risky their business was. A shoulder bone embedded in a cannon offered gruesome evidence of how one sailor died. "As the ship struck shore and began its fatal roll, the cannons shifted like logs rolling down a mountain. The pirate was crushed by cannons weighing hundreds of pounds." Perry wrote. Looking at that bone, or holding a sailor's shoe drew Perry back to the 1700s, and the Whydah's last horrible moments. "Holding these objects in your hand is like living someone's life (in) review. The last person who held this object died 282 years ago and there is a real sense of sadness."
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Summary: A Good Summer Reading Book
Review: Clifford's book is great reading for the beach or wherever you might be. A fantastic adventure book that tells the story of Barry Clifford's discovery and excavation of the Whydah off the coast of Welfleet, MA(Cape Cod). A story of pirates, treasure, and Cape Cod that will remain in your mind for days after you have read it.
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Summary: A book with everything - Business, Adventure, and Ghosts
Review: From a writer's point of view, this book has everything. Which means, of course, that it has everything from a reader's point of view, too. This is a story of obsession, that of a modern day explorer named Barry Clifford and an 18th century pirate named "Black" Sam Bellamy. Bellamy crashed his pirate ship, the Whydah, on the sandy shores of Cape Cod in April of 1717. At least 146 pirates were killed in that crash, along with the booty from 50 ships.Such a crash would have been a heyday for the residents of the impoverished Cape had they been able to reach the capsized vessel. Unfortunately for them, the storm prevented anykind of salvage and they could only watch in frustration as the ship filled with treasure sank into the voracious sands of the Cape. Shortly it disappeared and people forgot exactly where it had sank. Eventually it became a legend, like so many other "lost gold" legends around the world. . . . Enter Barry Clifford. It is 266 years later and he is telling Walter Cronkite the story of "Black" to Sam Bellamy at a Thanksgiving get together at writer William Styron's house."Why don't you look for the Whydah?" asks Cronkite. And Barry does. Through an exciting process of discovery, he finds the Whydah. Then the adventure begins, as modern day pirates try to jump his claim and jealous archaeologist try to keep him from bringing up artifacts and treasure.Barry is a human monument to perserverance. Over the years he and his colorful crew have brought up over 100,000 artifacts, including gold, silver and the ethereal jewelry of African tribesmen who were hauled as slaves to the New World by the former Captain of Whydah, a slave runner named "Prince."What will you get out of this book besides a good read? You'll get and understanding of what "obsession" and "pursuit of excellence" means. The cost of finding this legendary pirate ship - the only one in the world to be excavated - has been a high one for Barry. But the reward has been a large one, too. He refuses to sell any of the thousands of artifacts that he has retrieved from this dangerous archaeological site. Instead he is keeping the collection together to contribute to our knowledge of a mysterious sub-culture, one that contributed to the formation of our nation
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