The Real Captain Kidd: A Vindication

by Cornelius Neale Dalton

This was a prize of no great value, but such as it was he and his men were no doubt glad enough to lay hands on it. For they must by this time have been running short of money, and it was the first capture they had made. Moreover, their own ship being very leaky, they were glad to keep it in company.

Shortly afterwards, on the fifth of February, 1698, they came across a very different ship, the Quedagh Merchant, an extremely valuable prize. Sailing under French colours, as Kidd frankly admits “with a design to decoy,” he met, to quote his own words, “with a Bengal merchantman belonging to Surratt of the burden of four or five hundred tons, and he commanded the master on board. And a Frenchman, an inhabitant of Surratt, and belonging to the French factory there, came on board as master; and when he came on board the narrator caused the English colours to be hoisted and the said master was surprised and said, ‘You are English,’ and asking which was the captain. Whom when he saw, he said, ‘Here is a good prize,’ and delivered him the French pass.”

There is no reason to believe that this is not a perfectly correct account of the taking of the ship; but for the capture of which it is improbable that any complaint against Kidd would ever have been made by the East India Company. Kidd’s own account of the capture is corroborated even by the King’s evidence, Bradenham, who states that Kidd chased the ship under French colours, and that when he came up with her he commanded the master on board. “And there came,” he says, “an old Frenchman in the boat; and after he had been aboard awhile” (mark the subtlety of the word “awhile.” Who would have conceived that it meant five or six days?), “he told Captain Kidd that he was not the captain but the gunner, and Kidd sent for the captain, whose name was Wright.” Palmer, the other King’s evidence, says he was not on board when the ship was taken. At the trial Kidd went more fully into this incident than in his narrative. “My lord,” he said, “this Frenchman was aboard for five or six days before I understood there was any Englishman aboard. ‘Well?’ said I. ‘What are you?—an Englishman?’ ‘I am, master.’ ‘What have you to show for it?’ ‘Nothing.’”

Fortunately the French passes given to Kidd on the taking of both prizes were carefully preserved by him. He sent them to the Earl of Bellamont on his first arrival in American waters, and Bellamont forwarded them to the Admiralty. They were included amongst the papers relating to Kidd, delivered in at the clerk’s table of the House of Commons by the chairman of the committee appointed to sort the papers received from Bellamont and report thereon. Verbatim copies of them are to be found in the Journals of the House of Commons (Vol. 18, page 21), and are printed in Appendix C of this work. They constitute the most important documentary evidence that could have been forthcoming at Kidd’s trial; but although the Admiralty officials had them in their possession, and the House of Commons had directed that Kidd should have access to them, and although Kidd pleaded hard for a postponement of his trial in order that they might be produced, not only were they not produced, but the jury and judge were led to suppose that they existed only in Kidd’s imagination.

The belated suggestion made by the Englishman Wright that he was the master of the ship, coupled with an offer on the part of the Armenians to redeem the prize for twenty thousand rupees, a wholly inadequate sum,[5] seems to have raised some doubt in Kidd’s cautious Scotch mind as to the expediency of carrying off the ship to America in accordance with his sailing orders. He called his crew on deck and consulted them as to the course they should take. They voted not to accept the proffered ransom but to take her to Madagascar, which he decided to do, Madagascar lying in the direct route for America. His sailing orders[6] from Bellamont as to the course he should take with any prizes were explicit. They were: “You are to sail directly to Boston or New England, there to deliver to me the whole of the prizes, treasure, merchandise, and other things you shall have taken by virtue of the powers and authorities granted you.” The only contingency in which he might depart from them was, “if you shall fall in with any English ship bound for England having good convoy, you are in such case to keep them company and bring all your prizes to London.” It is difficult to see how, in the face of these orders, he could have done otherwise than take his two prizes to Madagascar.

As a matter of fact, he set sail at once with both; and according to his narrative “sailing thither the Galley was so leaky that they feared she would have sunk every hour; and it required eight men every two glasses to keep her free; and” (he) “was forced to woold her round with cables to keep her together, and with much ado carried her into the port of St. Marie’s, where they arrived the first day of April, 1698.”

On her way to Madagascar the Adventure Galley unfortunately seems to have fallen in with a Portuguese ship. According to the deposition[7] of William Jinkins, a London lad, one of the boys who had remained faithful to Kidd, “she also in her passage to St. Marie’s aforesaid took a Bark or Ship, navigated with Portuguese. She came from Bengall and was bound to Goa, and had on board, Bengalls, Muslins, Calicoes, and other things, which the Galley’s Company began to plunder and bring on board the Galley: but seeing several Ships coming towards them the said Galley with the other two prizes she had taken, came to sail, and left the said last Prize at a place between Brin John and Angingo, so called from being an English and Dutch factory; and left on board the same all the company belonging thereto, except the Master Merchant and seven men more that had come on board the Galley, when she first took the said Ship.” This deposition made two years before Kidd’s trial was confirmed in substance by two other lads, Barlicorn and Lumley. At the trial, Bradenham, the King’s evidence, told the story thus: “We met with a Portuguese ship off the coast of Malabar and he” (i. e., Kidd) “took her and he took out of her some opium, some East India goods, some plunder and sixty or seventy bags of rice.” Asked by Kidd whether he had seen them brought on board, Bradenham evaded the question by saying: “I am answering the bench.” In reply to a further question by the Solicitor General, “Were there any other goods,” he replied: “Yes, there was bees’ wax and thirty jars of butter.”

This is the only vessel with respect to which there is any good ground for suspecting that Kidd’s proceedings were irregular. His omission to make any reference to this ship in his narrative is significant; and points to the conclusion that he felt some difficulty in justifying what had been done. It is not improbable that he was forced by stress of circumstances to acquiesce in what was undoubtedly an act of piracy on the part of his crew, though it may have been regarded by them as a very justifiable reprisal for the damage and loss of life which the Galley had sustained by the recent unprovoked attack of the Portuguese man-of-war. That Kidd was placed by their action in this case in great difficulty is obvious. In their then temper, it is unlikely that if he had had time to reason with them, he could have induced them to return to the Portuguese the goods they had wrongfully brought on board the Galley. As it was, the sudden appearance of several other ships bearing down on them left him no alternative, but either to make off at once, or to hand over the wrongdoers to be dealt with by their enemies, who might in the meanwhile themselves make off with his two lawful prizes. Kidd’s paramount object during his voyage seems to have been to do his best for his employers, and he may well have thought that it was not to their interest that he should await the arrival of the approaching ships.