by Frank Sherry
In the days preceding his execution, Kidd was visited by the Reverend Paul Lorrain, chaplain of Newgate Prison, who offered him the comfort of religion.
But Kidd, far from asking forgiveness for his crimes or throwing himself upon the mercy of his Creator, continued to insist that he was innocent of all crimes. Lorrain, however, did not despair of Kidd’s soul. On the day that Kidd was scheduled to die, as Lorrain himself later reported it, the chaplain applied himself with “particular exhortations” until, at last, according to the clergyman, Kidd “readily assented and said he truly forgave all the world.”
The chaplain, thereupon, left Kidd alone to meditate on the death that awaited him in only a few hours.
At 3:00 P.M. on May 23, 1701, however, when Kidd emerged from Newgate for his ride to Wapping, he was not intoxicated with the hope of everlasting life. Instead he was falling-down drunk on alcohol that some kindly benefactor—apparently lacking the chaplain’s clear-sighted sense of what was fitting for a condemned man—had smuggled in to him.
Kidd was transported to the place of execution in a black-draped cart. The king’s deputy marshal preceded him in an open carriage, resting a silver oar (the symbol of the Admiralty) on his shoulder. A crowd, hooting and shouting with glee, followed Kidd’s cart as the little parade moved through the district of shabby hovels and cheap taverns toward the execution ground.
Finally, after two hours, the cavalcade arrived at Execution Dock at Wapping on the tidal flats of the dismal riverside.
Even now, in the shadow of the gallows, Kidd, still unsteady from drink, continued to insist that he had committed no piracies.
Chaplain Lorrain, grieved by his charge’s drunken condition, renewed his campaign to achieve Kidd’s repentance. Even at this late hour, the chaplain exhorted Kidd, there was time for redemption, if he would say he repented of his crimes. But the stubborn Kidd, true to his own vision of himself, would only say he was sorry for his sins in general.
“He expressed abundance of sorrow for leaving his wife and children, without having the opportunity to take leave of them,” the chaplain reported later, “so that the thoughts of his wife’s sorrow at the sad tidings of his shameful death was more occasion of grief to him than that of his own sad misfortunes.”
Now Kidd was made to stand on the rickety platform of the gallows. The noose was tightened around his neck. He was then pushed off. But the rope snapped. He fell to the ground.
White-faced and shaken, he had to be hanged a second time. This time he was made to climb a ladder. Again Chaplain Lorrain called upon Kidd to confess his evil deeds. In response Kidd spewed forth some words of sorrow which the Chaplain was pleased to regard as the long-sought repentance.
Now, with a swift motion, the constables pulled away the ladder. Kidd fell. The rope held.
Kidd’s body, tarred to preserve it, was displayed on the bank of the Thames for years—caged and hung from a gibbet—as a “deterrent” to other malefactors.4
So perished Captain William Kidd. Within months he had become a legend. Songs were written about him. One of them, “The Ballad of William Kidd,” gives the flavor of the legend that grew up around him and his fate:
My name was William Kidd, when I sailed, when I sailed.
My name was William Kidd, when I sailed.
My name was William Kidd,
God’s laws I did forbid.
And so wickedly I did, when I sailed.
That William Kidd did wickedly is beyond dispute. He was guilty of most of the charges against him. He did kill the gunner, Moore. He did disobey the orders contained in his commission. He did engage in piracy—despite his claim regarding the missing French passes.5
Yet, despite his guilt, Kidd was far less a conscious criminal than a victim—of circumstances, of bad luck, of social pressures exerted by powerful men, of a mutinous crew, and above all, of his own propensity for wishful thinking.
Throughout his long descent into the inferno, he continually committed acts that were not only wrong but against his own best interests. All these self-destructive acts—from his insolence to the navy to his attempts to cozy up to Lady Bellomont—flowed from this fundamental defect in his character: his disposition to see things as he wished them to be. It was this flaw that first set Kidd on his journey to the gallows at Wapping—by permitting him to dream of becoming a Royal Navy commander. If he had not saddled himself with that unreal ambition, he probably would not have traveled to London in the summer of 1695, would not have met with Livingston and Bellomont, would not have acceded to the impossible mission they pressed on him—and would not have blundered into the crimes that eventually brought him to Execution Dock.
