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The Ballad of Captain Kidd: the Fall of Piracy and Rise of Universal Jurisdiction (1625–1856)

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The Ballad of Captain Kidd: the Fall of Piracy and Rise of Universal Jurisdiction (1625–1856) Chapter 5 The Ballad of Captain Kidd: the Fall of Piracy and Rise of Universal Jurisdiction (1625–1856) My name was William Kidd, God’s laws I did forbid And so wickedly I did, when I sailed. I’d a Bible in my hand By my father’s great command, And sunk it in the sand when I sailed. I’d ninety bars of gold And dollars manifold With riches uncontrolled as I sailed. We taken were at last And into prison cast: Now, sentence being past, we must die. To the Execution Dock While many thousands flock, But I must bear the shock, and must die. Take a warning now by me And shun bad company, Let you come to hell with me, for I must die.1 ∵ The Ballad of Captain Kidd was intended to serve as a poetic warning to any- one seeking to follow in the stead of this rogue privateer and his romanticised outlaw lifestyle. Yet a closer examination of the context surrounding Captain 1 The Ballad of Captain Kidd (selected verses), anon, 1701. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/978900439046�_006 <UN> 114 Chapter 5 Kidd’s arrest (in 1699) and trial (1701) reveals that he was probably innocent of piracy.2 Rather, Kidd was a scapegoat for the English,3 executed to appease their allies and showcase a renewed intolerance of piracy. His death was sym- bolic, then, but nevertheless marked a crucial turning point in terms of policy towards pirates, signalled by communal suppression in a new era of State rela- tions and untempered commerce.4 At last, “[l]egal recognition of pirates as criminals emerged from centuries of intermittent cooperation and conflict”.5 This “age of intolerance” towards piracy was born of necessity. The post- Columbian era of colonial discovery signalled the start of a famous new age of piracy, with sea-robbers spreading beyond the crime-ridden crucible of the Mediterranean to the unruly Caribbean and the American mainland “beyond the line”.6 Here they established bases far from the governments, laws, and navies of Europe, finding ample prey amongst the new-found wealth of the colonies and, often, acquiescence in their deeds.7 As the colonial powers began to rely increasingly on trade, however, the tide began to turn against the pi- rates who preyed upon it. Captain Kidd’s 1701 trial marked something of a turn- ing point in terms of governmental response to the pirates who so hampered commerce. With so many pirate captains in the region being of British origin,8 an implicit onus fell on the British governments to implement more effective legal provisions and procedures. A law-driven approach was developed, based on statute and judicial precedent, providing a more concrete and (in theory) 2 David Harpham, “The case of Captain William Kidd – a 300 year old miscarriage of justice?” 3 New Histories (July 2012), available online. 3 Given that the union of England and Scotland did not occur until 1707, it is appropriate to refer to the two States separately in reference to events before that date; “Britain” or “The United Kingdom” as a political unit only existed afterwards. 4 See, e.g., A.T. Whatley, “Historical Sketch of the Law of Piracy” 3 Law Magazine and Review (1874) 618, 639. 5 Joaquín Alcaide Fernández, “Hostes humani generis: Pirates, Slavers and Other Criminals” in Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (Oxford: oup, 2012) 120, 123. 6 The phrase refers to the longitudinal line (c. 46° west) drawn in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, granting Spain and Portugal exclusive possession of all lands to the west. See Angus Konstam, Piracy: The Complete History (Oxford: Osprey, 2008), 38. 7 See, e.g., David J. Starkey, “A Restless Spirit: British Privateering Enterprise, 1739–1815” in Da- vid J. Starkey, E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga and J.A. de Moor (eds), Pirates and Privateers: New Perspectives on the War on Trade in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Exeter: Univer- sity of Exeter Press, 1997) 126, 127. 8 David Cordingly, in Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (London: Abacus, 1995), 15, lists the nationality of pirates “who terrorised the Caribbean from around 1715 to 1725”, as being 35 per cent “native Englishmen”, 25 per cent “born in the American colonies”, 20 per cent “from the West Indian colonies” (mostly Jamaica, Barbados and the Bahamas), 10 per cent Scottish, 8 per cent Welsh, and 2 per cent other Europeans (Swedish, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese). <UN>.
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