June 11, 2012 • 23 mins
William Kidd had settled down by 1695, but privateering was still in his blood. He struck up a plan to attack pirates plaguing English ships and enlisted investors to back his efforts. Eventually he was declared a pirate. But did he deserve the label?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to
bling a chalk reboarding and I'm stared out and we're
gonna start today's episode with a discovery. In two thousand seven,
a snorkeler off the southern coast of the Dominican Republic
(00:23):
stumbled across a group of sunken cannons and immediately alerted
Dominican officials, who in turn contacted a team of underwater
archaeologists at Indiana University that had been doing research in
the area for several years. So when the Indiana team
checked it out, they realized that it wasn't just a
bunch of cannons down there, It was the wreckage of
(00:44):
a ship, and not just any ship. Because of the
location of the find and the arrangement of the cannons,
the Indiana researchers believed that they had found the remains
of the car A Merchant, which is sometimes also called
the quit A Merchant, a ship once belonging to a
seventeenth century pirate of notorious repute, Captain William kidd Are.
So this find was obviously significant, not just because of
(01:07):
its connection to a pirate. But because of the legend
of this particular pirate supposed it lost treasure that's circulated
throughout the years. It's a legend that started up around
the time of kids death in seventeen o one and
persisted in the following centuries. The legend, of course, has
been the motivation behind numerous treasure hunts throughout the years,
(01:28):
from America's eastern seaboard to the Caribbean, to Madagascar to Asia.
In fact, Barry Clifford, who discovered the remains of the
Widow One, said quote, everyone who has ever walked a
beach from the Dominican Republic to Maine has looked for
the pirate treasure of Captain Kidd. It's even inspired works
of literature, from Daniel Dafoe's Pirate Writings to Robert Louis
(01:50):
Stevenson's Treasure Island and post Story The Gold Bug. But
over the last century or so, historians have debated not
only the existence of anis dent of this lost treasure,
but whether Kid was ever really a pirate at all.
Crushing yeah, I mean, some believe that he acted only
as a privateer, who is a person legitimately hired by
a government to attack enemy ships, so basically kind of
(02:14):
a pirate catcher or a wartime legitimate pirate sort of. Yeah,
So we're going to take a look at what's known
about kids life and how exactly his adventures on the
high seas went down to try to see how likely
either of these scenarios are. It's sort of tough, though,
looking for any pirate tendencies and kids early life, because
not a lot is really known about his youth. He's
(02:36):
believed to have been the son of a Presbyterian minister
born in Sixtet in Greenick, Scotland. So a biographical article
about Kid by Richard Mean suggests that it might have
been because his father's death and his mother's subsequent remarriage.
Other sources suggest that maybe it was just because he
grew up in a port town and had pretty easy
access to the sailor's life. But either way, it seems
(03:00):
that Kid left home and took to the sea at
a pretty early age, and according to the Encyclopedia of
World Biography, though, the first verifiable record of him doesn't
pop up until about six eighty nine, when Kid was
already forty four years old, so there's a lot of
lost years in there. At that time, he was a
member of a French English pirate crew in the Caribbean
(03:21):
that Mute Need ditched their captain and went to the
island of Nevis, an English colony. While they were there,
they renamed the ship the Blessed William and Kid was
made captain either by a vote or by the governor
of the colony, and they started working as legitimate privateers
for the governor of Nevis. France and England were at
war at the time, so the Blessed William's job was
(03:43):
to attack French ships and their payment was basically whatever
spoils they got from those ships that they attacked. Soon though,
Kid decided that he would join in to help the
Royal Navy in a sea battle with French warships, and
of course that meant there isn't a lot of treasure
on a war ship, and it means there's a lot
of danger fighting one. So Kid's crew wasn't too happy
(04:04):
about the situation, and so, led by a guy named
Robert Culifford, the Blessed Williams crew mutinied after the battle
and they stole the ship and sailed off to the
pirates life and the governor of Nevis gave Kid a
friendship to use, and Kid took off, and perhaps at
first he was intending to hunt down his mutinous crew
and punish them, but ultimately he decided to set a
(04:28):
course for a very different destination that was New York,
and Kid reached New York, which was also a British
colony at the time, in and while there his life
took a very different turn. He met an english woman
named Sarah Bradley Cox Ort, who was married to a
very wealthy man named John Ort. John Ort died that year.
Apparently somewhat mysteriously, Kid and Sarah applied for a marriage
(04:52):
license just a couple of days later and were married
just a few days after that. According to the Encyclopedia
World Biography, historians think Kid might have even killed John Ort,
maybe even with Sarah's help. The timeline is certainly a
little suspicious, and trust those Sarah's oh no, So regardless
though any suspicion, I haven't haven't done anything, don't look
(05:15):
at me to Blena. Okay, So, but regardless, any suspicions
that anyone may have had at the time about Kid
or Sarah didn't really seem to affect them, and they
did set up a very nice, comfortable life together. Sarah
had actually been married twice before kids, so she brought
a lot of wealth to the table, and when they
were married, Kid basically had control over all of that,
(05:36):
including a number of business interests along the waterfront, and
he became the father to Sarah's two daughters. So a
very different life for him. Right. Suddenly it's this former
sailor who has become rich, a New York business mogul,
living in a stately home with his wife and kids.
