I
Sometime in the autumn of the year 1695, Captain William Kidd, of New
York, arrived in the city of London. He came as master of a trading
sloop; he left in the following spring a commissioned officer of his
most gracious Majesty, King William III, on the quarter-deck of what
was really a man-of-war.
This was not the first time, however, that Captain Kidd had been in
the public service. Said to be the son of a Scottish minister, he
became first definitely noticeable in the province of New York, where,
sometime before 1695, the grateful council of New York had voted him
a gratuity of one hundred and fifty pounds for valuable efforts in
suppressing local disturbances, ensuing the revolution of 1688. Not
only that, but during England’s interminable argument with France,
he had locked shrouds with the Frenchmen off the West Indies, thus
acquiring the repute of a “mighty man” against them.
In fact, Captain Kidd when he thus stepped on to the docks of old
London was a substantial colonial, a householder and taxpayer of the
town of New York, where, we must suppose, his wife and daughter moved
in those delectable geometrical figures, the best circles.
The royal commission of 1696, though, was a novel one in the captain’s
experience.
It is important to notice the exact wording of this commission:
“William III. By the grace of God, king of England, Scotland,
France and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc. To our trusty
and well-beloved captain William Kidd, commander of the ship
Adventure-galley, or to any other the commander for the time being.
Whereas we are informed That captain Thomas Too, John Ireland,
captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze, or Mace, and other
our subjects, natives or inhabitants of New England, New York and
elsewhere in our plantations in America, have associated themselves
with divers other wicked and ill-disposed persons, and do, against
the law of nations, daily commit many and great piracies, robberies,
and depredations in the parts of America, and in other parts, to the
grave hindrance and discouragement of trade and navigation, and to
the danger and hurt of our loving subjects, our allies, and all others
navigating the seas upon their lawful occasions; Now know ye, That we
being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and, as far as in
us lies, to bring the said pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers to
justice, have thought fit, and do hereby give and grant unto you the
said William Kidd (to whom our commissioners for exercising the office
of our Lord High Admiral of England, have granted a commission as a
private man of war, bearing date the 11th day of December, 1695,) and
unto the commander of the said ship for the time being, and unto the
officers mariners and others, who shall be under your command, full
power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into your custody,
as well the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and
Captain William Maze or Mace, as all such pirates, free-booters and
sea-rovers, being our own subjects, or of any other nation associated
with them, which you shall meet upon the coast or seas of America,
or in any other seas or ports, with their ships and vessels, and
also such merchandizes, money, goods and wares, as shall be found on
board, or with them, in case they shall willingly yield themselves;
but if they will not submit without fighting, then you are by force
to compel them to yield. And we do also require you to bring, or
cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers as you
shall seize, to a legal trial; to the end that they may be proceeded
against according to law in such cases. And we do hereby charge and
command all our officers, ministers, and other our loving subjects
whatsoever, to be aiding and assisting you in the premises. And we do
hereby enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceeding in the
execution of the premises, and therein to set down the names of such
pirates and their officers and company, and the names of such ships
and vessels as you shall by virtue of these presents seize and take,
and the quantities of arms, ammunition, provision and loading of such
ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you can judge.... In
witness whereof we have caused the great seal of England to be affixed
to these presents. Given at our court at Kensington, the 26th. day of
January, 1695, and in the 7th. year of our reign.”
Of all of which the sum is that Commander Kidd, in his private
man-of-war, is to catch Tom Too and the rest of them wherever he could
find them, bring them to justice and render a careful account of their
ships and cargoes. The ostensible aim is to protect the American
colonies; actually it is to exterminate piracy wherever discovered.
English-speaking folk have been as much a part of the sea as the white
spume of the waves. Like their element, too, they have made for good
and ill. The by-product of England’s maritime effort was the sea-rover,
a creature often as skilled, unfearing and enterprising as his brother
who went up and down the highways of the ocean on more lawful occasions.
Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century piracy gave to the world that
villainous, but picturesque, aggregation of maritime felons which
has so much fascination for people who never grow too old to enjoy
vicarious adventure: Too, Ireland, Wake, Low, Davis, Lewis, England,
Blackbeard, Avery, Gow, Quelch and other bold quarter-deck--usually the
other fellow’s quarter-deck--strutters, including, notably, the subject
of our present observations.
These ungentlemen gleaned in three principal regions: Africa, the
East and West Indies, with an occasional flyer down Brazil way. Under
the black flag, we shall presently see something of all these places;
just now we are engaged with the East Indies. Coming and going, and
sometimes lingering, they bothered the “plantations” all the way from
Charleston to Boston, so that the total scope of piracy was sweeping
and widely embracing.
India was pouring out richly its products of field and loom, plantation
and cottage, and was drawing hungrily in from Arabia, Europe, Africa,
everywhere, the things nature or economic circumstance denied her.
The carriers of this mighty movement of materials were usually rather
insignificant craft called grabs, pinks, galiots, sloops and what-not;
affairs of one mast, a couple of men, a boy and about sixteen ounces
of cargo. These were coasters; a larger vessel plied to the Gulf of
Aden and the Red Sea under charter of Moors, Armenians and other swart
merchants.
Bumping these lesser fry out of the way, however, were the
comparatively impressive ships of the expanding European trading
companies--Dutch, Swedish, Austrian and so on--and preeminently the
English East India Company, destined to grow great enough eventually to
swallow India herself,--old John Company.
