Kidd wanted to let the ship go, but his angry crew insisted on keeping their prize and its plunder. While the ship was flying French colors, it turned out it was captained by an Englishman and merely operating under a right of safe passage from the French. He eventually captured the Quedagh Merchant, an Armenian vessel carrying a wealth of cloth, gold, silver, and spices. Soon, Kidd had to bend to his crew’s pressure to avoid a revolt, and he made several attacks on neutral shipping. Kidd was unconcerned about the consequences of this action, claiming his prominent friends in England would help him avoid trouble. One of these disagreements devolved into violence, with Kidd murdering a gunner by throwing a bucket at his head. Kidd was unable to locate any pirates or French ships, and argued regularly with the crew, who wanted him to turn pirate and seize neutral vessels. It was nearly a year into the voyage, and they had suffered hardships without any prizes to show for it. He also discovered that Adventure Galley had sprung a number of leaks, making it unseaworthy until it was patched up.īy the time Kidd reached the Red Sea, most of his crew were close to mutiny. While stopped in the Comoros islands, a cholera outbreak killed a third of his crew. He then set sail again for the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, but again encountered disaster. Most of his crew were impressed into service for the navy in revenge, so Kidd sailed to New York to hire a new crew - most of whom were pirates or hardened criminals. Misfortune struck early in his journey: he failed to fire his guns in salute of a naval ship, which took offense and stopped him. Kidd crewed his ship with men he handpicked for their loyalty and skill, and he had the backing of investors who intended on splitting shares of captured loot. His mission was to sail around Africa to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, where he was to hunt down pirates that were harassing East India Company ships, and attack French shipping. In 1695, Captain Kidd sailed the Adventure Galley down the Thames River out of London. Later, Kidd became a respected citizen and ship owner of New York City, from which he sometimes sailed to fight off enemy privateers. In 1690, his ship was stolen by Robert Culliford, a mutineer who later turned pirate. From here, he operated as an English privateer, defending the colony from French attacks. He sailed the ship, now renamed the Blessed William, to the English island of Nevis. When war broke out between the two nations in 1689, the Englishmen led a mutiny, and made William Kidd the captain. Kidd’s early career saw him serving as part of a joint English-French crew aboard the Sainte Rose, a French privateering vessel in the Caribbean. Captain Kidd’s tale serves as a warning of how easily one could cross the thin line between privateering and piracy. His final voyage, for which he was accused of piracy, was a largely unsuccessful venture full of bad luck. William Kidd spent most of his life as a privateer and pirate hunter.
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