So it sounds like a pretty sweet set up. But
(05:56):
kids still wanted more or something a little different. At least,
the sea still called to him. He still had the
urge to do some privateering, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
even while living in New York, Kid would get called
upon from time to time because of his background as
a seaman, to get rid of enemy privateers on the
New York and Massachusetts coast. But in six he and
(06:19):
his friend Robert Livingston hatched a bigger and potentially more
profitable plan. Pirates in the Indian Ocean and other areas
were always interfering around this time with English shipping traffic,
and Kid could sail potentially around pirate infested waters and
attack pirate ships, apprehending pirates and the loot that they'd
(06:39):
taken from other ships. It would be profitable and adventurous first, though,
Kid needed them investors and of course, some sort of
official backing, otherwise he'd just be another pirate. So traveling
to London that year, he got both of the things
he was looking for, and in a very big way
to a group of key people supported kids plan. The
Earl of Almont, who was the newly nominated Governor of Massachusetts,
(07:04):
Sir John Summers who was the Duke of Shrewsbury, and
the Baron of Romney, the Earl of Orford, all prominent
members of the Whig political party. But there was somebody
else who was in the mix, somebody who really landed
a certain cachet to this whole project, none other than
the King himself, William the Third and Kids mission was
essentially a privateering expedition. He'd be attacking enemy French ships again,
(07:29):
but it was sort of privateering with a special twist.
He'd also be hunting down pirate ships who were causing
trouble for England. As he had originally planned, any booty
that Kid happened to confiscate from pirate ships would be
divided up among his investors. According to an article by
Eric Mills and Naval History, even the King would be
(07:49):
taking a ten percent cut of whatever pirate loot they got.
But some a little morally questionable that it does. And
I mean we should point it out because you might think, Okay,
hunting pirate doesn't sound so bad, right, That sounds like
a legitimate thing to do in any case. But the
sketchy thing to point out about this plan here is
that Kid and his investors were technically proposing stealing stolen
(08:11):
stuff and then claiming said stolen stuff as their own
instead of just turning it over to the government or something.
So thanks to that influential group though behind him, Kid
was able to set fail in a thirty four gun
ship called the Adventure Galley with an official commission, complete
with a new Great Deal of England patent and all
(08:33):
of those things just granted his mission legitimacy. So even
with the official paperwork though, and the powerful backers, including
the King himself, Kid and his Adventure Galley had some
trouble right from the start, So he set fail in
April of s with about a seventy to eighty man crew,
and he had plans to pick up about eighty more
(08:53):
men when he was in New York, but he got
into trouble before he even got out of the tempt Yeah.
First off, he passed a Royal Navy ship without dipping
his colors, which was a really important custom at the
time to show deference to a Navy vessel, So not
doing so was a real sign of disrespect. And who
knows why he failed to do this, if it was
(09:14):
just an acc out of practice right, or perhaps he
just thought that he didn't need to because he had
such important backers. The Navy vessel, in either case, responded
by sending a cannonball in their direction, and according to
mills article, Kid's crew then responded to that by quote
turning around and slapping their backsides at the Navy vessel.
(09:35):
This is kind of the early version of road rage.
This encounter, though, led to the Navy taking away twenty
of kids best men, and when Kid complained about it,
the Navy gave him back twenty men, but not the
good ones that they had taken. They brought him a
bunch of no good troublemaker type, and Kid didn't really
fare much better in the crew department when he made
(09:57):
it to New York either, because New York also had
a share for good for nothing pirate types hanging around
about this time, and these were the type of recruits
that Kid was able to get, not top quality guys,
and according to Mills article, again, Governor Benjamin Fletcher called
these men described them as quote men of desperate fortunes.
(10:17):
By the time the Adventure Galley made it out to
the Indian Ocean, by early seven, they lost about thirty
more crewmen too illness, and they had to replace those
guys with former pirate crew members that they picked up
at various ports of call in the area. These were
basically the only sailors that were hanging around were people
who would have worked on pirate ships, So the Adventure
(10:38):
Galley had a bit of a motley crew going on.
But for a long time, Kid's biggest problem wasn't really that,
It was just that he couldn't find any ships to attack,
and this in turn made his crew really restless and
n happy because they hadn't taken any loot and they
were running out of supply, so Kid really started to
get desperate, desperate enough to become a pirate. Perhaps what
(10:58):
we're gonna see. So according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography,
it's unclear whether Kid really intended from the beginning to
stick to the plan of only attacking England's enemies, but
other sources, including Mills article, suggests that he proved as
much on certain occasions. So for example, on August fourteenth,
(11:19):
he started to attack what appeared to be a mobile convoy.
