William Kidd

William Kidd
Born	22 January 1645 Dundee, Scotland
Died	23 May 1701(1701-05-23) (aged 56) Wapping, England
Piratical career
Type	Pirate / Privateer
Allegiance	Kingdom of Scotland

William Kidd, also Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd (c. 22 January 1645 – 23 May 1701)^[1] was a Scottish sailor who was tried and executed for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean. Some modern historians deem his piratical reputation unjust.

Biography

Early life and education

Kidd was born in Dundee, Scotland, c. 22 January 1654, his father, Captain John Kyd, being lost at sea. Kidd gave Greenock as his place of birth and his age as 41 in testimony under oath at the High Court of the Admiralty in October 1694 or 1695. A local society supported the Kyd family financially after the death of the father. Kidd's origins in Greenock have been dismissed by David Dobson, who found neither the name Kidd nor Kyd in baptismal records; the myth that his "father was thought to have been a Church of Scotland minister" has been discounted, insofar as there is no mention of the name in comprehensive Church of Scotland records for the period. Others still hold the contrary view.^[2][3]

Early voyages

Kidd later settled in the newly anglicized New York City, where he befriended many prominent colonial citizens, including three governors. Some published information suggests that he was a seaman's apprentice on a pirate ship during this time,before partaking in his more famous seagoing exploits.

By 1689, Kidd was a member of a French-English pirate crew sailing the Caribbean, during a voyage of which, Kidd and other crew members mutinied, ousting the captain and sailing to the British colony of Nevis. There they renamed the ship Blessed William, and Kidd became captain either as a result of election by the ship's crew, or by appointment of Christopher Codrington, governor of the island of Nevis. In any case, Captain Kidd, an experienced leader and sailor by that time and the Blessed William, became part of Codrington's small fleet assembled to defend Nevis from the French, with whom the English were at war. The governor did not pay the sailors for their defensive services, telling them instead to take their pay from the French. Kidd and his men attacked the French island of Marie-Galante, destroying its only town and looting the area, and gathering for themselves something around 2,000 pounds sterling. Later, during the War of the Grand Alliance, on commissions from the provinces of New York and Massachusetts Bay, Kidd captured an enemy privateer off of the New England coast.^[4] Shortly thereafter, he was awarded £150 for successful privateering in the Caribbean, and one year later, Captain Robert Culliford, a notorious pirate, stole Kidd's ship while he was ashore at Antigua in the West Indies. In 1695, William III of England appointed Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont, governor in place of the corrupt Benjamin Fletcher, who was known for accepting bribes to allow illegal trading of pirate loot.^[5] In New York City, Kidd was active in the building of Trinity Church, New York.^[6][7]

On 16 May 1691, Kidd married Sarah Bradley Cox Oort, an English woman in her early twenties, who had already been twice widowed and was one of the wealthiest women in New York, largely because of her inheritance from her first husband.^[8]

Preparing his expedition

Captain Kidd in New York Harbor, c. 1920 painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

On 11 December 1695, Bellomont was governing New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and he asked the "trusty and well beloved Captain Kidd"^[9] to attack Thomas Tew, John Ireland, Thomas Wake, William Maze, and all others who associated themselves with pirates, along with any enemy French ships. It would have been viewed as disloyalty to the crown to turn down this request, carrying much social stigma and making it difficult for Kidd to say no. The request preceded the voyage which established Kidd's reputation as a pirate, and marked his image in history and folklore.

Four-fifths of the cost for the venture was paid for by noble lords, who were among the most powerful men in England: the Earl of Orford, the Baron of Romney, the Duke of Shrewsbury, and Sir John Somers. Kidd was presented with a letter of marque, signed personally by King William III of England. This letter reserved 10% of the loot for the Crown, and Henry Gilbert's The Book of Pirates suggests that the King may have fronted some of the money for the voyage himself. Kidd and his acquaintance Colonel Robert Livingston orchestrated the whole plan and paid for the rest. Kidd had to sell his ship Antigua to raise funds.

The new ship Adventure Galley^[10] was well suited to the task of catching pirates, weighing over 284 tons burthen and equipped with 34 cannon, oars, and 150 men. The oars were a key advantage, as they enabled Adventure Galley to manoeuvre in a battle when the winds had calmed and other ships were dead in the water. Kidd took pride in personally selecting the crew, choosing only those whom he deemed to be the best and most loyal officers.

