Captain Kidd's Treasure

is it real or an enduring myth? We think he may very well have buried or placed his treasure somewhere safe as everything we learned about the man says he wasn't too stupid and knew his days may be numbered.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Oh, welcome everyone to Unsolved Mysteries. Tonight. We're talking about Captain Kid's

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treasure, and I'm Dorothy and we'regoing to have a we look at this
because in more recent times it wassuggested that they found it and we're like
me, I'm not so sure aboutthat. But we'll start with the making
of a pirate, like anythings thatgo bad. Earlier, pirates were often
created by governments and royalty who paidprivateers rewards for attacking and stealing from foreign

(02:07):
trade ships and open waters. Inother words, it was illegal right.
This was particularly aimed officially at leastat enemies, but in reality it was
just legal pirating and profiteering. However, the captains and their ships were operating
legally for the most part, beingsanctioned by their own governments and their own
crown who couldn't use their navy forfear of starting wars or inviting reprisals.

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Yet the word deniability was well inplay, and since the English made it
a real thing, every country hasbeen using it ever since. A privateer
was a privately owned and armed vessel, and that's a bit handy rate commissioned
by the state to attack enemy ships. Usually vessels of commerce, and that
means they weren't actual enemy ships.They were from other countries. And today

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we call at sanctions and we grabbedtheir ships and we hang onto them even
though they're in private ownership. There'snothing right about any of it. Privateering
was carried on by all nations ultimatelyfrom the earliest times until the nineteenth century.
Crews were not paid by the commissioninggovernment. But we're entitled to crews

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for their own profit, with crewmembers receiving portions as the value of any
cargo or shipping that they could restfrom the original owners. And then of
course they would take a percentage aftergiving the crown, so it would go
to court. Legitimately, the personwould bring all their treasures and maybe the
ship they could have stolen, theship they'd ransom their sailors and crew back

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to their country and maybe the shipas well, and then the crown because
we say government but mean crown,because it's the sixteen hundreds we're talking about
here, the crown would take thelargest percentage of the profits, so they'd
be very very happy. If you'veever seen any Queen Elizabeth, the first
stuff, you'll see this in actionthere are actual documents, and how proud

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was of her private teers because theroyalty and the government and the taxpaer didn't
have to pay for them. Theyjust it was like a win win situation.
Really. It was carried on byall these nations, and so frequently
it was impossible to restrain the activitiesof privateers within the legitimate bounds laid down
in their commissions. But you know, I just it's dodgy stuff. As

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soon as you're aligned with crown orwith governments and you're out on your own
somewhere like a sore thumb, youknow that they'll turn on you if they
really really need to or want to. So it often became difficult to distinguish
between privateers, pirates, coursers orbuccaneers, many of whom sailed without genuine
commissions, and in short, theywere no different and acted independently as mercenaries

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at the end of the day,that's all it was. A lot of
them would pay tariffs to different countriesso that they would get a free pass
from navy ships, and they wouldfly their flags to show that they were
warranted. They were allowed to doit pretty dodgy all the way around.
In the late sixteenth century, Englishprivateers such as Sir John Hawkins and Sir

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Francis Drake were encouraged all restrained accordingto prevailing political conditions. With the growth
of a regular navy, however,the British Admiralty began to discourage privateering because
it was more popular amongst sailors thanwas serving in the navy. In other
words, private teering was okay,but with a growing fleet of warships,

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they were struggling to get sailors whowanted to be on these ships for no
pay hardly, you know, justa few shillings are at best, and
being beaten and deprived and treated.So that was the birth of press gangs,
where you know, it just getsmore disgusting than more you think about
it. It was considered okay anda number of countries to go into a

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bar with a few heavies and graba few drunks, or grab people on
the street and throw them on ashirp, lock them down and they'd wake
up and they were suddenly sailors forthe navy, I mean really. At
the same period, Dutch sea beggarsand French huger or privateers were also active
Throughout the seventeenth century, English buccaneersin the West Indies, such as Sir

(06:13):
Henry Morgan, sometimes sailed as genuineprivateers, so they could easily shift from
one title to another depending on theflavor of the day. And if they
had something or offered something that anygovernment in any country wanted, they were
given a pass. And I thinkwe need to acknowledge that during the American