Um it was kind of a sketchy attack of his
because he attacked flying a crimson flag, which was basically
a sign of piracy and mint surrender no quarter. But
the convoys English captain hoisted the colors of the East
India Company and so Kid backed off. But his crew
(11:40):
wasn't really happy with that move. No, they were ready
for something to happen. That October, Kid got into an
argument with a crew member named William Moore, who was
unhappy that the captain would only attack non English ships.
He was still supposedly trying to keep within the original
parameters of his mission at this time, so during their fight,
(12:01):
Kid ended up picking up a bucket and smashing it
over Moore's head and more died the next day from
the wounds that he got from that encounter. And it's
after this point that sources really start to diverge a
lot over the point of whether Kid really took to
outright piracy. Just a few examples of different things that
people put out there. According to the Encyclopedia World Biography,
(12:22):
Kid considered any ship that came across fair game after
this because he really wanted to regain the respect of
his crew. I mean, murdering a crew member, even if accidentally,
isn't the best way to win more support. So he
really had something to me. They needed to be put
to work quickly, and according to Means Biography, Kids set
out still trying to find enemy friendships. Then he captured
(12:45):
what he thought was an enemy friendship, the Ruparel that November.
The ship's Dutch captain, though, told him that they were
under the command of the East India Company, but Kid
commandeered the ship anyway, So you know, kind of a
murky ground there with that one, right, And other sources
don't really indicate that he ever changed his intent to
(13:06):
stick to his commission, his original plan of only attacking
French ships and pirate ships regardless, one thing that they
can all agree on is that in January, Kid in
the Adventure Galley came across what appeared to be an
India built Armenian owned ship called the Car Merchant archival research.
As we mentioned that there, you might hear a different
(13:26):
name for the ship at times, but archival research has
since confirmed that this is the correct name for the ship.
Kid flew a French flag is kind of a disguise
for his own ship, and the Car Merchant, even though
it actually had an English captain, turns out did the
same thing, according to Mills article, just to protect the ship.
They thought, okay, we need to at least put the
(13:47):
face forward that we are French, right. The captain of
the Car Merchant also sent a French gunner over to
Adventure Galley with a French pass or paper of safe conduct,
and this supposedly convinced Kid this was a legit capture.
This was a friendship, totally fair game for him to attack.
But it was only after capturing the ship that Kid
(14:09):
realized it was in fact carrying East India Company cargo
and the captain was English. So what is he going
to do now? It looked like a friendship, but turns
out it's not. Well. At this point, the Adventure Galley
Crew was so desperate for some sort of loot that
they ended up keeping it, selling some of it off,
and dividing it for profits. So they went ahead with
(14:31):
the plan even after they found back they found out
they had made a mistake, and after that they ended
up going to Madagascar, which was kind of a hotbed
for pirates at the time, and there they ran into
Kids old crew member from his pre New York days,
Robert Culifford. Seems like the perfect opportunity to both catch
a pirate which is part of their mission, and get
(14:51):
some revenge at the same time. Right, So well, yeah,
that's what it seems like, And it would have been
if the majority of Kids Crew didn't decide that it
was also the perfect time to desert Kid and join
up with Clifford instead. And according to mills article, they
wanted to work for somebody who represented pure piracy, who
they knew, they knew where he stood, rather than some strange,
(15:13):
half cocked hybrid version of piracy privateering special mission. And
if that wasn't bad enough, you know, losing your your
guys to your old enemy Kids ship, the Adventure Galley,
was also falling apart by this point. Yeah, He and
the small remaining crew just figured it was a lost
(15:33):
cause and they decided to sink the ship and make
the car a merchant their main ship. Then they headed
for the West Indies. When they reached there, though, Kid
discovered that the British government had declared him a pirate
and he was a wanted man. According to Mills, part
of what was behind this was that the car merchants
for investors were blaming the East India Company for what
had happened, and England needed to protect the company's reputation.
(15:57):
I mean the East India Company. That's an important part
of an In's economy. They have to stay face at
this point. The other thing was that the Tories had
taken over Parliament from the Whigs, so Kids, once very
influential friends, weren't as influential anymore and they didn't want
to go out on a limb for him. The King,
of course, didn't even step up to a pirate, and
(16:20):
so Kid thought that he could prove his innocence, especially
since he still had that French pass that he had
collected from the English captain of the car merchant to
prove that he thought that the ship that he was
attacking was French, at least at first. So he ditched
the car a merchant near Hispaniola and headed off to
New York in a more discreet boat, because of course,
in this India built boat, they would have been drawing
(16:43):
attention to themselves all over the place in that region
of the world. And he headed back to try to
clear his name. By the time he got there, though,
the rumor mill had already been working against him. According
to an article by Willard Helen Bonner, the rumors that
were spread around this time about kids activities and his
associations with other pirates and his supposed treasure actually made
(17:05):
it into official newsletters works of journalism at the time
and informed a lot of what people knew about Kid
for years after, and maybe even up until this day.