As the Adventure Galley sailed down the Thames, Kidd unaccountably failed to salute a Navy yacht at Greenwich, as custom dictated. The Navy yacht then fired a shot to make him show respect, and Kidd’s crew responded with an astounding display of impudence – by turning and slapping their backsides in [disdain].^[11]

Because of Kidd's refusal to salute, the Navy vessel's captain retaliated by pressing much of Kidd's crew into naval service, despite rampant protests. Thus short-handed, Kidd sailed for New York City, capturing a French vessel en route (which was legal under the terms of his commission). To make up for the lack of officers, Kidd picked up replacement crew in New York, the vast majority of whom were known and hardened criminals, some undoubtedly former pirates.

Among Kidd's officers was his quartermaster Hendrick van der Heul. The quartermaster was considered "second in command" to the captain in pirate culture of this era. It is not clear, however, if van der Heul exercised this degree of responsibility, because Kidd was nominally a privateer. Van der Heul is also noteworthy because he may have been African or of African descent. A contemporary source describes him as a "small black Man". If van der Heul was indeed of African ancestry, this fact would make him the highest ranking black pirate so far identified. Van der Heul went on to become a master's mate on a merchant vessel, and was never convicted of piracy.

Hunting for pirates

In September 1696, Kidd weighed anchor and set course for the Cape of Good Hope. A third of his crew perished on the Comoros due to an outbreak of cholera, the brand-new ship developed many leaks, and he failed to find the pirates whom he expected to encounter off Madagascar.

As it became obvious that his ambitious enterprise was failing, Kidd became desperate to cover its costs. But, once again, he failed to attack several ships when given a chance, including a Dutchman and a New York privateer. Some of the crew deserted Kidd the next time that Adventure Galley anchored offshore, and those who decided to stay on made constant open threats of mutiny.

Howard Pyle's fanciful painting of Kidd and his ship, Adventure Galley, in New York Harbor.

Howard Pyle's fanciful painting of Kidd burying treasure

Kidd killed one of his own crewmen on 30 October 1697. Kidd's gunner William Moore was on deck sharpening a chisel when a Dutch ship appeared. Moore urged Kidd to attack the Dutchman, an act not only piratical but also certain to anger Dutch-born King William. Kidd refused, calling Moore a lousy dog. Moore retorted, "If I am a lousy dog, you have made me so; you have brought me to ruin and many more." Kidd snatched up and heaved an ironbound bucket at Moore. Moore fell to the deck with a fractured skull and died the following day.^[12]

Seventeenth-century English admiralty law allowed captains great leeway in using violence against their crew, but outright murder was not permitted. Yet Kidd seemed unconcerned, later explaining to his surgeon that he had "good friends in England, that will bring me off for that".

Accusations of piracy

Acts of savagery on Kidd's part were reported by escaped prisoners, who told stories of being hoisted up by the arms and drubbed with a drawn cutlass. On one occasion, crew members ransacked the trading ship Mary and tortured several of its crew members while Kidd and the other captain, Thomas Parker, conversed privately in Kidd's cabin. When Kidd found out what had happened, he was outraged and forced his men to return most of the stolen property. Kidd was declared a pirate very early in his voyage by a Royal Navy officer, to whom he had promised "thirty men or so".^[9] Kidd sailed away during the night to preserve his crew, rather than subject them to Royal Navy impressment.

On 30 January 1698, he raised French colours and took his greatest prize, the 400-ton Quedagh Merchant,^[13][14] an Indian ship hired by Armenian merchants that was loaded with satins, muslins, gold, silver, an incredible variety of East Indian merchandise, as well as extremely valuable silks. The captain of Quedagh Merchant was an Englishman named Wright, who had purchased passes from the French East India Company promising him the protection of the French Crown. After realising the captain of the taken vessel was an Englishman, Kidd tried to persuade his crew to return the ship to its owners, but they refused, claiming that their prey was perfectly legal, as Kidd was commissioned to take French ships, and that an Armenian ship counted as French, if it had French passes. In an attempt to maintain his tenuous control over his crew, Kidd relented and kept the prize. When this news reached England, it confirmed Kidd's reputation as a pirate, and various naval commanders were ordered to "pursue and seize the said Kidd and his accomplices" for the "notorious piracies".^[15] they had committed.

Kidd kept the French passes of Quedagh Merchant, as well as the vessel itself. While the passes were at best a dubious defence of his capture, British admiralty and vice-admiralty courts (especially in North America) heretofore had often winked at privateers' excesses into piracy, and Kidd may have been hoping that the passes would provide the legal fig leaf that would allow him to keep Quedagh Merchant and her cargo. Renaming the seized merchantman Adventure Prize, he set sail for Madagascar.

