“So I sail to the Indian Ocean.” I tried to steer us along.
“Not you, Kidd. And the first thing he did was sail to London on a trading voyage, to obtain a real privateering licence, properly signed by the highest authorities, and get a ship to go with it. With the changing times, neither was easy, but Kidd got both; he was the genuine article—a veteran buccaneer captain who knew the game, and had patronage besides. In London, he found further patrons, including King William himself. It was the system. Kidd got his ship, a thirty-four-gun frigate with a turn of speed and a bank of oars for advantage in light airs. It was called Adventure Galley. His licence authorised him to capture pirates, including his old shipmates. So, back to New York he sailed, not to start capturing pirates around there, heaven forbid, but to recruit a full crew to go out to the ocean of no rules, and get rich, and make a bigger name.”
“And do I?”
The captain cocked an eye a me. “Kidd sails, and fetches Madagascar in January of 1697 after a five-month, nonstop voyage. The usual scurvy is taking its toll. He takes on fresh supplies, rests his crew, gets intelligence, then sails for the Comoros Islands to await the seasonal winds that will carry him to his target—the entrance to the Red Sea. Through those narrows passes some of the world’s wealthiest shipping, dhows loaded with prosperous pilgrims returning from Mecca, Arab and Indian merchants with their goods, and other traders. Fat and helpless.”
“But his licence was only to take pirates?”
“Pirates and Frenchies. That was his napkin, but this was the ocean of no rules. Awaiting the southwest monsoon, he careens Adventure Galley, cleans her bottom. Tropical disease claims thirty of his men, but he recruits others. Remember, the buccaneers had been out there for years. Far from chasing pirates, he needed some to flesh out his crew. As many as he could get. He blew north with the wind at the end of April, passed Zanzibar and the Horn of Africa, rounding into the Gulf of Aden in late July. There he waited for the annual pilgrim fleet to come out of the Red Sea. He sent raiding parties ashore for water and supplies, killing and alienating locals, as Drake never would have done.” The captain’s story had been moving slowly, but here it dragged to a halt with one of his long pauses.
“And?”
“He waited, as I said. August came, and the sun blasted down, with temperatures that cooked the brains out of the New Englanders, and the pitch out of the deck seams. Wetting down decks was a primary activity, and the pumps had to be kept going. Also, the long voyage had tired the ship, and she was ever more leaky. Tempers rose with the temperature, and no action.” I commented that I was ready for some action myself. He treated me to a languorous nod.
“Think of how Kidd and his crew felt. They’d spent almost a year of hard sailing and deprivation to get to where they were, then waiting, broiling, pumping. It’s always amused me that the pirates are seen as lacking patience, when—like fishermen—they were leading exemplars of that particular virtue. You could use a bit yourself.” The captain proceeded at a sedate pace.
“The pilgrim fleet did appear, but with three well-armed European ships in a convoy. One of them was a British East Indiaman that fired shots as Kidd approached, foiling his plan. Shooting back at a Company ship would have been hard to explain later. Finally, there was no choice but to sail for the northwest coast of India—yet another long voyage, and to a riskier place.”
As Adventure Galley sloshed along, crossing the Persian Gulf toward Surat, I learned about Indian politics under the Moghul emperor, and the role of the British East India Company there. This powerful trading firm was like an arm of the English government, both being controlled by the same interests. They were eager to stay in the Moghul’s favour, and buccaneers had begun to jeopardise everything. All the pirates were thought to be English, or English colonials, and when Henry Avery raided the coast where Kidd was headed, he captured an astonishingly rich ship owned by the Moghul himself. Aboard it was lots of his wealth, also friends and family, who were murdered along with most of the other passengers.
“This soured him on Englishmen in general, including the Company, which he suspected of collusion with the pirates. Company officers along the Malabar coast were pitched into jail. Trade and profits were threatened, causing alarm in London on the subject of piracy in the Indian Ocean. Kidd was sailing farther into it with every mile that passed under his leaky ship, with its unhappy crew, out of money and supplies.