Or perhaps, being what he was, William Kidd might have found some other road to some other Wapping.
In any event, Kidd did commit murder and piracy. He was a criminal.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
But he was not a pirate. The pirates of the outlaw nation were conscious, deliberate outlaws—rebels against society. Among them there could be no such thing as a “trusty and well-beloved” Sailor of the King—which was what Kidd tried to be, and thought he was, right up to his last moments.
It is possible that while reveling with Culliford at Madagascar, Kidd was tempted by the free and lusty life of piracy, but he was also clearly disgusted by it. His innate respect for order, his sense of duty and mission, his past life as an honest, successful seaman, as faithful husband and loving father, and above all, his ambition for the future—all these factors precluded Kidd from ever becoming a true pirate. If he committed piracies, they were acts of expediency, even acts of survival. But they were not acts of rebellion, not acts of war. Kidd simply did not have it in him to rebel against society. He was too much a part of it.
Yet Kidd, and the cruise of Adventure Galley, occupy an important place in the annals of the outlaw brotherhood.
Kidd’s story illuminates the pervasiveness of piracy among the common sailors of his time—and makes plain the power of its allure for simple seafarers.
Although his crewmen were not outlaws when Kidd signed them aboard Adventure Galley, they were soon infected by the genuine pirates that Kidd later brought into the crew. In time almost all of Kidd’s men—except for a handful of loyalists—became open rebels who defied their captain and their king by forcing Kidd to piracy, thereby in effect making him a prisoner aboard his own ship while on the king’s own business. The vast majority of Kidd’s men, when offered the chance, joined Culliford in Madagascar to go pirating, once again demonstrating that for many sailors it was better to be a free pirate than the honest servant of any Authority, even the king’s.6
Kidd’s voyage was also important because it showed contemporaries just how futile would be any further private efforts to stem piracy in the East. The failure of Kidd’s cruise helped to convince many of those in power that only a determined effort by the Royal Navy and an honest effort by colonial officials to enforce the king’s writ at sea and ashore would eradicate piracy in the eastern seas.
As for Kidd himself, in death he became known as one of the most fearsome pirates of history. Even in this he was a victim. Encapsulated in his false legend, he remains as much a captive of the outlaw nation today as he was during the long, luckless, and fatal cruise of Adventure Galley.
10
Counterstroke and Intermission: The War Moves West
Even before Captain William Kidd had returned from his ill-starred voyage, the forces of law and property had begun an effective counterattack against the outlaw nation based on Madagascar.
The initial blows had been economic, designed to deprive the Madagascar outlaws of the two essential pillars of their existence: their sources of supply and markets for their stolen goods.
Lord Bellomont, the new colonial governor, fresh in his post and full of highly visible zeal against the trade in pirate contraband, had embarked on a campaign to remove corrupt officials from the colonies. He had begun by sending the notorious Ben
jamin Fletcher back to England under arrest. He had also had numerous other officials whom he suspected of trading with pirates (“pirate brokers” he called them) dismissed from their positions.
Bellomont had let it be known far and wide that unlike previous colonial governors, he could not be bribed. Nor would he countenance evasion of the Navigation Acts, no matter how onerous they were to the general population.
To enforce his policies Bellomont had deployed the small naval forces available to him to guard the coastal waters, to board suspected vessels, and to seize illegal cargoes.
Although pirates had continued to operate by sneaking past Bellomont’s coast guards, the sweet trade had soon begun to sour both for the pirates themselves and for the businessmen who purchased their booty. So effectively had Bellomont cut into the piratical trade that in 1698 New York merchants had petitioned London to recall him—and to send back Fletcher!