On 1 April 1698, Kidd reached Madagascar. Here he found the first pirate of his voyage, Robert Culliford (the same man who had stolen Kidd’s ship years before) and his crew aboard Mocha Frigate. Two contradictory accounts exist of how Kidd reacted to his encounter with Culliford. According to The General History of the Pirates, published more than 25 years after the event by an author whose very identity remains in dispute, Kidd made peaceful overtures to Culliford: he "drank their Captain's health", swearing that "he was in every respect their Brother", and gave Culliford "a Present of an Anchor and some Guns".^[16] This account appears to be based on the testimony of Kidd's crewmen Joseph Palmer and Robert Bradinham at his trial. The other version was presented by Richard Zacks in his 2002 book The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd. According to Zacks, Kidd was unaware that Culliford had only about 20 crew with him, and felt ill-manned and ill-equipped to take Mocha Frigate until his two prize ships and crews arrived, so he decided not to molest Culliford until these reinforcements came. After Adventure Prize and Rouparelle came in, Kidd ordered his crew to attack Culliford's Mocha Frigate. However, his crew, despite their previous eagerness to seize any available prize, refused to attack Culliford and threatened instead to shoot Kidd. Zacks does not refer to any source for his version of events.^[17]

Both accounts agree that most of Kidd's men now abandoned him for Culliford. Only 13 remained with Adventure Galley. Deciding to return home, Kidd left the Adventure Galley behind, ordering her to be burnt because she had become worm-eaten and leaky. Before burning the ship, he was able to salvage every last scrap of metal, such as hinges. With the loyal remnant of his crew, he returned to the Caribbean aboard the Adventure Prize.

Trial and execution

Captain Kidd, gibbeted, following his execution in 1701.

Prior to returning to New York City, Kidd learned that he was a wanted pirate, and that several English men-of-war were searching for him. Realizing that Adventure Prize was a marked vessel, he cached it in the Caribbean Sea, sold off his remaining plundered goods through pirate and fence William Burke,^[18] and continued toward New York aboard a sloop. He deposited some of his treasure on Gardiners Island, hoping to use his knowledge of its location as a bargaining tool. Kidd found himself in Oyster Bay, as a way of avoiding his mutinous crew who gathered in New York. In order to avoid them, Kidd sailed 120 miles around the eastern tip of Long Island, and then doubled back 90 miles along the Sound to Oyster Bay. He felt this was a safer passage than the highly trafficked Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn.^[19]

Bellomont (an investor) was away in Boston, Massachusetts. Aware of the accusations against Kidd, Bellomont was justifiably afraid of being implicated in piracy himself, and knew that presenting Kidd to England in chains was his best chance to save himself. He lured Kidd into Boston with false promises of clemency,^[20] then ordered him arrested on 6 July 1699. Kidd was placed in Stone Prison, spending most of the time in solitary confinement. His wife, Sarah, was also imprisoned. The conditions of Kidd's imprisonment were extremely harsh, and appear to have driven him at least temporarily insane. By then, Bellomont had turned against Kidd and other pirates, writing that the inhabitants of Long Island were "a lawless and unruly people" protecting pirates who had "settled among them".^[21]

After over a year, Kidd was sent to England for questioning by the Parliament of England. The new Tory ministry hoped to use Kidd as a tool to discredit the Whigs who had backed him, but Kidd refused to name names, naively confident his patrons would reward his loyalty by interceding on his behalf. There is speculation that he probably would have been spared had he talked. Finding Kidd politically useless, the Tory leaders sent him to stand trial before the High Court of Admiralty in London, for the charges of piracy on high seas and the murder of William Moore. Whilst awaiting trial, Kidd was confined in the infamous Newgate Prison, and wrote several letters to King William requesting clemency.

Kidd had two lawyers to assist in his defence.^[22] He was shocked to learn at his trial that he was charged with murder. He was found guilty on all charges (murder and five counts of piracy). He was hanged on 23 May 1701, at Execution Dock, Wapping, in London. During the execution, the hangman's rope broke and Kidd was hanged on the second attempt. His body was gibbeted over the River Thames at Tilbury Point – as a warning to future would-be pirates – for three years.^[23]

His associates Richard Barleycorn, Robert Lamley, William Jenkins, Gabriel Loffe, Able Owens, and Hugh Parrot were also convicted, but pardoned just prior to hanging at Execution Dock.

Kidd's Whig backers were embarrassed by his trial. Far from rewarding his loyalty, they participated in the effort to convict him by depriving him of the money and information which might have provided him with some legal defence. In particular, the two sets of French passes he had kept were missing at his trial. These passes (and others dated 1700) resurfaced in the early twentieth century, misfiled with other government papers in a London building.^[24] These passes call the extent of Kidd's guilt into question. Along with the papers, many goods were brought from the ships and soon auctioned off as "pirate plunder". They were never mentioned in the trial.

