The story of captain Kidd: The pirate who was born in Dundee
“I would rather my soul broil in hell than I do you any harm”
- Captain William Kidd -
Wealth, fame and power. These were the 3 main things that every pirate looked for in the golden age of piracy, which took place between 1650s and 1730s especially in the Caribbean, where the ships set sail looking for adventures, flapping flags with a skull and 2 crossbones and the strength was the only law.
Lots of British cities had a “pirate representatives” such as Edward Blackbeard Teach in Bristol, Mary Reed in London or Benjamin Hornigold in Norfolk… and of course, our dear Dundee wasn’t going to be worse.
Our central character is the Captain William Kidd, who was born in Dundee the 22nd January 1645. He was a pirate, but not just an ordinary pirate, he was a leader of a privateer who got a letter of marque and that meant he was allowed to chase, murder and steal pirates from the rival crowns, such as France…Simply a pirate-hunter pirate.
His father, John Kidd, was a sailor who was lost at sea…but I don’t really think that his father was so proud of William, because he didn’t exactly follow into John’s steps and became a bit different kind of a sailor: a pirate.
Kidd began his career as a sea wolf joining French and English pirate ships in the West Indies. Kidd soon decided that he didn’t want to be a mere sailor and together with other crew members they betrayed the captain and took over the ship, renaming it Blessed William.
It is said that he was elected as the captain ship by the crew, but also that it was the governor of Nevis who gave him this title. The same governor of Nevis asked Kidd for defending the city against French attacks.
After that, Kidd settled down in New York, where he married Sarah Bradley Cox Oort in 1691. In 1695, the Governors of New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, asked Kidd to chase and hunt several pirates such as Thomas Tew in return for all the treasures that he could snatch up from those pirates and also every French ship that he found. On that way, Kidd got a letter of marque, which was signed by the King William III himself and was given a new ship: the Adventure Galley, which was financed by a group of wealthy English noblemen.
Kidd had to come back to England to collect his brand new galleon, and it turned into a funny anecdote. After Kidd’s crew had picked up the ship, they began sailing along the Thames where they met the British navy. They should have greeted them…but they didn’t and the ship’s captain got angry, shooting a cannonball towards the Adventure Galley. They did not wait long for Kidd’s crew response: all of them went to the side of the ship and showed their naked bum cheeks.
Anyway. Let’s come back to the main story. Between 1695 and mid 1968 Kidd was trying, unsuccessfully, to catch some of these pirates. In January 1698 Kidd finally found a French ship and immediately attacked and captured it. Unfortunately, the ship’s captain was English. When he realized he tried to convince his crew to free the ship because he was aware of the consequences that this situation could have brought…no one in England would be happy after knowing that their corsairs attacked their own compatriots! However, Kidd’s crew had been for months without getting any loot or treasure, so that they decided to keep the juicy trophy.
Logically, when the news were spread in England, Captain Kidd was labelled as a pirate and a price was put on his head. When Kidd came back to America, he hoped that the same group of English noblemen who had financed the expedition would help him out make this unlucky misunderstanding right. Go figure…it wasn’t like that! No one wanted to discuss this and Captain Kidd was arrested and thrown into prison, where he went mad.
But that wasn’t the end of his days, he was sentenced to be hung and that was his destiny however during the first attempt the rope broke so they have to do it again. His dead body was left in a cage on the shore of the river Thames and left there to rot.
It is believed that the Captain Kidd’s treasure chests are still buried on several islands, waiting for someone who get there to find it. To finish this story one has to know that there is a legend about one of those treasure chests which tells that it was buried on Clarke’s Island, and after finishing to dig the hole and drop the chest there, one of the Kidd’s crewmember was murdered and his dead body was thrown into the hole as well. The legend says that to find the chest, three men must dig in silent at midnight, when a full moon is overhead.
Are you brave enough to take a map, a compass, a shovel and dig it up? GOOD LUCK!