Some of those ideas are still mixed into the William
Kids stories that we know. Yeah, and that reputation definitely
caught up with him. Kid was arrested. He was imprisoned
in a colonial jail in Boston for several months, and
(17:27):
then he was sent off to England, where he was
locked up in Newgate Prison, which was a really horrible, dirty,
disease ridden place to be. And in the meantime, that
crucial French path that was supposed to prove his innocence
was conveniently misplaced. According to Mill's article, it didn't resurface
until the twentieth century. And on May eight s one,
(17:50):
Kid was brought to trial for William Moore's murder and
for piracy. Yeah, and I mean the odds were really
stacked against him. He had to defend himself basically without
any evidence because that French pass was missing. Basically someone
had to take the fall for this situation with the
East India Company, and the trial was over by the
(18:11):
next day. He was scheduled to be executed on May
twenty three, seventeen o one, with some other accused pirates
near the Thames, and Kid was supposedly very drunk when
they were all transported out to be hanged, which was
a real disappointment to the prison pastor who had hoped
that Kid would repent and confess before dying. When the
(18:31):
hangman tried to hang Kid the first time, the rope
broke Kid was the only prisoner for which this happened.
They were all kind of hanged at the same time,
and his was the only one. The rope that was
holding him was the only one that broke, and while
the hangman was wringing up a new rope for Kid,
according to the Encyclopedia World Biography, he prayed with the
pastor and finally repented, so the second time he was hanged,
(18:54):
Kid did die. His body was then tarred or wrapped
in chains and putting a cage that was strung up
along the banks of attempts for years after that as
a warning to others, don't be a pirate. It does
not pay no. So the search for the car merchant
and for kids treasure, of course, began well before his execution, though,
(19:15):
and according to mills article in Naval History, his old supporter,
Lord Belmont, unsuccessfully sent a ship to the West Indies
to try to track it down while Kid was still
in prison. That sounds like kind of a mean thing
to do. I don't know. It's generally believed that kids
remaining crew members burned and thanked the ship after taking
(19:35):
whatever valuables were on board, but that inability to find
the ship is one of the things that fueled the
treasure hunts over the years, you know, where where is it?
Where could it be? Yeah, And since two thousand seven,
the Indiana University team has confirmed that the shipwreck found
was indeed the car Merchant. Incidentally, it was found about
seventy feet off of the shore of Cataleen Island and
(19:57):
only about ten ft below the surface, so it's actually
kind of exactly. It was very It's kind of strange
that nobody found it before then. But last year the
underwater shipwreck site was dedicated as a quote living museum
of the sea on May three, which is I think
the anniversary of kids hanging. But there is one more
(20:19):
thing to add to the story, and it's a conspiracy.
So according to an article by Erling Hole and Geographical,
at least one man iss the door. Pawanski believed that
kid didn't die in seventeen o one. He thought kid
was able to bribe the keeper of the Newgate prison
with promises of hidden treasure, and that's why the rope
(20:40):
really snapped. Yeah, he just asked those questions, Why did
the rope snap? Why did all of a sudden Kid
change his mind when he wasn't willing to confess and repent,
and then later when he came out the second time,
he was ready to repent and confess. So just was
there a switchero potentially? Is that what he suggested? Yeah,
he suggested that they switched guys and that the second
(21:04):
guy was not Kid, and so he was more willing
to talk to the pastor right that That's why his
sentiments had sort of changed, because he wasn't in fact
the same man at all. Kid's widow. There's another aspect
of to this. Kid's widow remarried a man named Christopher
Rousby and s three and moved to New Jersey for
some reason, even though she had this big, stately New
(21:26):
York mansion and it didn't seem like there would be
any reason why she'd want to move to New Jersey.
Paiwanski believed that Rousby was really Kid, and he wrote
a book to this effect that I believe was released
earlier in the two thousands. Needed to get out of town.
Maybe maybe so, I mean, you know, it's a maybe
(21:46):
a long shot theory, but an interesting one to entertain
just in case. I always like it when we have
the very slim chance LEAs that the subject of our
podcast did not die. In fact, it's it's kind of
elvith ish and went on to have a life along
life in Jersey. Maybe maybe so. Um, it was definitely
(22:06):
interesting to learn a little bit more about one of
the most famous pirates. We've got quite a collection of
pirate episodes now, we do well. We did Shipwrecks last year.
We covered a lot of shipwrecks and we talked about
I think a couple of pirates and that, and of
course we've talked about black Beard and who else lady pirates,
some lady pirates. Oh that's right, Cheny sal and Grace O'Malley.
(22:28):
So we do have quite a collection going, but there
are still so many more. If any of you want
to request any more pirates, you always know where to
find us because we love to do those stories. We
do so we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on Facebook.