“Then came more troubles. The word was out on Kidd; he was a pirate-chaser turned pirate, whatever his credentials, and news of him had preceded Adventure Galley wherever she sailed. That was the length of the Malabar coast for the next few months, with no more success than before. Bad to worse. He did cross paths with ships under English colours. Many in his crew wanted to attack, but he would not, making a mood in the fo’c’sle that went to mutinous. It erupted when his gunner, chap named William Moore, publicly squabbled with Kidd, who whacked him with a water bucket. Fractured his skull. Died the next day. Kidd appointed a new gunner, and slept with one eye open.”
“If the buccaneers could vote their captains out, why didn’t Kidd’s crew do that to him?” I wanted to know, commenting that Captain Kidd did not seem very likable.
“No. Poor bloke never had a talent for likability, but he had a hard core of bully boys who stuck by him, and Adventure Galley had the highest kind of privateering licence, with the most honourable investors, and she wasn’t sailing under the rules of the brotherhood, whatever her intentions. Kidd was master, barring mutiny, with forty shares for himself and his backers. So far, there had not been much to share, but that finally changed. Just after Christmas, at last he took a worthy prize. She was Quedah Merchant, a five-hundred-ton dhow, owned by Armenians, with a Moorish crew, and an English captain, under French colours—flown because they were the colours Kidd flew himself. It was his trick. Just about every large merchantman carried passes from every authority—English, French, Portuguese—so, when approached by a warship flying this or that flag, they could fly it, too. All in all, it was a very confusing situation.
“Anyway, Kidd had his prize at last: gold, silver, hundreds of bales of fancy fabrics, gemstones, the lot. He also had an argument for taking it that he reckoned would wash, with a judicious payout or two back home. So home he turned, after snapping up a couple of more small prizes. He sailed first for Saint Mary’s Island, Isle Saint Marie, Madagascar’s main pirate base, where he had to get a lot of things sorted out. One was his ship. When he got there, after a couple of more months, hard pumping at sea, Adventure Galley was just about finished. Her hull had to be bound with heavy cordage just to help it stay together.
“But her approach was viewed with some alarm by the pirates of Isle Saint Marie. These were the people that Kidd had a commission to capture, as they knew, and some of them were from the crew who had stolen his ship off Saint Kitts, the same ones he’d pursued to New York. In order to be allowed into the port without a fight, Kidd had to assure these chaps that he was one of them. Demonstrably, this was true, by his loot and the ships he’d taken. He’d brought a couple with him.
“So Kidd got the hospitality of Edward Welsh, the New York factor, who bought and sold slaves and other pirate goods. When Kidd paid out everybody’s shares, Welsh bought their bales of cloth, their ivory, and everything else they wanted converted into cash, or rum, or whatever his store had to offer. His buildings were on high ground behind a stockade—warehouse, slave pens, cattle. And a tavern, needless to say, the community social centre, with entertainment of all kinds. A little home away from home, except it was built of red clay blocks slathered with ochre and dung. Foul stuff. You had to be careful not to lean against a wall, because its dry crust would crumble away and get between your skin and your clothes.” He wriggled, running his finger around his collar as though clearing a paste of dung dust and sweat.
“How would you know that?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve been there to be sure. It’s where I picked up Poppins.” H
ere he became quite melancholy. “He was my best mate; slept with me every night; seldom left my side. We had some good years together, Poppins and me, until the bloody day he got torn apart by a pack of wild dogs in Port Said.” He raised his mug and toasted to a point in space: “Here’s to you, mate. I’ll never forget you.” He wiped moisture from his eyes.
I found this a lot to absorb.
“Poor old darling,” he continued, then noticed my face. “He was a ring-tailed lemur, dear boy, indigenous to Madagascar and the finest pet a sailor could wish for. Why, Poppins was the best small-boat top-man I ever had. Didn’t need ratlines, ran up the lacings and trimmed the downhaul to the fore-and-aft tops’l over the peak taikle in a tack slicker than any light-yard man. I trained him to it. He was a good pickpocket, too,” he added with a wink, “without any teaching at all.”
“When was that?” I asked. It was the first time he had ever said anything personal about himself.
