Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

As soon as Captain Kidd entered the port, it was suspected that he was the pirate. Two English gentlemen, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Mason, came on board, and charged him with the crime, asking him what he had done with his two captives, Captain Parker and the Portuguese mate. Kidd assumed an air of injured innocence, denied that he had any knowledge of the event, showed them his commission from the King of England as the head of a company of the most illustrious nobles to pursue and punish the pirates. Triumphantly he submitted the question if it were reasonable to suppose that a man who enjoyed the confidence of the king and his nobles, and was intrusted by them to lead an enterprise so essential to the national honor, should himself turn pirate.

The gentlemen were silenced, but not convinced. All this time Parker and Antonio the Portuguese were concealed in a private place in the hold. There he kept them carefully guarded eight days, until he again set sail. Just after he had left the port, a Portuguese man-of-war entered. The English merchants communicated to the commander their suspicions. He immediately put to sea in search of the Adventure, resolved, should he overtake her, carefully to examine the hold, hoping to find the captives on board, or at least some evidence of their having been there.

The two ships met. Kidd was by no means disposed to have his vessel searched. A fierce battle ensued which lasted for six hours. Neither vessel was disposed to come to close quarters until the other was disabled. Kidd at length, finding the Portuguese ship too strong for him, spread all his sails and escaped. With his vast amount of canvas he could run away from almost any foe. Ten of his men were wounded in this conflict, but none killed.

Again these desperate men found it necessary to run into the land for provisions. They entered a small port called Porco. Here they filled their water-casks, and “bought,” Kidd says, a sufficient number of hogs of the natives to victual the company. As it is known that Kidd had no money, it is probable that the swine were obtained by that kind of moral suasion which is found in the muzzle of a pistol and the edge of a sabre.

This suspicion is confirmed by the fact that the natives, in their exasperation, killed one of his men. The retaliation was characteristic of the crew and the times. Captain Kidd brought his guns to bear upon the village. With broadside after broadside he laid their huts in ruins. The torch was applied, and in an hour the peaceful village was converted into mouldering ashes.

One of the natives was caught. They bound him to a tree, and then a whole boat’s company, one after another, discharged each a bullet into his heart. Having achieved this exploit, which they probably thought chivalric, but which others may deem fiendish, Captain Kidd again spread his sails for a piratic cruise.

The first vessel he came across was a large Mongol ship richly freighted. Kidd gave chase, unfurling the French flag. The captain was a Dutchman, by the name of Mitchel. Seeing that he was pursued under French colors, he immediately ran up the banner of France. Captain Kidd at once spread to the breeze the flag of England. He was very exultant. He could lay aside the odious character of a pirate, and seize the ship in the less disgraceful capacity of a privateersman. He exclaimed with an oath, “I have caught you. You are a free prize to England.”

A cannon-ball was thrown across the bows of the ship, and she was ordered to heave to. The ship was hailed in the French language, and some one replied in the same tongue. They were then ordered to send their boat on board. The boat came bearing the captain of the ship, who was a Dutchman, by the name of Mitchel, and a French gentleman by the name of Le Roy.

Kidd received them in his cabin, and upon inquiry ascertained that the ship and cargo belonged to Mongol merchants; that they had intrusted the command to a Dutch captain, as was not unfrequently the case in those days, and that the French gentleman was merely a passenger accidently on board, passing from one port to another.

These tidings, to use a sailor’s phrase, “struck him all aback.” Holland, as we have mentioned, was England’s ally. The Great Mogul was England’s friend. Kidd must release the ship, or confess himself a pirate and an outlaw, and run the imminent risk of being hanged should he ever return to England. For a moment he seemed lost in thought, bewildered. Then his wicked mind, now rapidly descending into the abyss of sin and shame, rested in a decisive resolve.

CHAPTER III

Piratic Adventures

Audacity of Kidd. – Fate of the November. – Kidd kills William Moore. – The Renowned Ballad. – Kidd’s Compunctions. – Kidd at Madagascar. – Piratic Carousals. – The Artificial Hell. – Kidd’s Return to the West Indies. – Exaggerated Reports of Avery. – His wretched Career, and wretched End.

