The Real Captain Kidd: A Vindication

by Cornelius Neale Dalton

“I shall tell you how it happened according to the best of my knowledge. The commander fortuned to come up with this Captain Hoar’s ship, and some were for taking her, and some not. And afterwards there was a little sort of a mutiny and some were in arms, the greater part. And they said they would take the ship. And the commander was not for it; and so they resolved to go away in a boat and take her. Captain Kidd said: ‘If you desert my ship, you shall never come aboard again, and I will force you into Bombay, and I will carry you before some of the council there.’ Insomuch that my commander stilled them, and they remained on board.”

It is easy to understand that although for the nonce the mutiny was quelled, it left bad blood behind between Kidd and Moore, the spokesman of the mutineers. About a fortnight afterwards another altercation arose between them, which ended in Kidd’s knocking Moore down with a bucket. According to Parrott, it arose in this way: “Moore said, ‘Captain, I could have put you in the way to have taken the ship, and have never been the worse for it.’ He says, ‘Would you have me take this ship? I cannot answer it. They are our friends!’ And my commander was in a passion, and with that I went off the deck. I understand that afterwards the blow was given, but how I cannot tell.”

From the evidence given by the cook and a seaman named Barlicorn, who remained on deck, it appears that Moore upbraided Kidd and said, “You have brought us to ruin, and we are desolate;” and that Kidd said, “Have I brought you to ruin? I have not done an ill thing to ruin you. You are a saucy fellow to say those words.” And then he took up the bucket and gave him a blow with it.

The version given by Palmer, the King’s evidence, was this: “Captain Kidd came and walked upon the deck, and walks by this Moore. And when he came to him he says, ‘Which way could you have put me in a way to take this ship and been clear?’ ‘Sir,’ says Moore, ‘I never spoke such a word nor ever thought such a thing.’ Upon which Captain Kidd called him ‘a lousie dog.’ And says William Moore, ‘If I am a lousie dog, you have made me so. You have brought me to ruin and many more.’ Upon his saying this, says Captain Kidd, ‘Have I ruined you, you dog?’ and took the bucket and struck him on the right side of his head, of which he died the next day. Repeating the words two or three times, he took a turn or two on the deck and then struck him.”

Kidd admitted at the trial that he had given the blow; but pleaded that he had all the provocation in the world given him; that he had no design to kill Moore and no malice or spleen against him. It was not done designedly but in his passion, for which he was heartily sorry.

It is not certain that Moore died of the blow, for one witness deposed that Bradenham, the surgeon, who subsequently deserted Kidd at Madagascar to join the pirate Culliford, said at the time, “This blow was not the cause of his death,” and that Moore had been on the sick list for some time before. It is only fair to say, however, that Bradenham denied this.

Whether or not Moore died from the blow, it is clear that he was the spokesman of the mutineers on the two occasions on which dispute arose between Kidd and his crew as to the plundering of the Dutch ship, that he upbraided Kidd for his not allowing his men to commit a gross act of piracy, and that his death had the effect of quieting the mutineers for a while.

Coming next to the two cases in which Kidd did take prizes in the course of this voyage, according to his own illiterate but intelligible narrative, he met in November, 1697, “A Moore’s ship of about 200 tons, coming from Surratt, bound for the coast of Malabar, loaded with two horses, sugar, and cotton in trade there, having about 40 Moors on board, with a Dutch pilot, boatswain and gunner, which said ship the narrator hailed and commanded” [? The Master] “on board. And with him came eight or nine of the Moors and the three Dutchmen who declared it was a Moor’s ship and” (were) “demanded their pass from Surrat, which they showed and the same was a French pass which he believes was shown by mistake. For the pilot swore sacramentally she was a prize and staid on board the Galley and would not return on board the Moor’s ship, but went in the Galley to the port of St. Marie’s.”[4]

This statement is corroborated by such of his crew as returned with him to America, from whose depositions it further appears that all the Christians ultimately remained in the Galley and “took up arms there,” that the Moors had the long boat given them to go on shore, which was two leagues distant; and that Captain Kidd and his men sold the cotton and horses to the natives of the country for money and gold, but kept the ship itself with them and carried her to Madagascar, the Galley being very leaky. The King’s evidence against Kidd was practically to the same effect.