Museum to discuss efforts to see if bones belong to pirate
By Associated Press
Feb 18, 2018 9:53 PM CST
In this Aug. 14, 2017 photo, Marie Kesten Zahn, an archaeologist and education coordinator at the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth, Mass., probes the concretion surrounding a leg bone that was salvaged from the Whydah shipwreck off the coast of Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Researchers are working to...   (Associated Press)

YARMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Researchers are set to discuss their efforts to determine whether human bones recovered from a Cape Cod shipwreck are those of the infamous pirate Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy.

The Whydah Pirate Museum in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, says it also will publicly display the bones for the first time and showcase what they believe to be Bellamy's pistol Monday.

The objects were encased in a hardened mass of sand and stone pulled from the Whydah Gally (WIH'-duh GAH'-lee) shipwreck several years ago.

The museum has enlisted forensic scientists to compare DNA from the bones to a sample given by one of Bellamy's living descendants.

The Whydah went down in stormy seas in 1717, killing most of its crew and leaving its treasure on the ocean floor. The wreck was discovered in 1984.