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Revolution, the American colonists found itdifficult to form a new navy because more
than one thousand privateers were already licensed. I mean, can you imagine all
the way back then in the sixteennearly seventeen hundred a thousand privateers, and
on top of that pirates, coursairsand navies from other countries. This is

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like an enormous amount of seapower floatingaround out there, all willing to devastate
you. There was more even thanthat, and it would mean that it
was pure luck to get your goodssafely from one place to another. Developing
ever, faster ships became the primaryconcern for legitimate traders who sailed the season.
They were literally warrants, if youlike, almost like a current,

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a right of passage. If youlike and that's where it comes from.
A right of passage where they wouldcarry papers, and they would have to
pay a variety of governments. Theseare poor traders or traders trading and goods.
They would have to pay a varietyof countries to be left alone.
This isn't war, This is justprofiteering by governments and crowns at that time,

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crowns and just about every country.The popularity of privateering continued in the
War of eighteen twelve between Great Britainand the United States, when, as
an example, the US brigg aYankee Alan seized or destroyed five million dollars
worth of English property eighteen twelve.Can you imagine what that would be.

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That would be well into the billionstoday. And I don't know what to
say about that. You know,France used many privateers during the French Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars. The war mongeringcountries of the day were so destractive then
and as they still are now,with all that dosh ending up in the

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hands of a few rich cementing theirfortunes to this day, and a number
of royals and all of their lordsand ladies and everybody in those things and
the people that were in the topequilons of business or properteering from the losses
of others. It shows you whatwe've built our world upon. In eighteen
fifty six, by the Declaration ofParis, Great Britain and other major European

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countries accept Spain to note, exceptSpain declared privateering illegal. The US government
refused to accede, holding that thesmall size of its navy made reliance on
privateering necessary and the time of war, so two countries abstained, the US
government and Spain. The rise ofAmerican navy by the end of the nineteenth

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century and the realization that privateering belongedto an earlier form of warfare prompted the
United States to recognize the necessity offinally abolishing Spain abolishing it, and Spain
agreed to ban it in nineteen oheight, So privateering went on all the
way up to early last century.At the Hague Peace Conference in nineteen o
seven, was then stipulated and hassince become part of international maritime law that

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armed merchant ships must be listed aswarships those though there have been various interpretations
of the word armed. The ambiguousstatus of a privateer has thus ceased to
exist. The state now assumes fullresponsibility for all converted ships engaged in military
operations. In short, if it'sa ship and it is armed, it

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is over to attack, as itis classed as a war vessel of the
country of origin, as it alwaysshould have been. But Captain Kidd was
around centuries before these law changes.It was a free for all for hundreds
of years, making the war reasoningmoot. Theft had long been the preserve
of the greedy, overlording these lessfortunate, usually only stopping short if the

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fight looked to be bought home.It isn't lost on us that the same
countries were the aggresses back then asthey are now. Clearly learning from the
past isn't a big deal, asthere are always fortunes to be made off
the deaths and the losses of others. England, the English Empire was in
full force, so they were reapingand pillaging India, and so was France

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and Canada, and I mean thelist goes on, and so essentially it
was just like, I know,psychopaths were in charge of the foxes and
the hen House. I know thatwas a bit mixed up. But you
get the story. It was justa big, bad problem. Captain Kidd
was a Scottish privateer who turned pirate, but despite only ever capturing one significant

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price ship, he had become legendarythanks to the persistent rumor he buried a
fantastic treasure that nobody has yet found. And how we get there is actually
a little bit twisted and interesting.Kidd was arrested, sent to England and
hanged in whopping Old Stairs in aseventeen oh one. The mystery is the

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treasure and was he hanged because hewouldn't hand it over or because the government
didn't want to admit they paid himrewards for capturing the treasures of other countries.
Here we see that deniability and action, and to save a conflict,
they threw him to the dogs.It is always a dangerous thing to involve
oneself and being shady for a shadyroyal. Many have lost their heads working
with the worst of powers. Theones that are born into it have the

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tendency to psychopathy through the ages.You know, if you've heard of the
Knight's Templar, you are talking inthat same range of timeframes. They were
money lenders. They had achieved somany riches in their travels in the East,
and of course the East and India, all of that whole continent was
literally raped and pillaged by crown aftercrown, government after government, through war

