On today’s episode - our last of this season - we’re addressing an age-old question: “Privateer or Pirate?” Ok, maybe not age old, exactly, but it’s a question I didn’t even know to ask until I spoke with maritime archaeologist Neil Dobson, whose work spans decades of deep-water shipwreck exploration and recovery. In his all his years of studying ships and their legendary captains, none has captured Neil’s imagination, and heart quite so much as that of the famous Captain William Kidd, who was a “privateer” wrongly convicted as a pirate and, as Washington Irving writes in our opening passage, hanged for his “crimes.” If you’re wondering what the heck a privateer is, how one could be confused with a pirate, and above all, why that would be such a terrible thing in the eyes of the law, you’ve come to the right time machine. So - Hoist the sails! Yo ho ho and a bottle of... beer? Well, that’s what Neil says, anyway.
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