The Real Captain Kidd

en two and three months afterwards. Sir Edmund Harrison, described by Bellamont's apologist as "a reputable city merchant," had been at the pains to select the

ore tersely, merely recording the fact that "on the first of March, when he came to the Buoy at the Nore, his men were pressed for the fleet." Seeing that the First Lord of the Admiralty was one of the principal partners in the adventure, it may seem strange to those who have had no personal experience of official blunderings, that precautions had not been taken to prevent this untoward mishap, which made a hopeless enterprise more hopeless than ever. For it left Kidd no[41] alternative but to get the bulk of his crew from America. With s

for hanging purposes likely to be a popular employment in that part of the world. He probably picked up some adventurous boys, eager to go to sea at any cost, in ignorance of the fate to which they were consigning themselves. Of the older men who joined, Darby Mullins, a rolling stone who had gathered no moss, may perhaps be taken as a fair sample.[43] From so much of his previous history as this poor man told to the chaplain at Newgate, it appears that he was an Irishman, born near Londonderry, kidnapped when young and shipped for the plantations, where he had followed various honest avocations without any conspicuous success. Most of Kidd's grown-up recruits, it is to be feared, were men of this kind, who for one reason or another were indisposed to remain long in any one employment, and likely to abandon the enterprise as soon as they got tired of it. Whilst picking up one and another of these men during his last stay at his

, continued his course eastwards in pursuit of them. In company with a sloop belonging to Barbadoes, which had come in at Telere whilst he was there, he sailed to the Island of Johanna on the coast of Malabar. There he "found four East India merchantmen outward bound and watered there all together and stayed about five days. From thence about the twenty-second of March he sailed for Mehila, an island ten leagues distant[46] from Johanna, where he arrived the next morning and careened the Galley." "And about fifty men died there in about a week's time," he tells us pithily and without comment, as though such a catastrophe was an ordinary occurrence, as indeed it probably was in those days to a ship's crew suddenly attacked by cholera or plague in those parts. These deaths seem to have induced him to leave that coast somewhat suddenly and to seek hea

be seen hereafter. But assuming that Kidd made use of these words, they are susceptible of a perfectly innocent interpretation. Kidd was on the lookout not only for pirates but also for French[48] ships. It was not improbable that some of the vessels in the Mecca fleet would be ships belonging to Frenchmen, or sailing under French colours to the French factories in India, in which case he would have had a perfect right to seize them under

[49] on Kidd from one or both of their convoys. It also appears that "sundry shots were fired from Kidd's ship," possibly with the object of bringing the ships to, in order that explanations might be forthcoming from both sides. On this point an attemp

o; they fi

(that is, Bradenham) "said I f

"Mr. Bradenham, did

I only said, you fired at them

It was no fault of Kidd's that its convoys mistook him for a pirate, of which there were undoubtedly plenty in

ight very reasonably be mistaken for a pirate by any ship which she chased. The coast trade was carried on mainly in vessels manned by Asiatics with, in some cases, two or three Europeans on board. The wily Indian had by this time learned the advantage of carrying Europeans of more than one nationality in each ship, so that if caught by a ship carrying French colours, he might produce a Frenchman as the owner, and if caught by an English ship an Englishman. It was Kidd's plain duty to take as prizes any French vessels he came across, and with that end in view to examine carefully every ship which he had reason to suspect was French. He knew very little of the coast or of the Eastern languages, and stood greatl

eir cutlasses. Kidd's defence, and there is no reason to doubt that it was a perfectly genuine defence[53] so far as he was concerned, was that he had nothing whatever to do with this fracas and that he did not go on board the ship at all. It was further alleged by the King's evidence that his men took out of her a bale of coffee and a bale of pepper and s

g him possibly for one of the pirates of whom he was in quest, or possibly for some less reputable reason. Her