Captain Kidd, with a piratic frown upon his brow, and piratic oaths upon his lips, turned to Mr. Le Roy and said:

“Do you pretend that this is not a French ship, and that you are but a passenger on board?”

“It is so,” Mr. Le Roy politely replied. “I am a stranger in these parts, and have merely taken passage on board this native ship, under Captain Mitchel, on my way to Bombay.”

“It is a lie,” said the pirate, as he drew from his belt a pistol and cocked it. “This is a French ship, and you are its captain; and it is my lawful prize. If you deny this, you shall instantly die.”

The features of Kidd, and his words blended with oaths, convinced Mr. Le Roy that he was in the hands of a desperate man, who would shrink from no crime. He was silent. Kidd then added:

“I seize this ship as my legitimate prize. It belongs to a French subject, and is sailing under the French flag. I have a commission from his majesty the King of England to seize all such ships in his name.”

It seems strange that Kidd, after the many lawless acts of which he had already been guilty, should have deemed it of any consequence to have recourse to so wretched a quibble. But the incident shows that the New-York merchant, formerly of good reputation, still recoiled from the thought of plunging headlong into a piratic career. By observing these forms he could, in this case, should he ever have occasion to do so, claim the protection of the royal commission authorizing him to capture French ships.

Kidd took his prize, which he called the November, because it was captured in that month, into one of the East-Indian ports, and sold ship and cargo for what they would fetch. What the amount was, or how he divided it, is not known. Again he resumed his cruise. It was evident that he had become anxious to renounce the career of pirate, upon which he had barely entered, and resume that of privateersman. They soon came across a Dutch ship, unmistakably such, in build and flag and rigging. The crew clamored for its capture; Kidd resolutely opposed it. A mutiny arose. A minority of the ship’s company adhered to the captain. The majority declared that they would arm the boats and go and seize her.

The captain, with drawn sabre in his hand, and pistols in his belt, and surrounded by those still faithful to him, stood upon her quarter-deck and said to the mutineers, firmly:

“You may take the boats and go. But those who thus leave this ship will never ascend its sides again.”

One of the men, a gunner by the name of William Moore, was particularly violent and abusive. With threatening gestures he approached the captain, assailing him in the most vituperative terms, saying:

“You are ruining us all. You are keeping us in beggary and starvation. But for your whims we might all be prosperous and rich.”

The captain was by no means a meek man. In his ungovernable passion he seized an iron-bound bucket, which chanced to be lying at his side, and gave the mutineer such a blow as fractured his skull and struck him senseless to the deck. Of the wound the gunner died the next day. Not many will feel disposed to censure Captain Kidd very severely for this act. It was not a premeditated murder. It was perhaps a necessary deed, in quelling a mutiny, in which the mutineers were demanding that the black flag of the pirate should be raised, and which demand the captain was resisting. And yet it is probable that this blow sent Kidd to the gallows. Upon his subsequent trial, but little evidence of piracy could be adduced, and the death of Moore was the prominent charge brought against him.

Kidd ever averred that it was a virtuous act, and that it did not trouble his conscience. It was done to prevent piracy and mutiny. He also averred that he had no intention to kill the man. Had he so intended he would have used pistol or sabre. In the ballad which, half a century ago, was sung in hundreds of farm-houses in New England, the lullaby of infancy, the event is alluded to in the following words:

“I murdered William Moore, as I sailed, as I sailed,I murdered William Moore as I sailed;I murdered William Moore, and left him in his gore,Not many leagues from shore, as I sailed.”

