![]() ![]() Image linked via the Law Library of Congress. He denied any act of piracy and the case went on to trial of six counts: a murder charge for the death of William Moore, and five counts of piracy. In 1701 Kidd was finally called before the House of Commons, which eagerly hoped that he might denounce one of the noblemen and say that he was encouraged to be a pirate. Out of concern that Kidd would be tried and executed while Parliament was on recess (and before the politicians could cover the appropriate bums), the legislature asked to postpone trial – so after eight months in Boston prison, Kidd would spend about a year more in Newgate prison uncharged and without the conveniences that would normally be afforded a man of his station. Both parties assumed Kidd was a pirate, Richard Zacks writes, “the Tories delighting that he was a pirate and the Whigs claiming that he wasn’t our pirate.” England was abuzz: If upstanding men had basically created a pirate syndicate, what would this mean? Kidd’s backers were Whigs, who were then losing power. The nervous governor had Kidd arrested and jailed, and then sent to London for trial. Kidd went home, where three years without solid news had many Englishmen – especially the ones with skin in the game – wondering: where had he been all this time, what was he really doing, and who was paying for it?īellomont wrote with the possibility of pardon, but Kidd returned to a chill reception. Kidd stashed away the French passes and may have breathed easier had his crew not soon voted, 100-15, to mutiny over to the ship of known pirate Robert Culliford. Thankfully for Kidd and the crew’s morale, the Adventure Galley soon captured two fat prize ships, Armenian-owned vessels sailing under French paperwork that verified them as legal capture. The argument ended with Kidd hitting the gunner over the head with an iron-ringed bucket, and he later died as a result of the wound. Moore goaded the crew by grinding a heavy chisel Kidd called Moore a lousy dog. The crew wanted to take a Dutch ship they suspected to be especially rich, and Moore suggested they kidnap the crew, loot the ship and make everyone sign a letter stating the capture was legal. Kidd pushed on, hoping he could bring in enough gold to make up for being past deadline.Ī few skirmishes and small captures didn’t help distract the men from their lousy prospects, and a fight eventually broke out between Kidd and the Galley men, led by gunner William Moore. After more than a year at sea the Adventure Galley had taken no prize, and since no capture meant no payday, the crew – many of them former pirates themselves – were angry. ![]() (Think of it as colonial venture capital.) The men solicited four influential lords to put up the money to get Kidd’s ship, the Adventure Galley, ready to sail. Of note: the backers clearly had their sights on pirate goods, which they just happened to exempt from accounting, and Kidd signed a £20,000 performance bond – a huge sum that all but guaranteed financial ruin if he failed. “…to take what prizes he can from the King’s Enemies, and forthwith to make the best of his way to Boston in New England, and that without touching at any other port or harbour whatsoever, or without breaking bulk or diminishing any part of what he shall so take or obtain…deliver the same into the hands and possession of the said Earl.”** The Earl of Bellomont, an ambitious politician living in the colonies as appointed governor of Massachusetts Bay, and Robert Livingston, a wealthy New York merchant, signed Kidd: He perked up when two of the most influential men in England and its colonies came calling with a privateering commission. After his father’s death he went to sea, and before long Kidd was a successful privateer and merchant captain, well regarded and married to a wealthy New York widow. William Kidd was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1654, in the Cromwell era. So: birth of a pirate king, or a complete bus-chuck? To the end Kidd denied he’d been a pirate, and lamented a perfect storm of mutiny, betrayal and scapegoating. Not 25 years later, Captain Kidd was renowned in England as the man “whose publick Tryal and Execution here, rendered him the Subject of all Conversation, so that his Actions have been chanted about in Ballads.”* William Kidd, a merchant captain and commissioned privateer, was tried and executed in 1701 for throwing away the king’s commission to turn pirate in the Indian Ocean. Privateer, man of song and legend, unwitting pirate?Īsk him about: the tabloid trial of the (18th) century!
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