All good places to um share your thoughts, let us
(22:49):
know about pirate issues, on your mind, whatever, and if
you want to find out a little bit more about
the topic we discussed today, we have an article on
our website called how Pirates Work, and I believe it
even covers modern piracy a bit as well. You can
find that by searching our homepage, which is at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(23:13):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to
bling a chalk reboarding and I'm stared out and we're
gonna start today's episode with a discovery. In two thousand seven,
a snorkeler off the southern coast of the Dominican Republic
(00:23):
stumbled across a group of sunken cannons and immediately alerted
Dominican officials, who in turn contacted a team of underwater
archaeologists at Indiana University that had been doing research in
the area for several years. So when the Indiana team
checked it out, they realized that it wasn't just a
bunch of cannons down there, It was the wreckage of
(00:44):
a ship, and not just any ship. Because of the
location of the find and the arrangement of the cannons,
the Indiana researchers believed that they had found the remains
of the car A Merchant, which is sometimes also called
the quit A Merchant, a ship once belonging to a
seventeenth century pirate of notorious repute, Captain William kidd Are.
So this find was obviously significant, not just because of
(01:07):
its connection to a pirate. But because of the legend
of this particular pirate supposed it lost treasure that's circulated
throughout the years. It's a legend that started up around
the time of kids death in seventeen o one and
persisted in the following centuries. The legend, of course, has
been the motivation behind numerous treasure hunts throughout the years,
(01:28):
from America's eastern seaboard to the Caribbean, to Madagascar to Asia.
In fact, Barry Clifford, who discovered the remains of the
Widow One, said quote, everyone who has ever walked a
beach from the Dominican Republic to Maine has looked for
the pirate treasure of Captain Kidd. It's even inspired works
of literature, from Daniel Dafoe's Pirate Writings to Robert Louis
(01:50):
Stevenson's Treasure Island and post Story The Gold Bug. But
over the last century or so, historians have debated not
only the existence of anis dent of this lost treasure,
but whether Kid was ever really a pirate at all.
Crushing yeah, I mean, some believe that he acted only
as a privateer, who is a person legitimately hired by
a government to attack enemy ships, so basically kind of
(02:14):
a pirate catcher or a wartime legitimate pirate sort of. Yeah,
So we're going to take a look at what's known
about kids life and how exactly his adventures on the
high seas went down to try to see how likely
either of these scenarios are. It's sort of tough, though,
looking for any pirate tendencies and kids early life, because
not a lot is really known about his youth. He's
(02:36):
believed to have been the son of a Presbyterian minister
born in Sixtet in Greenick, Scotland. So a biographical article
about Kid by Richard Mean suggests that it might have
been because his father's death and his mother's subsequent remarriage.
Other sources suggest that maybe it was just because he
grew up in a port town and had pretty easy
access to the sailor's life. But either way, it seems
(03:00):
that Kid left home and took to the sea at
a pretty early age, and according to the Encyclopedia of
World Biography, though, the first verifiable record of him doesn't
pop up until about six eighty nine, when Kid was
already forty four years old, so there's a lot of
lost years in there. At that time, he was a
member of a French English pirate crew in the Caribbean
(03:21):
that Mute Need ditched their captain and went to the
island of Nevis, an English colony. While they were there,
they renamed the ship the Blessed William and Kid was
made captain either by a vote or by the governor
of the colony, and they started working as legitimate privateers
for the governor of Nevis. France and England were at
war at the time, so the Blessed William's job was
(03:43):
to attack French ships and their payment was basically whatever
spoils they got from those ships that they attacked. Soon though,
Kid decided that he would join in to help the
Royal Navy in a sea battle with French warships, and
of course that meant there isn't a lot of treasure
on a war ship, and it means there's a lot
of danger fighting one. So Kid's crew wasn't too happy
(04:04):
about the situation, and so, led by a guy named
Robert Culifford, the Blessed Williams crew mutinied after the battle
and they stole the ship and sailed off to the
pirates life and the governor of Nevis gave Kid a
friendship to use, and Kid took off, and perhaps at
first he was intending to hunt down his mutinous crew
and punish them, but ultimately he decided to set a
(04:28):
course for a very different destination that was New York,
and Kid reached New York, which was also a British
colony at the time, in and while there his life
took a very different turn. He met an english woman
named Sarah Bradley Cox Ort, who was married to a
very wealthy man named John Ort. John Ort died that year.
Apparently somewhat mysteriously, Kid and Sarah applied for a marriage
(04:52):
license just a couple of days later and were married
just a few days after that. According to the Encyclopedia
World Biography, historians think Kid might have even killed John Ort,
maybe even with Sarah's help. The timeline is certainly a
little suspicious, and trust those Sarah's oh no, So regardless
though any suspicion, I haven't haven't done anything, don't look
(05:15):
at me to Blena. Okay, So, but regardless, any suspicions
that anyone may have had at the time about Kid
or Sarah didn't really seem to affect them, and they
did set up a very nice, comfortable life together. Sarah
had actually been married twice before kids, so she brought
a lot of wealth to the table, and when they
were married, Kid basically had control over all of that,
(05:36):
including a number of business interests along the waterfront, and
he became the father to Sarah's two daughters. So a
very different life for him. Right. Suddenly it's this former
sailor who has become rich, a New York business mogul,
living in a stately home with his wife and kids.