We will give a few more verses to show the general character of this ballad of twenty-five stanzas, once so popular, now forgotten:

“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.“Thus being o’ertaken at last, I must die, I must die,Thus being o’ertaken at last, I must die;Thus being o’ertaken at last, and into prison cast,And sentence being pass’d, I must die.“To Newgate now I’m cast, and must die, and must die,To Newgate now I’m cast, and must die,To Newgate now I’m cast, with sad and heavy heart,To receive my just desert, I must die.“To Execution Dock I must go, I must go,To Execution Dock I must go;To Execution Dock will many thousands flock,But I must bear my shock, and must die.“Come all ye young and old, see me die, see me die,Come all ye young and old, see me die;Come all ye young and old, you’re welcome to my gold,For by it I’ve lost my soul, and must die.”

The Dutchman had no consciousness of the peril to which he had been exposed. The two ships kept company for several days, and then separated. Is it possible that all this time Kidd was hesitating whether to raise the black flag and seize the prize? It looks like it; for a few days after the Dutch ship had disappeared, quite a fleet of Malabar boats were met with, laden with provisions and other articles which Kidd needed. Unscrupulously he plundered them all. Probably he had no fears that tidings of the outrage would ever reach England. And even if a rumor of the deed were ever to reach those distant shores, he had no apprehension that England would trouble herself to punish him for a little harsh treatment of semi-savages on the coast of Malabar.

A few days after this robbery a Portuguese ship hove in sight. Kidd’s moral nature was every hour growing weaker. He could no longer resist the temptation to seize the prize. He robbed the vessel of articles to the estimated value of two thousand dollars, and let her go, inflicting no injury upon the ship’s company.

For three weeks they continued to cruise over a sailless sea, when one morning, about the middle of December, an immense mass of canvas was seen rising over the distant horizon. It proved to be a native ship of four hundred tons burden. The ship was called the Quedagh Merchant, was very richly laden, and was commanded by an Englishman, Captain Wright. The wealthy merchants of the East were fully aware of the superior nautical skill of the English seaman, and were eager to intrust their important ventures to European commanders.

Kidd unfurled the French flag, chased the ship, and soon overtook it. A cannon-ball whistling over the heads of the crew was the very significant hint with which the ship was commanded to heave to. Kidd ordered the captain to lower his boat and come on board the Adventure. The captain obeyed and informed the pirate that all the crew were East Indians, excepting two Dutchmen and one Frenchman, and that the ship belonged exclusively to East-Indian merchants.

Kidd took piratic possession of the ship. He had not the shadow of a claim to it on the ground of his commission as a privateersman. He landed the officers and the crew, in boatload after boatload, upon the shore, and left them to shift for themselves. One or two of the merchants who owned the ship and cargo were on board. They offered the pirate twenty thousand rupees, which was equivalent to about fifteen thousand dollars, to ransom the property. Kidd declined the offer.

His own ship, after such long voyaging, was leaky and much in want of repairs. The Quedagh Merchant was far superior to the Adventure. He therefore transferred all his stores to his prize. The torch was applied to the Adventure, and the ill-fated ship soon disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame. Kidd, now a confirmed pirate, directed his course toward the great rendezvous of the pirates at Madagascar. Here the prize was valued at sixty-four thousand pounds, or about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

Still this strange man assumed that he was acting under the royal commission, in behalf of the London company; and these treasures were the legitimate plunder of a piratic ship. He therefore reserved forty shares for himself and the company. There were about one hundred and fifty men composing this piratic crew. Each man received about two thousand dollars. Kidd’s portion amounted to nearly eighty thousand dollars.

In the pirates’ harbor at Madagascar, Kidd found a large ship, the Resolution, belonging to the East India Company, which the captain, a man by the name of Culliford, with the crew, had seized and turned into a pirate. It was clearly Kidd’s duty, under his commission, at once to attack and capture this piratic ship. When Captain Culliford saw him entering the harbor with his powerful and well-armed ship, he was terrified. The pirates had heard of Captain Kidd’s commission, and had not yet learned that he had turned pirate himself. Captain Culliford, with the gallows in vision before him, and trembling in every nerve, for there was no possibility of escape, sent some officers, in a boat, on board the Quedagh Merchant, to ascertain Captain Kidd’s intention.