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after that was brought to them.Countries were carved up by England where England
had no right to carve them up, and they took single countries and turned
them and pivoted them against each other, and it was a really interesting thing.
So the knights Templars were lending alot of money, and they were
essentially, i think the very firsttype of IOU or check system, where

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they would give your piece of papersaying you can show this to people and
they know we've got your money.It was sort of like the first banking
system officially really interesting. Instead ofa treasury at the bottom of the castle,
there was now another party, athird party, holding the actual goal,
the actual money, and they couldbring it to you. But just
them saying it was your was enough. And they had lent so much money

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to the King of France through thisperiod that he couldn't pay it back.
And so you've got these countries atthese royals running around spending money like it's
nothing on themselves, but also onthis war mongering, and then of course
they got into trouble because money wasreal money, and at that point,
if you didn't have the gold,if you didn't have the treasure, you

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had nothing. And then you werein trouble because people expected to be paid
for their ships. They're expected tobe paid for their armaments, they're expected
to be paid for the food,whatever it is that you were using and
taking, and so it was aninteresting time. And of course the French
king, I think it was Henry, but I could be wrong. He
turned around and he outlawed the Templarsonly because they owed him. He owed

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them money, and by outlawing themand making claims that they were undertaking sacrilegious
practices, by the way, withBeth Foment, then he got out of
his debt by having them all outlawedand killing as many of them as possible.
That's what you get for doing dealswith Tevil. Captain Kidd had received

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a Royal commission for privateering expedition inthe Indian Ocean. And although Kidd did
attack some small vessels which were notlegitimate targets, they probably would have been
ignored. And I don't think thatwas that unusual, to be honest.
But it's like anything. You givesomebody a little bit of rope, right,
and if you've got the power,you can change your rules at any
time, or you can use therules that you usually let go so that

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you get the treasures, even smalltreasures as treasures. Given the terms of
his commission, his fate ultimately hungon his capture of the Kadar Merchant.
A show trial, and it's calledat that's suggesting it wasn't a trial at
all, and London deemed it Kidwas guilty of piracy since this ship,
although perhaps sailing under a French flag, was no longer an enemy of England's

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following the termination of the Nine YearsWar, which lasted from September sixteen eighty
eight to September sixteen ninety seven.And the most important thing to look at
here is the timing, because hewas hung in seventeen oh one, and
it was well over a year betweenhim undertaking this and the acknowledgement that this
ship had a French warrant in theFrench were the enemy, but the East

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India Company had different legs. Sohere we come to this shady stuff.
There were a lot of people makinga lot of money out of India,
and there were the French and theEnglish, which both had big interests in
this country. A few months previously, il lakpoor timing and his abandonment by

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the publicity shy English authorities who hadbacked his original missus missions all ensured that
Kidd was found guilty of piracy andmurder. Not only was he hanged,
but Kid's body was left to rotin public for years as a conspicuous warning
to others. We personally here atUnsolved Mysteries think the warning is don't get

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involved with political crepole and you willalways end up getting hanged out to dry.
They're going to screw you and beingrich for a few years. It's
just not really worth it. Afew details of William Kidd's early life,
or there are few details nine ofhis early life with any certainty anyway,
but he was born in sixteen fortyfive and he was the son of a

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Presbyterian minister. Traditionally his birth townis given as Greenock in western Scotland,
and he first began privateering in sixteeneighty nine, when he operated on the
eastern coast of North America and theCaribbean. Privateering was a legitimate capture of
ships and cargo from merchant vessels classedas enemies of a particular state, and

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this could change, like monthly,it could change. Privateers were royal sanctioned
mercenaries with the advantage of not costingus sent Literally where the word commission comes
from, we take much of yourbooty and you get a nice fat commission.
It was a win win for England, France, or the or America,
Portugal or Spain. Back in theday. As captain of the Blessed

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William Kidd attacked French ships, alegitimate target during the nine year War between
France and England. Along with variousallies. Kidd was part of the fleet
that attacked the Marie Galuent one ofGuadalupe Islands in December sixteen eighty nine.
In February sixteen ninety, Kid's crewhijacked the Blessed Williams while the captain was