So it sounds like a pretty sweet set up. But
(05:56):
kids still wanted more or something a little different. At least,
the sea still called to him. He still had the
urge to do some privateering, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
even while living in New York, Kid would get called
upon from time to time because of his background as
a seaman, to get rid of enemy privateers on the
New York and Massachusetts coast. But in six he and
(06:19):
his friend Robert Livingston hatched a bigger and potentially more
profitable plan. Pirates in the Indian Ocean and other areas
were always interfering around this time with English shipping traffic,
and Kid could sail potentially around pirate infested waters and
attack pirate ships, apprehending pirates and the loot that they'd
(06:39):
taken from other ships. It would be profitable and adventurous first, though,
Kid needed them investors and of course, some sort of
official backing, otherwise he'd just be another pirate. So traveling
to London that year, he got both of the things
he was looking for, and in a very big way
to a group of key people supported kids plan. The
Earl of Almont, who was the newly nominated Governor of Massachusetts,
(07:04):
Sir John Summers who was the Duke of Shrewsbury, and
the Baron of Romney, the Earl of Orford, all prominent
members of the Whig political party. But there was somebody
else who was in the mix, somebody who really landed
a certain cachet to this whole project, none other than
the King himself, William the Third and Kids mission was
essentially a privateering expedition. He'd be attacking enemy French ships again,
(07:29):
but it was sort of privateering with a special twist.
He'd also be hunting down pirate ships who were causing
trouble for England. As he had originally planned, any booty
that Kid happened to confiscate from pirate ships would be
divided up among his investors. According to an article by
Eric Mills and Naval History, even the King would be
(07:49):
taking a ten percent cut of whatever pirate loot they got.
But some a little morally questionable that it does. And
I mean we should point it out because you might think, Okay,
hunting pirate doesn't sound so bad, right, That sounds like
a legitimate thing to do in any case. But the
sketchy thing to point out about this plan here is
that Kid and his investors were technically proposing stealing stolen
(08:11):
stuff and then claiming said stolen stuff as their own
instead of just turning it over to the government or something.
So thanks to that influential group though behind him, Kid
was able to set fail in a thirty four gun
ship called the Adventure Galley with an official commission, complete
with a new Great Deal of England patent and all
(08:33):
of those things just granted his mission legitimacy. So even
with the official paperwork though, and the powerful backers, including
the King himself, Kid and his Adventure Galley had some
trouble right from the start, So he set fail in
April of s with about a seventy to eighty man crew,
and he had plans to pick up about eighty more
(08:53):
men when he was in New York, but he got
into trouble before he even got out of the tempt Yeah.
First off, he passed a Royal Navy ship without dipping
his colors, which was a really important custom at the
time to show deference to a Navy vessel, So not
doing so was a real sign of disrespect. And who
knows why he failed to do this, if it was
(09:14):
just an acc out of practice right, or perhaps he
just thought that he didn't need to because he had
such important backers. The Navy vessel, in either case, responded
by sending a cannonball in their direction, and according to
mills article, Kid's crew then responded to that by quote
turning around and slapping their backsides at the Navy vessel.
(09:35):
This is kind of the early version of road rage.
This encounter, though, led to the Navy taking away twenty
of kids best men, and when Kid complained about it,
the Navy gave him back twenty men, but not the
good ones that they had taken. They brought him a
bunch of no good troublemaker type, and Kid didn't really
fare much better in the crew department when he made
(09:57):
it to New York either, because New York also had
a share for good for nothing pirate types hanging around
about this time, and these were the type of recruits
that Kid was able to get, not top quality guys,
and according to Mills article, again, Governor Benjamin Fletcher called
these men described them as quote men of desperate fortunes.
(10:17):
By the time the Adventure Galley made it out to
the Indian Ocean, by early seven, they lost about thirty
more crewmen too illness, and they had to replace those
guys with former pirate crew members that they picked up
at various ports of call in the area. These were
basically the only sailors that were hanging around were people
who would have worked on pirate ships, So the Adventure
(10:38):
Galley had a bit of a motley crew going on.
But for a long time, Kid's biggest problem wasn't really that,
It was just that he couldn't find any ships to attack,
and this in turn made his crew really restless and
n happy because they hadn't taken any loot and they
were running out of supply, so Kid really started to
get desperate, desperate enough to become a pirate. Perhaps what
(10:58):
we're gonna see. So according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography,
it's unclear whether Kid really intended from the beginning to
stick to the plan of only attacking England's enemies, but
other sources, including Mills article, suggests that he proved as
much on certain occasions. So for example, on August fourteenth,
(11:19):
he started to attack what appeared to be a mobile convoy.