It was testified at the subsequent trial of Kidd, that he stood upon his deck and received with open arms the piratic officers as they came up over the ship’s side, that he invited them to his cabin, where they had a great carouse in drinking and smoking; and that in the frenzy of drink he offered for a toast:

“May damnation seize my soul if I harm a hair of the head of any one on board the Culliford.”

It was declared that he received large presents of bales of silk from the piratic captain, and sold him some heavy ordnance, with suitable ammunition, for two thousand dollars; and that he was on the most friendly terms with Culliford, exchanging frequent visits with him.

On the other hand, Kidd emphatically denied all these charges. He said, “I never stepped foot on board Captain Culliford’s ship. When I entered the harbor and ascertained the character of the craft, I ordered my men to prepare for action. But the mutinous crew, who had already compelled me to resort to measures against which my soul revolted, peremptorily refused, saying that they would rather fire two shots into my vessel than one into that of Captain Culliford. The mutiny became so menacing that my life was in danger. The turbulent crew rifled my chest, stole my journal, took possession of the ammunition. I was compelled to barricade myself in the cabin. The mutineers held the ship, and being beyond all control, acted according to their own good pleasure. I was in no degree responsible for their conduct.”

The captain’s statement was not credited by the court. At the same time it was quite evident that he had lost the control of his crew. His testimony was, however, in some degree borne out by the fact that ninety-five of his men in a body deserted him, and joined the piratic crew of Captain Culliford. This would seem to prove conclusively that Captain Kidd was not sufficiently piratical in his measures to satisfy the demands of the mutineers.

For several weeks these guilty and wretched men remained in the “own place” of the pirates, indulging in every species of bacchanal wassail and sensual vice, amidst their palaces and in their harems. Their revelry could not have been exceeded by any scenes ever witnessed in Sodom or Gomorrah. There were between five and six hundred upon the island. They were continually coming and going. Some of them were so rich that they remained at home cultivating quite large plantations by slave labor. They amused themselves by hunting, and in the wide meadows and forests found abundant game. The arrival of a ship in the harbor was the signal for an universal carouse. They endeavored to magnify the charms of their women by dressing them gorgeously in silks and satins, with glittering jewelry.

Often a pipe of wine would be placed upon the shore, the head taken out, and the community would drink of it as they pleased, as freely as if it were water. Drunken pirates reeled through the streets. Oaths filled the air. Knives gleamed, and pistols were discharged, and there were wounds and death. In the midst of all their revelry and wantonness and brawls, it is evident from the record we have of those days, that a more unhappy, wretched set of beings could scarcely be found this side of the world of woe. There was not a joy to be found there. There were no peaceful homes; no loving husbands and wives; no happy children climbing the parental knee and enfolded in parental arms; and in death nothing but a “fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.”

These wretched pirates were hateful and hating. Satiated with vice, they knew not where to turn for a single joy. Their shouts of laughter fell discordantly upon the ear like the revelry of demons. Satan never allows his votaries any happiness either in this world or in that which is to come. Wisdom’s ways only are ways of pleasantness, and her paths alone are those of peace.

How far Captain Kidd entered into these godless carousals is not known. But it is not probable that he was then able to throw off all restraint, and become hail-fellow with these vulgar, degraded, profane wretches, whom in heart he must have despised. Neither is it probable that one accustomed to the society in which an honored New-York merchant would move, could so soon have formed a taste for the drunken revelry of the lowest and vilest creatures on earth.

It is evident that these men had occasionally reproaches of conscience, and some faint sense of their terrible responsibility at God’s bar. Four of them decided one day to make a little artificial hell for themselves, that they might see who could stand its pains the longest.

A cloudless tropical sun blistered the deck with its blazing rays. The cabin was heated like an oven. In addition to this, they built a fire in the stove, till the iron plates were red hot. They then with blaspheming oaths entered this furnace, and sprinkled brimstone upon the fire till the room was filled with its suffocating fumes. One of these wretches, apparently as fiend-like as a man could be, bore the pains of this little artificial hell for five minutes. None of the others could endure them so long. The victor came out very exultant. One would have thought that the idea would have occurred to their minds that there was some considerable difference between five minutes and eternity.