The English company--taking it as illustrative--lined the Indian coast
with its forts or factories, and built its own vessels, the noted
“Indiamen”, at its home docks at Deptford; fought its rivals, fought
the natives, carried on perpetual war under the banner of trade.
Protected to the point of complete monopoly by royal and parliamentary
charters, it became practically a State itself, with the power of
minting money, maintaining forts and armies, negotiating treaties,
declaring war or making peace, and authorized to send its ships out
beneath the royal ensign, commanded by captains every one of whom was
the king’s commissioned officer.
Although ships of many flags plied in the commerce of the East Indies,
if you were aboard a larger Moorish, Arabian or Armenian vessel, you
would often have heard the working of it directed by the bellowings of
a Devonian, a Londoner, or a burr-tongued Yorkshireman. And if from
the lookout there came the cry of “Pirate!” you could be just as sure
that that swiftly oncoming menace was driven by a man who called in
English to a crew which needed no interpreter.
This varied coast and trans-oceanic sea traffic was almost without
police protection. At their settlement up Calicut way, the Portuguese
had a few ineffective tubs they called a navy. In India itself the
one-time vigorous rule of the Moguls was collapsing and anarchy was
slipping from beneath the lid. Yet even as government caved in,
commerce hardily struggled on, in spite of the fact that its voyages
began in fear and ended by good fortune, and its ships too often became
fat, unshepherded sheep for lean and unlawful shearers.
And the shearers--Tom Too _et al._--came; came in hordes; came from
anywhere and everywhere, chiefly from across the Atlantic, New York,
New England and their historic nest, the West Indies.
The lay of the land as well as of the water made against the merchant
and for the brigand. Once in the neighborhood, a thieving craft could
steal up a river and wait its opportunity, comfortably provided with
wood and water. Madagascar was the despair of the English Admiralty
and the bitter wail of merchants great and small. It was the prime way
station for pirates on their way to and from the Indies; it was a land
without law, governed by warring native chieftains, and with the Comoro
Islands close by, made one of the finest strategic bases imaginable for
piratical operations. There the pirates swarmed, careened their ships,
salted their provisions, established regular colonies, and exchanged
from one ship to another, leaving or signing-up quite after the manner
of legitimate ports. It was the West Indies of the Indian Ocean.
To strike piracy down in Madagascar and India was to weaken its blow
both at the American colonies and the Spanish Main. To India Kidd knew
he must resort to enforce the terms of his commission.
Richard Coote, the Irish earl Bellamont and a gentleman to whom the
historian Macaulay gives a very good character, was at that time
governor of the Province of New York. According to some accounts, he
was in London when Kidd arrived there in the autumn of 1695 and was
introduced to the sailor by a Colonel Livingston, one of New York’s
prominent citizens, then in England. Macaulay, however, says that
Bellamont was already in America when the acuteness of the problem
of piracy stirred him to action, and that there he was recommended
to William Kidd as a man competent on the sea and entirely familiar
with the practices of pirates. Bellamont’s appeals to the home
government for action being fruitless, he and Kidd evolved the notion
of outfitting a private man-of-war, Kidd to command, and sending it
forth to meet the situation in whatever stronghold piracy might then be
found. The venture would doubtless be profitable as well as patriotic.
Bellamont promoted the scheme with eloquent letters to England and was
so persuasive that statesmen like Shrewsbury and Romney, Orford, First
Lord of the Admiralty, and John Somers between them subscribed several
thousand pounds, and obtained the commission, under the Great Seal,
which we have seen created Kidd in effect the sheriff of the far-off
Orient seas.
With these funds a galley--not, however, the kind formerly propelled
by oars, but a sailing ship--called the _Adventure_ was purchased.
Her measurement was two hundred and seventy tons. You can see from
that what an imposing ship she must have been, especially when, in
imagination, placed beside a modern transatlantic liner, for which
she might possibly be big enough for a lifeboat. In those times the
last thought of a sailor seems to have been for the size of his ship.
Perhaps he was afraid a large ship would break in two. At any rate, he
threw himself in the most matter-of-fact way at the highest waves in
the world with what we would consider merely exaggerated rowboats.
Kidd bristled the _Adventure_ with thirty cannon. They understood the
economy of space in those days, you may well imagine. Kidd must have
been a natural-born packer. Not only thirty guns did he get on board,
not only provisions for months, with small arms and ammunition as well,
but when he left New York on the first run of the cruise proper, he was
bedding and boarding some one hundred and sixty men! Whatever else he
may have been, the captain was a man who knew his business as a tailor
knows his needle.
In order that he might be a stone for two birds, another commission was
laid upon Kidd to take and condemn French ships, as by law made and
provided, France and England being at war as usual. The thought was
that any leisure hour that could be spared from taking pirates might
be usefully employed in catching Frenchmen. The British Admiralty was
always a great hand at putting people to work.
Of course, if he got a Frenchman, he was not entitled to the captive’s
goods, wares and merchandise. Enemy ships were to be brought into the
nearest British port and by the proper authorities condemned. He had a
blank check signed only on the sea-robbers’ banks.
These things arranged, the trusty and well-beloved William Kidd, twice
commissioned, competed with the active press-gangs for eighty good and
faithful seamen among the taverns of Wapping and the wet alleys of
Blackwall.