Um it was kind of a sketchy attack of his
because he attacked flying a crimson flag, which was basically
a sign of piracy and mint surrender no quarter. But
the convoys English captain hoisted the colors of the East
India Company and so Kid backed off. But his crew
(11:40):
wasn't really happy with that move. No, they were ready
for something to happen. That October, Kid got into an
argument with a crew member named William Moore, who was
unhappy that the captain would only attack non English ships.
He was still supposedly trying to keep within the original
parameters of his mission at this time, so during their fight,
(12:01):
Kid ended up picking up a bucket and smashing it
over Moore's head and more died the next day from
the wounds that he got from that encounter. And it's
after this point that sources really start to diverge a
lot over the point of whether Kid really took to
outright piracy. Just a few examples of different things that
people put out there. According to the Encyclopedia World Biography,
(12:22):
Kid considered any ship that came across fair game after
this because he really wanted to regain the respect of
his crew. I mean, murdering a crew member, even if accidentally,
isn't the best way to win more support. So he
really had something to me. They needed to be put
to work quickly, and according to Means Biography, Kids set
out still trying to find enemy friendships. Then he captured
(12:45):
what he thought was an enemy friendship, the Ruparel that November.
The ship's Dutch captain, though, told him that they were
under the command of the East India Company, but Kid
commandeered the ship anyway, So you know, kind of a
murky ground there with that one, right, And other sources
don't really indicate that he ever changed his intent to
(13:06):
stick to his commission, his original plan of only attacking
French ships and pirate ships regardless, one thing that they
can all agree on is that in January, Kid in
the Adventure Galley came across what appeared to be an
India built Armenian owned ship called the Car Merchant archival research.
As we mentioned that there, you might hear a different
(13:26):
name for the ship at times, but archival research has
since confirmed that this is the correct name for the ship.
Kid flew a French flag is kind of a disguise
for his own ship, and the Car Merchant, even though
it actually had an English captain, turns out did the
same thing, according to Mills article, just to protect the ship.
They thought, okay, we need to at least put the
(13:47):
face forward that we are French, right. The captain of
the Car Merchant also sent a French gunner over to
Adventure Galley with a French pass or paper of safe conduct,
and this supposedly convinced Kid this was a legit capture.
This was a friendship, totally fair game for him to attack.
But it was only after capturing the ship that Kid
(14:09):
realized it was in fact carrying East India Company cargo
and the captain was English. So what is he going
to do now? It looked like a friendship, but turns
out it's not. Well. At this point, the Adventure Galley
Crew was so desperate for some sort of loot that
they ended up keeping it, selling some of it off,
and dividing it for profits. So they went ahead with
(14:31):
the plan even after they found back they found out
they had made a mistake, and after that they ended
up going to Madagascar, which was kind of a hotbed
for pirates at the time, and there they ran into
Kids old crew member from his pre New York days,
Robert Culifford. Seems like the perfect opportunity to both catch
a pirate which is part of their mission, and get
(14:51):
some revenge at the same time. Right, So well, yeah,
that's what it seems like, And it would have been
if the majority of Kids Crew didn't decide that it
was also the perfect time to desert Kid and join
up with Clifford instead. And according to mills article, they
wanted to work for somebody who represented pure piracy, who
they knew, they knew where he stood, rather than some strange,
(15:13):
half cocked hybrid version of piracy privateering special mission. And
if that wasn't bad enough, you know, losing your your
guys to your old enemy Kids ship, the Adventure Galley,
was also falling apart by this point. Yeah, He and
the small remaining crew just figured it was a lost
(15:33):
cause and they decided to sink the ship and make
the car a merchant their main ship. Then they headed
for the West Indies. When they reached there, though, Kid
discovered that the British government had declared him a pirate
and he was a wanted man. According to Mills, part
of what was behind this was that the car merchants
for investors were blaming the East India Company for what
had happened, and England needed to protect the company's reputation.
(15:57):
I mean the East India Company. That's an important part
of an In's economy. They have to stay face at
this point. The other thing was that the Tories had
taken over Parliament from the Whigs, so Kids, once very
influential friends, weren't as influential anymore and they didn't want
to go out on a limb for him. The King,
of course, didn't even step up to a pirate, and
(16:20):
so Kid thought that he could prove his innocence, especially
since he still had that French pass that he had
collected from the English captain of the car merchant to
prove that he thought that the ship that he was
attacking was French, at least at first. So he ditched
the car a merchant near Hispaniola and headed off to
New York in a more discreet boat, because of course,
in this India built boat, they would have been drawing
(16:43):
attention to themselves all over the place in that region
of the world. And he headed back to try to
clear his name. By the time he got there, though,
the rumor mill had already been working against him. According
to an article by Willard Helen Bonner, the rumors that
were spread around this time about kids activities and his
associations with other pirates and his supposed treasure actually made
(17:05):
it into official newsletters works of journalism at the time
and informed a lot of what people knew about Kid
for years after, and maybe even up until this day.
