Captain William Kidd

Name: William Kidd. Born: Dundee, 1654. Occupation: Sea captain. Defending English and American trade routes First ship: Antigua. He emigrated to New York in the 1680’s. Married: Sarah Bradley Cox Oort, a wealthy widow.

On 6 September 1696, Kidd and 150 crew members went to capture a pirate called Robert Culliford in the Indian Ocean. aboard the Adventure Galley.

His crew took over his ship on the way. This is called mutiny. Kidd was forced to become a pirate himself.

In 1698, Kidd and his crew attacked and took a ship: the cargo was silk, muslin, calico, sugar, opium, iron and salt peter and a worth rumoured to be £70,000 . The Quedah Merchant, renamed the Adventure Prize, was kept by Kidd, as he was forced to abandon and sink his now leaking ship.

Being a pirate was now against the law in England and America but Kidd did not know this on his return to America in 1699.

He buried the treasure on his way to Boston in Gardiner Island and Block Island.

The New England governor, Lord Richard Bellomont, had him arrested on 7 July 1699 in Boston. He was sent to England in February 1700. The trial started on 8 May and was completed the next day – the verdict was that Kidd was guilty of the murder of one of his crew and guilty of multiple acts of piracy.

Captain William Kidd was hanged on 23 May 1701.

His corpse was left to rot at the Thames River as an example to other would-be pirates.

After his death, his legend grew, especially the stories of buried treasure. Authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson with his book “Treasure Island” and Edgar Allan Poe (“The Gold Bug”) helped fuel the myth.