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ashore and sailed off for a lifeof piracy. So it's a bit unusual
and probably a bit embarrassing to haveyour crew steal your ship and run off
with it while you were having afew drinks on shore. Despite the setback,
he acquired the command of another ship, the Antigua, and he pursued
the Blessing William to New York andsixteen ninety one. Such an unfortunate position

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to be and really stranded by yourown crew after their style ship not only
embarrassing, but it showed his fourpitude of the man that he wasn't going
to let that lie. He foundhimself in America and quite happy to stay
there for a while. He settledin Manhattan area of New York, where
in May sixteen ninety one he marrieda wealthy widow, Sarah Ort, and
raised two daughters and perhaps carried orearned a living as a respectable merchant with

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a bit of small scale privateering onthe side. Nobody really knows, so
he may have been soliciting privateering.He clearly wasn't keptaining a ship anybody knows
about through that period of time,but would they have known. Around sixteen
ninety five he pops up again anddecided to try and find backing in London.
So it's only when he goes backto London that we pick up a

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story. There's records of him againfor more lucrative privateering expeditions further afield.
He sailed to London and the Antigua. For this purpose, he joined forces
with an American entrepreneur called Robert Livingstoneand Richard Coote, the Earl of Belmont,
and he was a member of Parliamentwho had just been appointed the new

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governor of New York and Massachusetts.The trio found a group of anonymous investors
in London who wished to attack shipsof England's enemy France, and to plunder
pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean.The consortium, which included some of the
very highest ranking officials in the BritishAdmiralty and Judiciary, fine fully intended to

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keep whatever they captured confiscated from pirates, rather than return it to the rightful
owners. In short, the enterprisewas both a secretive and shady one,
and not to mention that, atthis point a hundred percent piracy. Because
they were not handing it back tothe owners. They couldn't be getting rewards
they were stealing. Now, theidea that they would target mainly the enemies

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of England could be seen as morepragmatic than genuine hiding in plain sight,
so to speak. If you keptthe aristocracy happy, they would likely leave
you alone until they didn't. Wherethere were no witness, they could also
claim someone else did it, likereal pirates. Even kids shipped for the
expedition also paid for by the sponsors, who were backers making profits while sitting

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back at home and London in America, whilst the Adventure Galley purpose built in
Deptford, London. The two hundredthis is like fascinating to me. The
two hundred and eighty seven tons,three masted ship could pursue a target in
awe conditions thanks to its mix ofsquare rigged sails, Latin sails, and
banks of forty six oars. Intotal, the Adventure Galley was crewed by

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over one hundred and fifty men andwas well armed with thirty four cannons.
I mean that's some serious hardware rightthere. There was one significant downfload to
all of this financial backing, andthat was that kid had to sign a
contract which gave him and his crewa small proportion of any plunder taken on
the expedition. The upside was obvious. The more they stole, the more

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they made in profits. A smallportion of a lot of value is actually
still a lot of value. Atleast Kid's privateering expedition received the legitimacy of
royal support, his commission being signedby King William the third of England,
who was promised ten percent of theprophets. And this is where I really
think it all went wrong. Actually, there were three commissions, one to

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privateer against French vessels, another toapprehend pirates wherever Kid came across them,
including if possible, the notorious Henryevery and a third to keep all booty
for sharing amongst the investors without goingthrough any courts, as was the usual
legitimate practice. So he's got ashady deal with shady businessman and a shady

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crown. Shady king. Kids setsail from England to New York in April
to May of our sixteen ninety six, where he picked up recruits over the
summer for the adventure Galley. Unfortunately, at the last minute, half of
his crew was lost to a pressgang. The Royal Navy's aggressive and obligatory
recruitment method, Kid is obliged tomake up the numbers with less than desirable

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array of cutthroats and adventurers recrossing theAtlantic in September sixteen ninety six Kids sailed
around the Cape of Good Hope inSouthern Africa and then on to the Indian
Ocean. The press gang thing isinteresting because in America it was almost like,
you know, you take your lifein your hands if you're going to
hang anywhere near the docks. Thereare not just where there were tunnels set

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up so that they could go inunder these streets and under these pubs and
open hatchways to grab people and thentake them back through these tunnels so nobody
could see them and know where theywere going. And they could even keep
them in the tunnels tied up fordays if they needed to, waiting for
a ship. So it's slavery.Whether you want to call it anything else
as irrelevant. It was slavery,and at a time when slavery was Kid