The New York pirate brokers had had more cause than any others to complain of the new colonial governor, for Bellomont had directed most of his energies at them. In fact, Bellomont had managed to force out of business New York’s premier pirate trader, Frederick Philipse, who had been for many years the chief supplier and dealer for the Madagascar-based pirate broker Adam Baldridge.1
To halt Philipse’s illegal trading in pirate goods, Bellomont had ordered his coast guards to seize several of Philipse’s ships, each of them laden with plunder purchased from the pirates. Bellomont had also dismissed Philipse from his post on the governor’s council on the very good grounds that Philipse, by dealing with pirates, had been for many years violating the very laws he was sworn to uphold.
Nor had Bellomont been the only colonial governor to act against piracy in America.
Governor Francis Nicholson of Virginia, had also taken effective measures against the trade.
In November 1697, for example, Nicholson had sent an armed party over the Virginia border into Pennsylvania to capture a gang of pirates who had taken shelter there under the protection of Pennsylvania’s corrupt Governor William Markham. (Markham was one of the officials later dismissed through the efforts of Lord Bellomont.)
In June 1700—a year after Kidd’s return from his infamous cruise, and only four months after Bellomont had sent the notorious captain back to England for trial—Governor Nicholson had personally directed a coast-guard ship in a successful battle with a pirate vessel that had been cruising off the coast of Virginia. Throughout the bloody combat, one witness reported, Governor Nicholson “never stirred off the quarterdeck, but by his example, conduct, and plenty of gold which he gave amongst the men, made them fight bravely, til they had taken the pirates’ ship, with a hundred and odd prisoners, the rest being killed.”
Because of the zeal of Governor Nicholson and other honest colonial officials—and especially because of Lord Bellomont’s policies—the pirate trade had by 1701 all but withered away, and pirate vessels had become rare off colonial shores where once they had proliferated.2
In addition to economic measures against the pirate trade, the British government had attacked piracy by changing the laws to make it easier to prosecute seaborne outlaws.
Under the new laws, men charged with piracy no longer had to be returned to England for trial—as Kidd had been, for example. The new acts had authorized Admiralty courts to try pirates in the colonies themselves. This change had been a great improvement over the old system, which had been both time-consuming and costly, and which in practice had often meant that the accused went free because prosecution required more time, expense, and effort than it was worth.
However, stern new antipiracy laws had not been the only measures adopted by the London government. It had also tried to induce at least some of the Madagascar-based outlaws to cease their activities voluntarily. Toward this end King William had proclaimed a general amnesty for all pirates who sought pardon before June 1699. (William Kidd and Henry Every had been specifically excluded from the amnesty offer, however.)
The combination of proffered amnesty, new legal sanctions against piracy, and suppression of colonial markets had soon inflicted serious damage on the outlaw brotherhood. What good, after all, was loot that you couldn’t sell, or trade for rum or women?
Many Madagascar pirates, especially those who had depended most heavily on traders such as Baldridge in Madagascar and the colonial pirate brokers of New York, Newport, and Boston, had abandoned the sweet trade altogether. Others had begun to look elsewhere for markets for their plunder. A number had been taken by the East India Company—and tried and convicted under the new Admiralty acts. Many others, reading the handwriting on the wall, had accepted pardons and had returned to honest service or settled on Madagascar.
But despite the effectiveness of government programs against piracy, a number of pirates had remained in the East and had continued to prey on merchant shipping in the Indian Ocean, accepting for their plundered goods reduced prices from smugglers and from petty traders.
The enemies of piracy had had to recognize that this hardcore remainder—still a formidable force and still able to strike with impunity from its Madagascar sanctuaries—could be exterminated only by Royal Navy action.
And beginning in the latter half of 1698, such action had become, for the first time in nearly a decade, a distinct possibility, for in that year the political landscape had begun to alter, and with it the role of the Royal Navy.
In the summer of 1698 King William’s war against France, which had kept the English fleet engaged for nine years, had come to an indecisive end with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick.