Some of those ideas are still mixed into the William
Kids stories that we know. Yeah, and that reputation definitely
caught up with him. Kid was arrested. He was imprisoned
in a colonial jail in Boston for several months, and
(17:27):
then he was sent off to England, where he was
locked up in Newgate Prison, which was a really horrible, dirty,
disease ridden place to be. And in the meantime, that
crucial French path that was supposed to prove his innocence
was conveniently misplaced. According to Mill's article, it didn't resurface
until the twentieth century. And on May eight s one,
(17:50):
Kid was brought to trial for William Moore's murder and
for piracy. Yeah, and I mean the odds were really
stacked against him. He had to defend himself basically without
any evidence because that French pass was missing. Basically someone
had to take the fall for this situation with the
East India Company, and the trial was over by the
(18:11):
next day. He was scheduled to be executed on May
twenty three, seventeen o one, with some other accused pirates
near the Thames, and Kid was supposedly very drunk when
they were all transported out to be hanged, which was
a real disappointment to the prison pastor who had hoped
that Kid would repent and confess before dying. When the
(18:31):
hangman tried to hang Kid the first time, the rope
broke Kid was the only prisoner for which this happened.
They were all kind of hanged at the same time,
and his was the only one. The rope that was
holding him was the only one that broke, and while
the hangman was wringing up a new rope for Kid,
according to the Encyclopedia World Biography, he prayed with the
pastor and finally repented, so the second time he was hanged,
(18:54):
Kid did die. His body was then tarred or wrapped
in chains and putting a cage that was strung up
along the banks of attempts for years after that as
a warning to others, don't be a pirate. It does
not pay no. So the search for the car merchant
and for kids treasure, of course, began well before his execution, though,
(19:15):
and according to mills article in Naval History, his old supporter,
Lord Belmont, unsuccessfully sent a ship to the West Indies
to try to track it down while Kid was still
in prison. That sounds like kind of a mean thing
to do. I don't know. It's generally believed that kids
remaining crew members burned and thanked the ship after taking
(19:35):
whatever valuables were on board, but that inability to find
the ship is one of the things that fueled the
treasure hunts over the years, you know, where where is it?
Where could it be? Yeah, And since two thousand seven,
the Indiana University team has confirmed that the shipwreck found
was indeed the car Merchant. Incidentally, it was found about
seventy feet off of the shore of Cataleen Island and
(19:57):
only about ten ft below the surface, so it's actually
kind of exactly. It was very It's kind of strange
that nobody found it before then. But last year the
underwater shipwreck site was dedicated as a quote living museum
of the sea on May three, which is I think
the anniversary of kids hanging. But there is one more
(20:19):
thing to add to the story, and it's a conspiracy.
So according to an article by Erling Hole and Geographical,
at least one man iss the door. Pawanski believed that
kid didn't die in seventeen o one. He thought kid
was able to bribe the keeper of the Newgate prison
with promises of hidden treasure, and that's why the rope
(20:40):
really snapped. Yeah, he just asked those questions, Why did
the rope snap? Why did all of a sudden Kid
change his mind when he wasn't willing to confess and repent,
and then later when he came out the second time,
he was ready to repent and confess. So just was
there a switchero potentially? Is that what he suggested? Yeah,
he suggested that they switched guys and that the second
(21:04):
guy was not Kid, and so he was more willing
to talk to the pastor right that That's why his
sentiments had sort of changed, because he wasn't in fact
the same man at all. Kid's widow. There's another aspect
of to this. Kid's widow remarried a man named Christopher
Rousby and s three and moved to New Jersey for
some reason, even though she had this big, stately New
(21:26):
York mansion and it didn't seem like there would be
any reason why she'd want to move to New Jersey.
Paiwanski believed that Rousby was really Kid, and he wrote
a book to this effect that I believe was released
earlier in the two thousands. Needed to get out of town.
Maybe maybe so, I mean, you know, it's a maybe
(21:46):
a long shot theory, but an interesting one to entertain
just in case. I always like it when we have
the very slim chance LEAs that the subject of our
podcast did not die. In fact, it's it's kind of
elvith ish and went on to have a life along
life in Jersey. Maybe maybe so. Um, it was definitely
(22:06):
interesting to learn a little bit more about one of
the most famous pirates. We've got quite a collection of
pirate episodes now, we do well. We did Shipwrecks last year.
We covered a lot of shipwrecks and we talked about
I think a couple of pirates and that, and of
course we've talked about black Beard and who else lady pirates,
some lady pirates. Oh that's right, Cheny sal and Grace O'Malley.
(22:28):
So we do have quite a collection going, but there
are still so many more. If any of you want
to request any more pirates, you always know where to
find us because we love to do those stories. We
do so we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on Facebook.
All good places to um share your thoughts, let us
(22:49):
know about pirate issues, on your mind, whatever, and if
you want to find out a little bit more about
the topic we discussed today, we have an article on
our website called how Pirates Work, and I believe it
even covers modern piracy a bit as well. You can
find that by searching our homepage, which is at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(23:13):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com
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