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considered to be okay. There's somethingreally horrible about humans when you think about
it at times. Unfortunately, Kidlater, as he later testified, was
left frustrated in his temps to findpirates. Although just about everyone knew at
that time that Saint Mary's Island offthe northeast coast of Madagascar was a den
positively bristling with pirates here we startto question kids reporting and logs of his

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activities. He would definitely have knownwhere to find pirates if he was really
wanting to, but we think hehad bigger fish to fry and a few
scores to settle. By the springof nineteen sixty seven he decided to turn
pirate himself on I'm thinking he wasalready there. To be honest, He
first recruited additional crew, including slavesat Madagascar and on Joanna Island, now

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part of Camorra Island's group. Agood number of his original crew crew had
by now succumb to tropical disease,and I don't think any of that was
unusual for the time, not tomention scurvy and other things, and their
replacements were in an even more villainousgroup. But he would have needed that.
He didn't want guys that weren't outfor the money themselves. He could
easily have called into seaports and soughtout different types of sailors, but as

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head had been turned to the ideaof making all his own profits and not
ransoming pirates, passengers or treasures,or losing any part of his profit to
either his contributors, sponsors, orinvestors or the English crown. He was
setting himself up to make a fortune, and that was a personal fortune.
He set about attacking legitimate merchant vesselsof several nationalities, including Dutch, British

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and Portuguese ships. That tells youwhere he was going with this. From
the outset, he wasn't concerned whetherthey were from or whether they were allies,
and this made him officially a pirate. But there are still those who
believe that there was something else goingon, maybe from his American sponsors,
because it's notable that he did notattack American ships. He may have even

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recognized that the winds of change werecoming and wanted to annure himself and decided
that no matter what happened, atsome point he was going to end up
in trouble. He would have beenseen privateers hanged at by because it was
happening as pirates, and may havedecided to become one rather than handing over
his z ill gotten dosh, onlyto find himself hanging at the gallows with
his crew. The easiest targets werepilgrim fleets sailing from India to Mecca,

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some of the large emergent vessels andconvoys proved to have too much firepower for
the adventure Galley to take on,and that leaves us with wow, his
ship seemed big, and he hadthirty five guns, and they were still
too big for that, and Kidhad to settle for smaller ships. Through
August and September, he roamed thewestern coast of India, attacked an English

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trader and then a Laquerdive islands,where a number of locals were robbed,
beaten and raped. He wasn't justlimiting himself to ships. He was also
raiding towns, which was also commonfor pirates, small towns on the coasts
where there was a lot of moneyto be had. He now looked decidedly
like the commander of a pirate crewand not a privateering ship of the British

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Crown. One agent the Port ofKawa, India, gives a following description
of Kid at that time. Hewent on to say he's a very lusty
man, fighting with his men onany occasion, often calling for his pistols
and threatening anyone that dost speak anythingcontrary to his mind to knock out their

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brains, causing them to dread him. So he was definitely not the mild
men at captain the impression was givenfor so many years. The angry atmosphere
was likely over the crew wishing totry their luck at attacking the richer the
better armed British East India ships inthe area. For the moment, Kid
kept command and a moderate success camein November off the coast of India,

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where the capture of the Rupparel,a Dutch vessel carrying a French pass and
flag. Kid maintaining a crew onthe adventure. Galley himself sailed the Ripparrel
after renaming it at the November Nobodyseems to say what happened to that,
so there's no doubt that he soldit on to somebody, possibly more pirates.
And sixteen ninety eight a few smallvessels were then plundered, and then

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the big prize Kit had been hopingfor finally crossed his bow. This was
the four hundred ton Kurdar Merchant,which was under lease to the Indian government
but carrying a path from the FrenchEast India Company. KD captured the ship
on the thirtieth of January in sixteenand ninety eight. And we've got to
say that the East India company hasour terrible name. A quantity of cargo

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of silk, calico, sugar,iron opium was sold for ten thousand pounds,
which would be around two point fivemillions a day, and Kit even
took over the vessel and renamed hisnew ship the Adventure Prize. Unbeknown to
Kid, however, the Nine YearsWar had ended the previous September, and
so technically his attack on the merchantship was not an episode of privateering but

