From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism
From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism Ronald V. Huggins ONE DAY IN LATE MARCH 1697, a ship named the Adventure Galley arrived at the Island of Mohilla, one of the Comoro Islands. Its fever-stricken crew careened the vessel for cleaning and then proceeded to die off one by one, fifty men dead in about a week. The Adventure Galley had come to the Comoros the previous month, after stopping first at the neighboring Island of Johanna. It would not de- part again until April 18. Its captain, William (a.k.a. Robert) Kidd, did not know he would soon become one of history's most famous, and notorious, pirates. In those days pirates, even famous ones, were no oddity in the Comoros. Anyone who read, for example, the popular two-volume A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724 and 1728) by Daniel Defoe (a.k.a. Captain Charles Johnson), would find the Comoro Islands figuring into the accounts of Captains England, Misson, Tew, Kidd, Bowen, White, Condent, Cornelius, Howard, Williams, Burgess, North,1 and la Bouche.2 The pirate to whom Defoe dedicated his first chapter, Henry Avery (Every), also had a connection with the Comoros, which the author fails to men- 1. The edition used here is Daniel Defoe, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schon- horn, (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1972). Johanna is mentioned in the accounts of Captains England, 118, 130, 132; Misson, 407-16; Tew, 424-26; Kidd, 443; Bowen, 461; White, 478; Condent, 584; Cornelius, 605; Williams, 503; Burgess, 510; and North, 516.
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