As to the accusations of murdering Moore, on this he was mostly sunk on the testimony of the two former crew members, Palmer and Bradinham, who testified against him in exchange for pardons. A deposition Palmer gave, when he was captured in Rhode Island two years earlier, contradicted his testimony and may have supported Kidd's assertions, but Kidd was unable to obtain the deposition.

A broadside song "Captain Kidd's Farewell to the Seas, or, the Famous Pirate's Lament" was printed shortly after his execution and popularised the common belief that Kidd had confessed to the charges.^[25]

Mythology and legend

The belief that Kidd had left buried treasure contributed considerably to the growth of his legend. The 1701 broadside song "Captain Kid's Farewell to the Seas, or, the Famous Pirate's Lament" lists "Two hundred bars of gold, and rix dollars manifold, we seized uncontrolled".^[25][26] This belief made its contributions to literature in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug"; Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker"; Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Nelson DeMille's Plum Island. It also gave impetus to the constant treasure hunts conducted on Oak Island in Nova Scotia; in Suffolk County, Long Island in New York where Gardiner's Island is located; Charles Island in Milford, Connecticut; the Thimble Islands in Connecticut; Cockenoe Island in Westport, Connecticut;^[27] and on the island of Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy.

Captain Kidd did bury a small cache of treasure on Gardiners Island in a spot known as Cherry Tree Field; however, it was removed by Governor Bellomont and sent to England to be used as evidence against Kidd.^[28][29]

Kidd also visited Block Island around 1699, where he was supplied by Mrs. Mercy (Sands) Raymond, daughter of the mariner James Sands. The story has it that, for her hospitality, Mrs. Raymond was bid to hold out her apron, into which Kidd threw gold and jewels until it was full. After her husband Joshua Raymond died, Mercy moved with her family to northern New London, Connecticut (later Montville), where she bought much land. The Raymond family was thus said to have been "enriched by the apron".^[30]

On Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy, as early as 1875, reference was made to searches on the West side of the island for treasure allegedly buried by Kidd during his time as a privateer. For nearly 200 years, this remote area of the island has been called "Money Cove".

In 1983, Cork Graham and Richard Knight went looking for Captain Kidd's buried treasure off the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc. Knight and Graham were caught, convicted of illegally landing on Vietnamese territory, and assessed each a $10,000 fine. They were imprisoned for 11 months until they paid the fine.^[31]

Quedagh Merchant found

For years, people and treasure hunters have tried to locate Quedagh Merchant.^[32] It was reported on December 13, 2007 that "wreckage of a pirate ship abandoned by Captain Kidd in the 17th century has been found by divers in shallow waters off the Dominican Republic." The waters in which the ship was found were less than ten feet deep and were only 70 feet (21 m) off Catalina Island, just to the south of La Romana on the Dominican coast. The ship is believed to be "the remains of Quedagh Merchant".^[33][34] Charles Beeker, the director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs in Indiana University (Bloomington)'s School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, was one of the experts leading the Indiana University diving team. He said that it was "remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location," and given that the ship has been the subject of so many prior failed searches.^[35] Captain Kidd's cannon, an artifact from the shipwreck, was added to a permanent exhibit at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in 2011.^[36]

Treasure found

In May 2015, a 50-kilogram (110 lb) ingot expected to be silver was found in a wreck off the coast of Île Sainte-Marie in Madagascar by a team led by marine archaeologist Barry Clifford, and was believed to be part of Captain Kidd's treasure.^[37][38][39] Clifford handed the booty to Hery Rajaonarimampianina, President of Madagascar.^[40][41] However, in July 2015, a UNESCO scientific and technical advisory body revealed that the ingot consisted of 95% lead, and speculated that the wreck in question might be a broken part of the Sainte-Marie port constructions.^[42]

Portrayals in popular culture

Charles Laughton played Kidd twice on film, first in 1945 in Captain Kidd, then in 1952 in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd.

John Crawford played Kidd in the 1953 Columbia film serial The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd.

The most recent film portrayal was by Love Nystrom in the 2006 mini-series Blackbeard.

Captain Kidd appears in Persona 5, as one of the titular Personas belonging to Ryuji Sakamoto.

See also

• Joseph Bradish, a pirate who sailed in Kidd's company^[43]
• George Dew, buccaneer, pirate, and privateer who briefly sailed alongside Kidd in 1691 near the Piscataqua River.^[44]
• Captain Kidd's Cannon
• Gardiners Island
• Oak Island
• Treasure Island

References and notes

Bibliography

Further reading

Books

Articles

External links

Wikisource has the text of a 1892 Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography article about William Kidd.

• Captain Kidd pub, What's in Wapping? Local community website