(27:48):
one of piracy. And we questionedthat as well. He was already attacking
English ships, so we don't thinkhe cared. However, to further muddy
the legal issue, the merchant shipwas captained by an Englishman and was an
Amenian ship. Would start to getconfused here, and the cargo belonged to
the Indian noble Maclis Khan of theMrughll Court. In other words, it

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was like this multinational thing. Therewas a lot of money involved, and
basically the East India Company put somepressure on Khan, ensured the Indian authorities
and Surrect put pressure on the BritishEast India Company to make up for his
loss, occupying the company's premises andhalting trading in the meantime, which is
massive because they were a greedy bunchof you. In addition, and as

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well as the custom, the shiplikely held several passes and issued by several
national bodies. It had only producedthe French passport because Kid had himself been
flying a French flag when he wasapproached for the vessel, so they carried
these different passes right of passage fromdifferent countries. Is that even legal who
knows kids status as privateer of priatewas not helped by his attacking a Portuguese

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We saw and then unsuccessfully two moreEastern the Accompany's ships in the spring of
sixteen ninety eight. We think hiswhole claim to being a private cheer was
only part of his defense mechanism andhad nothing to do with where he was
at. I think he got abit power hungry. He then seriously prejudiced
any future case by swearing loyalty tothe British pirate Robert Califord on Saint Mary's

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Island. Regardless of the lines beingblurred. At the time, Kid was
well and truly a pilot and hadno way back. Oh, we think
he was actually happy with his positionand he had no intention of referring to
British rule. He wasn't paying anyantie to the Crown or to his sponsors,
and he knew that this would preventany pretense of privateering, and it
most likely this alone that brought abouthis downfall. He probably could have attacked

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all of those ships and paid hisanti and given the Crown their ten percent
to whatever it was, and nobodywould have really done too much about him.
Califord had sailed with Kid during hisprivateering day in the Caribbean, but
if Kit had fulfilled this commission,he should have taken Cauliford prisoner. So
clearly that wasn't what he was doing. He was working. They were working

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together, and by now the adventureGalley's beams were badly rotted and the ship
was abandoned. He ran her aground. She may have been one of two
possible pirate shipwrecks explored in the areafrom nineteen ninety nine, but the evidence
is in conclusive. Hearing that ageneral pardon on pirates had been issued,
Kit decided it was time to returnhome to his wife and daughters, and

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this was his mistake. Trusting thatthe amnesty would be honored, he sailed
across the Atlantic to Anguilla and inthe Caribbean on April of sixteen ninety nine,
where he learned that although there wasindeed a general pardon out for pirates,
all British colonial governors had been issuedwith a demand to arrest kid on
site. He decided to find refugeon the Danish controlled island of Saint Thomas,

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but was refused entry. His onlychance now was either to join the
pirates forever or to return to alife, or to sail to Boston,
where he hoped his associate, whonow had become Governor Kot, would issue
a pardon for his acts of privacypiracy. Unfortunately, he would find politics
was moving faster than he was.Kids sold off some of his cargo and

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exchanged ship for a sloop, theSaint Antonio, and in a private haven
in Hispanola, he then set sailfor North America. He was to be
sorely disappointed again when he landed onLynge Island in June, as Kot,
responding to request from kids backers inLondon, not the government and not the
Crown, but the backers, whohe hadn't been given any money, to

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treat him as a pirate and that'swhere we still say, that's where he
made his mistake. He got greedyand he didn't want to pay them.
He fully intended to respect the officialcall for the pirate's arrest. To note
that these backers have not benefited fromkids piracy, as we said, so
that mistake Costumer's life. The formalcomplaint sent by the British East India Company

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to the British government again we're talkingthese are companies that are instigating all of
this that kids should be detained,made it politically impossible for Coot and his
investors to publicly support their renegade employee. According to KOT, arresting Kid in
July sixteen ninety nine and in Aprilseventeen hundred, Kid was sent back to

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England for trial. The wily Coot, though, did manage to clear his
own name from his association with Kid, and he had acquired a good portion
of the pirate's treasure to boot,which probably was par for the course with
kids unfortunate foray into piracy. Weare left only with the question where does
the story of his treasure come fromand how has it endured all this time.