“Poppins has been gone for a long time. We shouldn’t get distracted. Kidd had to spend almost a half-year on Isle Saint Marie, waiting for the next round of seasonal winds. Once they were paid off with their shares, the bulk of his crew went their ways—home, or off to pirate some more. Adventure Galley was finished. Kidd had her stripped of guns, gear, and anything of use, then burnt her hull for the iron fastenings. Everything had value out there.
“With the northeast monsoon, he sailed on his biggest prize, the dhow, carrying his treasure. He had just twenty men now, plus some slaves. He re-rounded Africa, picked up the southeasterly trades and made a five-month passage to the Caribbean, where he had to stop for water and supplies. Also, he wanted to fence his bulk cargo, his fancy cloth, and get a smaller, less conspicuous vessel in which to approach New York.
“In the West Indies, he got some disturbing news. Word of his deeds was ahead of him again, and alarms were out about him, with talk of arrest warrants on his ship. But then, he didn’t have that ship anymore, and some legal difficulties were to be expected in cases like his. They were always dispelled by success—the right payoffs and some kind of excuse. Kidd had a story he’d been polishing for months, plus plenty of cash to take home to a place that made most of its living from such traffic. He was a prestigious citizen there; a loving family awaited him, the blessings of the elite. The governor was Lord Bellomont, same Whig chap who’d sponsored Kidd back in London, who was heavily invested in the venture, like some other people so powerful as to be able to make troubles go away. As per the system.
“He sailed back to New York but with a careful approach, sounding the waters. The governor was off in Boston, so Kidd had a couple of weeks to greet his wife and daughters, take them for a sail, and hide a lot of his treasure. Most of it got buried in the sands of Gardiner’s Island, where Kidd had friends, and that was the famous buried treasure of Captain Kidd. Shovels in the night. How would you like to be Kidd?” he suggested, with a kind of smile I had come to distrust. I shook my head.
“You’ve saved yourself some very disagreeable experiences,” he approved. “The world shifted in the years Kidd had been gone. Eastern outrage over English pirates in general and Kidd in particular was threatening to end the East India Company and all of its good income. Also, all of the European powers were adjusting to real rules as to the governance of colonies, and political relationships with other empires. The simple truth of it is, there came an awareness that trade was more profitable to governments than freebooting, and that’s what changed the system at last.
“The awakening world,” I quoted a chapter title in my history book.
“I’d say money. Certainly there was an awakening to that. It was Kidd’s bad luck that it happened on his watch.” Grandpa’s clock chimed. “Poor old Poppins,” he said, lapsing away from his story. He had put away two or three double rums.
“Kidd,” I reminded him.
“Kidd got hold of Bellomont, who promised on his word of honour, and in writing, a pardon in advance if Kidd would come to him. So he did, and gave him all the papers he had saved to support his story, including the French documents from his main prizes. Bellomont took them, had Kidd arrested, and threw him in jail. So much for Bellomont’s word of honour, eh? Fact is, he and all of Kidd’s other backers in London were Whig politicos, and, because of his reputation, their involvement with him was political treasure to their Tory opponents. Either Kidd had to be backed, or abandoned like a sinking ship, which is what they did. He was shipped to London in chains and irons, and put on trial for his life, first for the murder of William Moore with a bucket, second for piracy.”
“But Bellomont was the person who sent him out, and there were his big shot backers . . .?”
“Gone. More than just gone, turned against him: ‘What? Us send out a pirate? Who sir, we sir? No sir, not us, sir. We just sent him out after Frenchies and pirates; chap went off on his own account. Nothing to do with us.’ Kidd’s only friends were the merchants of New York, whose opinions weren’t worth a brass farthing where he was going. They threw him in Newgate Prison to enjoy a singularly wretched existence—I’ll spare us both the details—until the lords of the land got round to giving him his show trial, two years after his arrest. The collection of documents to support his case, which he’d given to Bellomont, had vanished. He was given no legal counsel until the morning of his trial. He had no chance for an eyewitness to support his claim that his actions were forced by a mostly mutinous crew, which was largely true, but the prosecution had plenty of rebuttal witnesses against him. Some of his old enemies got to walk away from the whole mess, keeping their loot in exchange for their testimony. A few were the very ones who prodded him into his whole adventure.”