We do not learn that any of these men were made better by the brief endurance of their self-inflicted tortures. The mind is appalled by the thought that these same men, when transferred to the spirit land, may be as persistent in their hostility to all God’s laws as they were here.

Captain Kidd found himself abandoned by nearly all his crew. He remained in port only long enough to recruit sufficient men to navigate his ship, and then, spreading the sails of his stolen vessel, the Quedagh Merchant, he set out for the West Indies, with his ill-gotten treasure of eighty thousand dollars. The news of Kidd’s piratic acts had been reported to the home government by the East India Company. Orders had accordingly been issued to all the governors of the American colonies to arrest him wherever he should appear.

The voyage from Madagascar to the West Indies was long and tempestuous. Not a single sail appeared in sight. Day after day the ocean was spread out in all its solitary grandeur before these guilty, discontented men. At length, in a very destitute condition, the ship reached Anguilla, or Snake Island, so called from its tortuous figure. This is the most northerly of the Caribbee Islands, and there was a small English colony here.

As Kidd dropped anchor in the little harbor he was greeted by the intelligence that he had been officially, in England, proclaimed a pirate; that his conduct had been discussed in Parliament; that a committee had been appointed to inquire into the character of the company which had commissioned him, and into the nature of the commission he had received; that a British man-of-war, the Queensborough, had been dispatched in pursuit of him, and that a royal proclamation had been issued, offering pardon to all who had been guilty of piracy, eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, before the last day of April, 1699, excepting William Kidd, and another notorious buccaneer by the name of Avery.

This Avery had obtained great renown, and the most extravagant stories were reported and universally believed in reference to his achievements. It was said that this pirate had attained almost imperial wealth, dignity, and power; that he had become the proud founder of a new monarchy in the East, whose sceptre he swayed in undisputed absolutism. His exploits were celebrated in a play called, “The Successful Pirate,” which was performed to admiring audiences in all the theatres.

According to these representations, Avery had captured a ship, belonging to the Great Mogul, and laden with the richest treasures. On board the imperial ship there was a beautiful princess, the daughter of the Great Mogul. Avery had married her. The father, reigning over boundless realms, had recognized the union, and had assigned to Avery vast territories in the East, where millions were subject to his control. He occupied one of the most magnificent of Oriental palaces, had several children, and was surrounded with splendors of royalty quite unknown in the Western world. He had a squadron of ships manned by the most desperate fellows of all nations. In his own name he issued commissions to the captains of his ships and the commanders of his forts, and they all recognized his princely authority.

His piracies were still continued on a scale commensurate with his power. Many schemes were offered to the royal council of England for fitting out a squadron to disperse his fleets and to take him captive. Others affirmed that he was altogether too powerful to be assailed in that way. They urged the expediency of sending an embassage to his court, and inviting him and his companions to come to England with all their treasures, assuring him of a hospitable reception and of the oblivion of all the past. They feared that unless these peaceful measures were adopted, his ever-increasing greatness would enable him to annihilate all commerce with the East.

These rumors were so far from having any foundation in truth, that at the same time that such wondrous tales were told, the wretch was a fugitive, wandering in disguise through England, trembling in view of the scaffold, and with scarcely a shilling in his pocket. His career was sufficiently extraordinary to merit a brief notice here.

Avery was born in one of the western seaports of England, and from a boy was bred to the hardships and the degradation of a rude sailor’s life. He was educated only in profanity, intemperance, and vice. As he grew up to stout boyhood he became a bold smuggler, even running contraband goods on shore on the far-away coasts of Peru. The Spaniards were poorly provided with war-ships to guard from what they deemed illicit traffic their immense regions in the New World.

They therefore hired at Bristol a stout English ship, called the Duke. It was manned chiefly by English seamen. Captain Gibson was commander. Avery was first mate. The captain was a gambler, fond of his cups, and he often lingered many days in foreign ports, spending his time in haunts of dissipation.