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It may be that before he landedin Boston. Kid had taken the
precaution of burying Hill's ill gotten loot, with New Jersey Long Island and the
neighboring Gardeners Island all being possible locations, but then it could have been where.
Let's face that if he had dowe believe he would be so naive

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as to carry all the treasure thathe had, knowing that it would be
taken off him or could be takenoff him. I am certain he took
some with him to use his bribesand payoffs, and that's pretty much what
Kirk got hold of. Let's notforget that Kirk got his hands on some
of it, but clearly there wasmissing inventory. While we know destination points
that could easily have been stops alongthe way, and as the good captain

(33:27):
would logically want to have some ofhis treasures safe and sound to pay his
way out of trouble if he neededit, or to grab it after he
achieved his pardon, which was hisname, Kid did indeed bury some of
his treasure, and these locations wereunder pressure revealed to the Boston authorities.
He is under his statements, healso obliged to list in detail his booty

(33:52):
and a document, which survives today, listed amongst the goods retrieved by the
authorities of silver and God's gold,coins, jewel, bales of silk,
and tons of iron and sugar.However, the persistent legend grew that Kid
had not revealed all, and somewherethere was another cash of loot, perhaps
much greater than that which had beenrecovered. This tantalizing legend had led to

(34:15):
treasure hunters digging holes across the centuries, in many possible locations, even remotely
connected to Captain Kidd, and nonewith any success. Mind you, you
know there's a lot of area tocover. Speculation as to the treasure whereabouts
has ranged from the coast of Americato India. The only tangible result of
Kid's habit of burying treasure is thatit has become a staple part of pirate

(34:37):
tales ever since. And in short, there were statements made by his men
that he did bury treavor and comeback treasure and come back to retrieve it.
I think there's a certain logic inthat you can't just keep filling up
your coffers. You'd have to unloadsomewhere and then be able to have your
money. If he's not giving itto his sponsors. I think this is

(34:58):
a bit he's not paying us monsors, if he's not paying the Crown,
if he's not paying well, he'snot paying anybody the governments. Then he's
keeping all of that treasure. Andso clearly whatever they got it to end
can't have been all of it.I think that's kind of the root of
all of this. He had toendure almost a year and the terrible Newgate

(35:22):
Prison in London before his fate wasdecided. Opponents of the government tried to
get kid to reveal who is anonymousbackers were, and that's the bit that
they wanted, and that's the bitI think that got him killed. And
so he was twice called before Parliamenton March seven in March of seventeen oh
one. How whever the investors,the Admiralty and the government all keen to

(35:44):
disguise the unsavory interest in privateering closedrinks. Key documents were conveniently lost,
and notably the French passes of theKuta Merchant and the Ripparel, both of
those would have exonerated him, andthe whole investigation was hushed up and they
had a scapegoat. They had apart of his fortune. They were ready

(36:04):
to throw him under the proverbial bus. Kid was nevertheless to be made an
example of other would be pirates.His trial, which was just a show
trial, concentrated not on the intendedprivateering side of the Indian Ocean expedition,
but on Kid's obvious turn to piracyand the murder of his gunner, which
was the more serious charge under Englishlaw. He protested his innocence regarding piracy,

(36:27):
stating that the attacks on smaller shipshad been forced upon him by his
rebellious crew. We don't believe itfor a minute either, and noted that
the two attacks on the larger vesselshad been carried out in good faith,
as they both flew the flag ofFrance. He also maintained he had killed
more that's the sailor accidentally. Buthe was found guilty of all charges by

(36:50):
jury of twelve and hanged in whopping. He then did his posthumous of reputation
no good at all. When hearrived drunk at his execution, I'm saying
who would lame him, and launchedinto an unrepentant and blasphemous speech at the
onlookers. He would have felt quitebetrayed, even though he had been pretty
much robbing everybody blind. Drama turnedto black comedy when the rope snapped and

(37:14):
Kid fell to the muddy ground,still very much alive. A second news
was applied and the deadly deed done. One of Kidd's crew, Darvy Mullins,
was also found guilty and hanged withhim. Captain Kidd's corpse was then
tarred and hung in a cage torot by the Thames as a further deterrent
to pirates. The gruesome process ofdeterioration largely reserved the most notorious pirate captains,