While the treaty had halted hostilities, it had not resolved any of the political, religious, and economic problems between the warring parties. It had merely acknowledged that both sides had reached near exhaustion and required a respite. All parties to the treaty, especially King William himself, had recognized that war might break out again at almost any time.
For this reason William had continued to resist the incessant pleas of the East India Company and other merchants to dispatch Royal Navy men-of-war to Madagascar. In addition to renewed war with France, William feared that war might break out in the Baltic between Sweden on one hand and a combination of Russia, Poland, and Denmark on the other. He wanted to be able to intervene with the Royal Navy if such an outbreak did occur—while still maintaining sufficient fleet strength to fend off any challenge from France across the Channel.
William had still another reason to retain the fleet in home waters: The Tories had won a majority in the House of Commons in the parliamentary elections of 1697 on a pledge to reduce taxes for the maintenance of the army and navy, and on a promise to pursue a policy of peace in opposition to William’s own determination to oppose Louis XIV of France. The Tories had wasted no time in reducing the size of the Royal Navy—and William had argued that in view of the cuts in the naval budget and the dangers of the international situation, it was more imperative than ever to husband the reduced fleet at home. But the Tories had disagreed with William. In spite of the king’s concern about the possibility of war’s breaking out again, and despite their own pledge to cut back on naval expenditures, the Tory government had decided it was in England’s interest to use the Royal Navy to suppress the Madagascar pirates. The nabobs of the East India Company had at last won their fight for Royal Navy help in the Indian Ocean.
Accordingly, in January 1699, the Admiralty had dispatched eastward four naval vessels—Anglesea, Hastings, Harwich, and Lizard—under Commodore Thomas Warren, the same officer whom Captain Kidd had tried to bully in their encounter off Africa two years earlier.
The Admiralty, which agreed with William that a new war was imminent, had been loath to spare even these four armed vessels from the main fleet. But it had done so out of political necessity.
Regarding the expedition as no more than a modest counterstroke designed to check the most serious of the pirate depredations—and to scare the less bold among the pirate captains out of the In
dian Ocean altogether—the Admiralty ordered Warren to use whatever force was necessary to break up the pirate concentrations but, at the same time, to extend the king’s pardon to any pirates willing to give up their outlaw life peacefully.
Warren and his flotilla of four ships had arrived at the island of St. Mary’s in May 1699.
According to Warren, the virtually landlocked harbor was filled with pirate ships when his squadron approached. Apparently the outlaws had been taken by surprise, but they had made haste to defend their base. They had manned the forty guns of Adam Baldridge’s old fort overlooking the harbor, and they had blocked the bottleneck of the harbor entrance by sinking old ships in the shallow water.
They also sank and burned all the other ships in the harbor, destroying whatever plunder they had aboard and many stores as well.
Commodore Warren, standing offshore with his guns trained on St. Mary’s harbor, reckoned that there were some fifteen hundred outlaws on the island and that a battle would be costly to both sides. Prior to initiating hostilities, therefore, he had sent an emissary ashore to offer the king’s pardon to all who would surrender. Most of the pirates, recognizing the impracticality of taking on the Royal Navy (and always willing to accept amnesty temporarily to escape a dangerous situation) gave themselves up. Many others, however, refused the offer of pardon. These crossed by various means to the main island of Madagascar and took refuge among the natives and ex-pirate settlers, apparently willing to wait until better days returned.
In the event, the Royal Navy squadron had not had to fire a shot. Warren’s men had dismantled the harbor defenses of St. Mary’s. The commodore had then resumed his search-and-destroy cruise in eastern waters.
For the better part of a year, the Royal Navy squadron had patrolled the eastern seas, seeking pirate vessels. But the squadron had not found a single pirate ship, nor had it fired a shot at any of the shore installations the pirates had built and now had abandoned. Finally, two of Warren’s four vessels had gone home, leaving two ships to continue on patrol in the East.