“And they hanged him?”
“They did, all with due process. Date of execution set for May 23,1701, as rightly I recollect, giving Kidd a couple of weeks more in the company of his jailors, and the jail’s pastor, who came to him often.”
“For his repentance?”
“For his story, or anything else he might say that the pastor could write up in his broadsheets. The tabloids of the time. All the juicy details about notorious criminals. They were the big celebrities. No movie stars then. The parson was the inside reporter who got to write them up. Chap named Paul Lorraine. Made a tidy sum for that, and dragging Kidd to the chapel to pray. People who wanted to see him were charged to get in. So that’s what Kidd had to put up with, and fading hope for a pardon. Maybe he could close out the sounds and smells, and the lice, and the painful sights of Newgate, and the weight of his chains. Maybe he focused his mind on memories: the fresh-scrubbed faces of his wee daughters, his wife’s laugh, the morning sunlight, coffee and pastry, the call of seabirds.
“When they took him out to hang him, they treated him to a two-hour ride in a horse cart, through the streets of London to Wapping, followed by a mob. Wapping wasn’t all that far, but they stretched it out because it was such an enjoyable event. Not to Kidd, o’course, but they stopped here and there and folks handed him drinks, and he drank what was handed him.” The captain took a swallow of rum. “Ah, the mob. Their eyes, the fascination . . . it’s always the same mob, y’know. Take a look at them,” he said, gesturing.
All at once I was looking into the thrilled faces of a mob, but they were people wearing modern clothes, and they were in front of a Hollywood theatre watching movie stars getting out of limousines. There were spotlights. Curiously, the vision was in black and white, and I realised I was seeing my own impressions from a newsreel I’d once watched.
“Do you see?” he asked. I told him what I’d seen. “Quite,” he nodded. “Well, here’s the same lot, come to see the last of old Kidd, and the cutpurses had good picking. There were two other pirates to swing that day. They made a bad show of it. Cried. One wet his pants. Both were very penitent. Kidd gave a lustier account of himself, getting to say everything out loud that he couldn’t in court. It was a fair amount, ending with a warning to seamen to be guided by prudence and caution. Then th
ere was a psalm, and a prayer, and the hangmen prodded him up the ladder.”
“Ladder?”
“Aye, there was no neat, quick drop back then. They fitted the noose and turned you off to dance on air and suffer, which is when your friends or family—hopefully somebody—could pull on your legs and make a shorter business of it. Kidd didn’t have anybody for that, though there were lots of his old shipmates in town. Fact is, his rope broke. Dropped him on the ground, so they had to get him back up there with a better halter onto him, and one more prayer, and that was his lot. Except they weren’t done with him. Ten quid they spent for iron chains and hoops to bind his body, keep it from fallin’ apart out on Tilbury Point, where they moved him to serve as a bit of a visual statement for all the mariners sailing in and out of London, showing them what became of pirates.”
“Did they ever find his treasure?”
“Almost immediately. Right after they arrested him. Went out to Gardiner’s Island in Long Island Sound, dug up the treasure, inventoried the lot, and Bellomont got a nice slice of it for bringing in Kidd, then adjudicating his money.” The captain chuckled. “And Kidd thought he knew about pirates. As for all that Bellomont sent to England, none of it ever found its way back to the chaps it had been stolen from. In point of fact, it was used to put up a fine public building, which today adjoins the National Maritime Museum. Among other things, that institution has the finest library you or Miss Titherington could ever imagine on pirate history. Very ironic, don’t you think?”
“And there couldn’t be any of his treasure at Oak Island?” I asked about the local legend that Kidd had buried some there.
“He didn’t get to Nova Scotia. His treasure for you is his example.” In the captain’s view, Kidd’s mortal error had been in depending for his authority on other authorities. “In fact, he never was any more than half a pirate. If he’d gone all out on his own account, he’d have had a better chance for a daintier demise. Now we’re done with him,” he concluded, taking out his tin flute.
The Brotherhood of Pirates Page 19