And the word of the day is CONCRETION

Samuel Bellamy was something of the Jeff Bezos of pirates. During a relatively short career - he was just 28 when he died, and had only been pirating for a bit over a year - he managed to capture over 50 ships and amass a booty fortune worth $145M by today's measure. Sure, that's not much by Bezos standards, but Bellamy was considered the wealthiest pirate on record.

A "pirate among pirates" from the Golden Age of Pirates (18th century), Bellamy had a good reputation for practicing shipboard democracy:

The New England Historical Society notes that the captain treated all crew members equally, allowing them to vote on significant decisions. Bellamy, who nicknamed himself “Robin Hood of the Sea,” viewed his piracy as a form of vigilante justice against wealthy merchants who “rob[ed] the poor under the cover of law.” To retaliate, he once declared in a speech, “[W]e plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage.” (Source: The Smithsonian)

Plus the Whydah was a model of inclusivity: freed slaves from African, native South and North Americans, Europeans, North American settlers with European roots. The Whydah Gally, had been a state-of-the-art slave ship. Bellamy converted it to a pirate ship. Definitely an upgrade!

They're still exploring the Whydah, and recently recovered six skeletons.

The Whydah went down off of Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, blown over in a wild nor'easter, and sinking quickly because it was weighted down by all the looty booty stored on board. (Among other things that have been found on the Wyhdah since it was discovered in 1984 was a cannon stuffed with gold and jewels.)

As CBS News reports, a team led by Barry Clifford, who discovered the wreck in 1984, found the remains inside huge concretions, or rigid masses that form around underwater objects. Experts at the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, now plan to examine the skeletons in further detail.

Concretion. That's a new one on me! And here's what one looks like. More or less. This one actually looks like it's been a bit cleaned up. That is a skeleton face emerging there, is it not?

Anyway, the plan is to extract DNA from the skeletons and see it they can find direct descendants or other family member. They have some from Sam Bellamy's family, which they used to check out a skeleton they'd found in a concretion a couple of years ago. Turns out that skeleton didn't belong to Sam, but to someone with Eastern Mediterranean lineage. The pirate who became that skeleton went down hoping he had a fighting chance:

Discovered embedded in a concretion, the anonymous pirate died with a pistol in his hand and metal—likely gold—stashed in his pocket, Clifford told the Times.“It appears that this person was killed by a 400-pound roll of lead that’s encapsulated within the concretion,” the archaeologist added, “and you can see that the lead was right on top of his skeleton.”

Not a great way to go, but it was probably quick. And he did die with the hope that he was going to be able to use some of that gold that was lining his pocket.

The Whydah had 146 pirate-y souls on board when it sank. Two somehow survived; 101 bodies of crew members washed up on the beach; and the remaining 43 went down with the ship. So there may be plenty of other bodies still to recover from Davy Jones' locker.

It'll be interesting to see whether the skeletons, once freed from the concretions that have been building up and continuously encasing them over the past 300+ years, are reunited with their families. And whether the families will be looking for a doubloon or two.

I'm looking forward to hearing the tales these dead men tell. And to learning yet more new words. Concretion is not one that I'll be able to weave into many conversations, but who knows? There may be other great words I've never heard before, buried in wordy prose concretions. Bring them on!