5

a Portuguese shi

ho fired

Portuguese

d the next morning about break of day he saw the said two men-of-war standing for the said Galley, and they spoke with him, and asked him whence he was. Who[55] replied, from London, and they returned answer, from Goa; and so parted, wishing each other a good voyage. And still sailing along the coast, the Commodore of the said man-of-war kept dogging the said Galley all the night, waiting an opportunity to board her; and in the morning without speaking a word, fired six great guns at the Galley, some whereof went through her and wounded four of his men. And thereupon he fired upon him again, and the fight continued all d

to be made by the prosecution out of this incident appears plainly from the verbatim report of the King's evidence. In reply to a question by the counsel for the prosecution, as to what Kidd had done after fighting with the Portuguese man-of-war, Bradenham replied, "We went to one of the Malabar islands for wood and water, and

had been ashore, and some of the natives had cut his throat, and that was the reason he or

etermination that his men should not be guilty of piracy. He came across a Dutch ship, The Loyal Captain, under the command of Captain Hoar. The greater part of his cre

ay to take the ship and be safe. Says I, 'How will you do that?' The gunner answers, 'We will get the captain and men aboard.' 'And what then?' 'We will go aboard the ship and plunder her, and we could have it under their ha

ng the ship[59] and that Kidd was against their doing so. The same incident was thus described at the trial by

le sort of a mutiny and some were in arms, the greater part. And they said they would take the ship. And the commander was not for it; and so they resolved to go away in a boat and take her. Captain Kidd said: 'If

hem, which ended in Kidd's knocking Moore down with a bucket. According to Parrott, it arose in this way: "Moore said, 'Captain, I could have put you in the way to have taken the ship, and have never been the worse for it.' He

said, "You have brought us to ruin, and we are desolate;" and that Kidd said, "Have I brought you to ruin? I have not done an i

ays Moore, 'I never spoke such a word nor ever thought such a thing.' Upon which Captain Kidd called him 'a lousie dog.' And says William Moore, 'If I am a lousie dog, you have made me so. You have brought me to ruin and many more.' Upon his saying

ation in the world given him;[62] that he had no design to kill Moore and no malice or spleen

erted Kidd at Madagascar to join the pirate Culliford, said at the time, "This blow was not the cause of his death," and

hich dispute arose between Kidd and his crew as to the plundering of the Dutch ship, that he upbraided Kidd for his not a

and cotton in trade there, having about 40 Moors on board, with a Dutch pilot, boatswain and gunner, which said ship the narrator hailed and commanded" [? The Master] "on board. And with him came eight or nine of the Moors and the three Dutchmen who declared it was a Moor's ship and" (were) "deman

6

ok up arms there," that the Moors had the long boat given them to go on shore, which was two leagues distant; and that Captain Kidd and his men sold the cotton and horses to the natives of th

ay hands on it. For they must by this time have been running short of money, and it was the first ca

ds, "with a Bengal merchantman belonging to Surratt of the burden of four or five hundred tons, and he commanded the master on board. And a Frenchman, an inhabitant of Surratt, and belonging to the French factory there, came on board as master; and when

and that when he came up with her he commanded the master on board. "And there came," he says, "an old Frenchman in the boat; and after he had been aboard awhile" (mark the subtlety of the word "awhile." Who would have conceived that it meant five or six days?), "he told Captain Kidd that he was not the captain but the gunner, and Kidd sent for the captain, whose name was Wright." Pa

6

rman of the committee appointed to sort the papers received from Bellamont and report thereon. Verbatim copies of them are to be found in the Journals of the House of Commons (Vol. 18, page 21), and are printed in Appendix C of this work. They constitute the most important documentary evidence that could have been forthcoming at Kidd's trial; but although

he course they should take. They voted not to accept the proffered ransom but to take her to Madagascar, which he decided to do, Madagascar lying in the direct route for America. His sailing orders[6] from Bellamont as to the course he should take with any prizes were explicit.[69] They were: "You are to sail directly to Boston or New England, there to deliver to me the whole of the prizes, treasure, merchandise, and other t

she would have sunk every hour; and it required eight men every two glasses to keep her free; and" (he) "was forced to woold her round with c

ps coming towards them the said Galley with the other two prizes she had taken, came to sail, and left the said last Prize at a place between Brin John and Angingo, so called from being an English and Dutch factory; and left on board the same all the company belonging thereto, except the[71] Master Merchant and seven men more that had come on board the Galley, when she first took the said Ship." This deposition made two years before Kidd's trial was confirmed in substance by two other lads, Barlicorn and Lumley. At the tri

regarded by them as a very justifiable reprisal for the damage and loss of life which the Galley had sustained by the recent unprovoked attack of the Portuguese man-of-war. That Kidd was placed by their action in this case in great difficulty is obvious. In their then temper, it is unlikely that if he had had time to reason with them, he could have induced them to return to the Portuguese the goods they had wrongfully brought on board the Galley. As it was, the sudden

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