The warp and woof of "Wolfert Webber" is the still persistent legend that Kidd buried treasure near the Highlands of the lower Hudson, or that his ship, the Quedah Merchant, was fetched from San Domingo by his men after he left her and they sailed her into the Hudson and there scuttled the vessel, scattering ashore and dividing a vast amount of plunder, some of which was hidden nearby. Many years ago a pamphlet was published, purporting to be true, which was entitled, "An Account of Some of the Traditions and Experiments Respecting Captain Kidd's Piratical Vessel." In this it was soberly asserted that Kidd in the Quedah Merchant was chased into the North River by an English man-of-war, and finding himself cornered he and his crew took to the boats with what treasure they could carry, after setting fire to the ship, and fled up the Hudson, thence footing it through the wilderness to Boston.
The sunken ship was searched for from time to time, and the explorers were no doubt assisted by another pamphlet published early in the nineteenth century which proclaimed itself as:
"A Wonderful Mesmeric Revelation, giving an Account of the Discovery and Description of a Sunken Vessel, near Caldwell's Landing, supposed to be that of the Pirate Kidd; including an Account of his Character and Death, at a distance of nearly three hundred miles from the place."
This psychic information came from a woman by the name of Chester living in Lynn, Mass., who swore she had never heard of the sunken treasure ship until while in a trance she beheld its shattered timbers covered with sand, and "bars of massive gold, heaps of silver coin, and precious jewels including many large and brilliant diamonds. The jewels had been enclosed in shot bags of stout canvas. There were also gold watches, like duck's eggs in a pond of water, and the wonderfully preserved remains of a very beautiful woman, with a necklace of diamonds around her neck."
As Irving takes pains to indicate, the basis of the legend of the sunken pirate ship came not from Kidd but from another freebooter who flourished at the same time. Says Peechy Prauw, daring to hold converse with the old buccaneer in the tavern, "Kidd never did bury money up the Hudson, nor indeed in any of those parts, though many affirmed such to be the fact. It was Bradish and others of the buccaneers who had buried money; some said in Turtle Bay, others on Long Island, others in the neighborhood of Hell-gate."
This Bradish was caught by Governor Bellomont and sent to England where he was hanged at Execution Dock. He had begun his career of crime afloat as boatswain of a ship called the Adventure (not Kidd's vessel). While on a voyage from London to Borneo he helped other mutineers to take the vessel from her skipper and go a-cruising as gentlemen of fortune. They split up forty thousand dollars of specie found on board, snapped up a few merchantmen to fatten their dividends, and at length came to the American coast and touched at Long Island.
The Adventure ship was abandoned, and there is reason to think that she was taken possession of by the crew of the purchased sloop, who worked her around to New York and beached and sunk her after stripping her of fittings and gear. Bradish and his crew also cruised along the Sound for some time in their small craft, landing and buying supplies at several places, until nineteen of them were caught and taken to Boston. That there should have been some confusion of facts relating to Kidd and Bradish is not at all improbable.
Among the Dutch of New Amsterdam was to be found that world-wide superstition of the ghostly guardians of buried treasure, and Irving interpolates the distressful experience of Cobus Quackenbos "who dug for a whole night and met with incredible difficulty, for as fast as he threw one shovelful of earth out of the hole, two were thrown in by invisible hands. He succeeded so far, however, as to uncover an iron chest, when there was a terrible roaring, ramping, and raging of uncouth figures about the hole, and at length a shower of blows, dealt by invisible cudgels, fairly belabored him off of the forbidden ground. This Cobus Quackenbos had declared on his death bed, so that there could not be any doubt of it. He was a man that had devoted many years of his life to money-digging, and it was thought would have ultimately succeeded, had he not died recently of a brain fever in the almshouse."
A story built around the Kidd tradition but of a wholly different kind is that masterpiece of curious deductive analysis, "The Gold Bug," with its cryptogram and elaborate mystification. In making use of an historical character to serve the ends of fiction it is customary to make him move among the episodes of the story with some regard for the probabilities. For example, it would hardly do to have Napoleon win the Battle of Waterloo as the hero of a novel. What really happened and what the author imagines might have happened must be dovetailed with an eye to avoid contradicting the known facts. Like almost everyone else, however, Poe took the most reckless liberties with the career of poor Captain Kidd and his buried treasure and cared not a rap for historical evidence to the contrary. Although Stevenson is ready to admit that his "skeleton is conveyed from Poe," the author of "Treasure Island" is not wholly fair to himself. The tradition that secretive pirates were wont to knock a shipmate or two on the head as a feature of the program of burying treasure is as old as the hills. The purpose was either to get rid of the witnesses who had helped dig the hole, or to cause the spot to be properly haunted by ghosts as an additional precaution against the discovery of the hoard.
What Stevenson "conveyed" from Poe was the employment of a skeleton to indicate the bearings and location of the treasure, although, to be accurate, it was a skull that figured in "The Gold Bug." Otherwise, in the discovery of the remains of slain pirates, both were using a stock incident of buried treasure lore most generally fastened upon the unfortunate Captain Kidd.