The Real Captain Kidd: A Vindication

by Cornelius Neale Dalton

“Their wickedness was so great that after they had plundered and ransacked sufficiently, they went five miles off to one Edward Welche’s house, where his, the Narrator’s chest was lodged, and broke it open and took out ten ounces of gold, 40 pound of plate, 370 pieces of eight, the Narrator’s Journal, and a great many papers that belonged to him and the People of New York that fitted them out.”

“About the fifteenth of June, the Moca Frigate went away, being manned with about 130 men and forty guns bound out to take all nations. It was then that the Narrator was left only with 13 men, so that the Moors he had to pump and keep the Adventure Galley above water being carried away, she sank in the harbour, and the Narrator with the said thirteen men went on board the Adventure Prize.”

Let us try to put ourselves in Kidd’s place, when the bulk of his men went over to the enemy. Forcibly deprived of his command at the moment when he saw success within his grasp; deserted by nearly all his crew; plundered of the greater part of the spoil he was taking home to his employers; on board the sinking Adventure Galley; confined to his stifling cabin with its barricaded approaches. What course can it be suggested that he could have taken and have been held blameless by an English court? What course ought any man to have taken in his place who sought to do his duty by his owners?

It would have been a mercy to him and to his memory, if the mutineers had then and there made an end of him. But to have done this, they must have stormed his cabin, and they dared not try it. They knew his fighting record. They had been with him in his encounter with the Portuguese man-of-war. None knew better than they that he would sell his life dearly. Let us hope, too, that some few of his crew stood by him in this emergency, with “the forty loaded small arms, besides pistols.” But although the pirates and mutineers could not make an end of him, it was equally impossible for him to take the offensive against them. If neither party could attack, the situation could only be relieved by diplomacy. The ultimate solution has been handed down to us by the doubtful testimony of one or two of those who were there. We are left to conjecture the intermediate stages of the arrangement.

According to the evidence the Adventure Galley was brought into the port on the first of April, in company with its smaller prize. The Quedagh Merchant did not come in until some weeks afterwards. The Moca Frigate, as already stated, went away on the fifteenth of June, leaving Kidd and thirteen men behind. In the interval some kind of a compact seems to have been come to, by which Kidd undertook not to molest the pirates, and Culliford agreed to let Kidd keep the Quedagh Merchant and a certain quantity of the goods on board of her. It is difficult to see how Kidd in his then position could have made a better bargain than this for the great men who were employing him. Judging from the amount of specie and goods which he succeeded after all in bringing to America, he appears to have done very well indeed for them. Possibly the canny Scot, notwithstanding the theft of his chest, had more gold and valuables concealed in his impenetrable cabin than the deserters dreamed of. Possibly some of his late crew had consciences and were willing to let him off cheaply. Whatever the details of the arrangement may have been, it is unlikely that he could in any case have saved himself from the charge brought against him at his trial, on which the judge laid great stress, and which has clung to him ever since, that having been sent out to catch the pirates, and bring them home with him, he had on the first occasion on which he had met them, promised not to molest them, an offence which it was alleged at his trial that he had aggravated by drinking deeply from a tub of “bomboo” with their Captain Culliford.

The word “bomboo” has a fine piratical suggestiveness about it. It sounds as if it were some weird concoction of strong liquors, which carousing pirates in their unholy orgies were wont to consume by the bucketfull. As a matter of fact, it was a very innocent beverage made of water, limes, and sugar; and it was small blame to poor Kidd that on emerging from his beleaguered cabin in that hot climate, he was glad enough to take a long drink of it, when at length a truce had been arranged. According to the King’s evidence at his trial, he solemnly undertook over this draught of “bomboo” not to molest the pirates, and presumably they also undertook not to molest him. The alternative very possibly was his death from thirst in his stuffy cabin. Culliford’s men outnumbered his by ten to one. The only evidence besides his own that we have of this incident was that given at his trial by two of his crew, who had deserted him and gone over to the enemy. Kidd not unnaturally was very bitter against these two men,—Bradenham the surgeon and Palmer, one of his seamen—as appears from the following quotations from the verbatim report of his trial.

Kidd (to Bradenham). “Did you not come aboard my ship and rob the surgeon’s chest?”

Bradenham. “No, I did not.”

Kidd. “Did I not come to you when you went away and met you on the deck, and said, ‘Why do you take the chest away?’”

Bradenham. “No, I did not do it.”