(37:39):
and he definitely wasn't one of those. Could take two years or more.
I mean horrible. Really humans,rather than deter pirates, Kid's terrible
fate only made them more determined tofight to the death rather than be taken
alive by the authorities. So nowthe governments and crowns of the world had
pirate that were absolutely mercenary, aggressiveand prepared to kill everybody on board any

(38:06):
boat that any ship that they boardedor stole from. Everyone knew that there
was a fine loan between privateering andpiracy, and that politics would win the
day even when cases were legitimate,so many privateers simply went right, that's
that we're now pirates stuff. Ifyou're going to hang us, then we're
going to deal to you. Agroup of archaeologists thinks they found a part

(38:29):
of Captain Kid's booty in a shipwreckoff the coast of Madagascar, and this
is huge. One hundred and twentyone pound of silver. They say is
just the tip of a treasure iceberg. This one bar has a current value
of around thirty three thousand US dollarsa dream at. A team of divers
found the bar off silver while investigatingshallow waters of Saint Marie Island. They've

(38:51):
been scouring the area for the remainsof the Adventure Galley and William Kid's ship,
which was discovered underwater in two thousandand Here we've got like this thus
saying this is that ship, butwe've got other explorers saying it's not actually
proven. It could be, butit's not proven. But they know that
he did put it aground in thatarea, but there were two ships there.

(39:14):
Though. Pass trips unearthed old bottlesof rum, shards of pottery,
archaeologists never really found anything to beconsidered treasure until now. In sixteen ninety
eight, the vessel was unseaworthy andKidd ran it ashore at Madagascar. The
question is would a crew just leavetreasure knowing it was on board, would

(39:34):
the captain run the ship aground withtreasure still on board, or would he
be more likely to move the goodease and hide them on land somewhere.
One thing is clear, that isone mighty big in god of silver,
and it comes from the right era, and it was found within the vicinity
of maybe the Adventure Galley, butat the same time where there were known
pirates activities. Mister Clifford, treasurehunter and salvage operators, said kept and

(40:00):
Kid's treasure is the stuff of legends. People have been looking for it for
three hundred years. To literally haveit hit me on the head, I
thought, what the heck just happenedto me? I really didn't expect this.
There's more down there, and Iknow the whole bottom of the cavity
where I found the silver bar isfilled with metal. It's too murky down
there to see what metal, butmy metal detector tells me there is metal

(40:22):
on all sides. We've got questionsabout this. We wonder if This isn't
a bit of a publicity stunt actually, because you know, we have to
be a bit skeptical. We knowthat the ship had a huge amount of
gunnery and ammunition, which is allmade of metal. We also know that
it would have plenty of metal andother areas of its construction. So forgive

(40:43):
us for believing that there may ormay not be treasure. But if it
is on the wreck, it makesvery little sense. As in the sixteen
hundreds, no one was going todie for it. And this is important
because it wasn't sunk accidentally. Itwas sunk on purpose. The team believes
there marked with what appears to bethe letter S, and the letter T
has its origins in the seventeenth century. Bolivia believes that the ship was found

(41:07):
a ship it has found was builtin England. However, there is bound
to be skepticism and cause for moreevidence that the bar was linked to Captain
Kidd. Our reporter says, ortheir reporter says. In short, there
is no apparent proof that the AdventureGalley is the shipwreck. It is still
a mystery. So watch the spaceand we want to just end with the

(41:30):
unlikelihood of scuppering a ship that's nonseaworthy, full of treasure. But then
I wanted to add something chaos becauseI noticed one thing when I was watching
his interview and I was listening tohim, He's talking about pulling this up,
and this ship is scuppered in fairlyshallow waters. When it comes to
salvage that kind of thing, they'dbeen over the ship, not just him,

(41:50):
but other salvages. So if youfound the one bar and you thought
there has to be heaps others,you would go all out because there's a
lot of money. If they evenfound ten twenty of these bars, they
would be full noise on. SoI'm not saying it isn't there, but
we are saying it's not likely thatit's Captain Kidd's ship for that reason and
for that reason alone. Next weekwe're going to have a look at some

(42:13):
pretty interesting stories missing submarines from WorldWar Two onwards. It might be surprisedly
that there are quite a number ofmissing and dodgy events that have happened around
submarines over the years. We explorewhat might have happened to some of these
subs and the poor lost souls aboard. I'm Dorothy this is unsold and Mysteries Schulp now