Cornelius Neale Dalton

“ 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; [83] 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 is to be feared that such views of the value of King’s evidence were by no means rare in those days. When questioned by the Judge, why, if he thought the Quedagh Merchant was a lawful prize, he did not have her condemned, Kidd’s simple answer was that his men would not allow him to do so. As a matter of fact he was on his way to the nearest Court of Admiralty competent to condemn her, when his men mutinied. “My lord,” he said, “there were ninety-five men that deserted my ship and took away what they pleased. We could not stand in defence of anything.” ”

“ Unfortunately Madagascar was one of the last places in the world in which Kidd was likely to find the men required to bring his ship home. The majority of such English-speaking men as were there were by no means desirous of bringing themselves within the grasp of the law. In the course of the next five months, to quote his own words, “he picked up here a man and there a man,” and “some passengers presented that were bound for these parts,” i. e., America. At last, still under-manned, he started on his homeward voyage, and reached Anguilla in the West Indies in April, 1699. ”

“ She has clung most unfairly and pertinaciously for more than two centuries to poor Kidd, who in common with most men of his calling, had no desire whatever to obtrude himself on the public notice. This worthy, honest hearted, steadfast, much enduring sailor, a typical sea captain of his day, seems really to have done his best to serve his country and his employers according to his lights, in very difficult circumstances. ”

“ Generations had yet to pass before any doubt as to its wisdom began to dawn in the minds of Englishmen. Had Bellamont’s instructions from his royal patron been confined to its furtherance, it would have been well for poor Kidd, and the reputations of Bellamont and sundry great personages in England. But they had, as has been seen, extended to the suppression of the alleged growth of piracy in New England. As a matter of fact, it may well be doubted whether piracy had, as alleged, been for several years on the increase in that part of the world. In the West Indies it had greatly diminished. ”

“ Such piracy as still lingered on amongst the English speaking race was for the most part limited to the eastern seas and consisted mainly in depredations on the shipping of Mussulmans, Armenians, and the natives of India, collectively termed by seamen Moors. Without in any way extenuating the practice of plundering these people, it is only right that we should bear in mind, in considering the case of Kidd and his crew, the belief then widely prevalent amongst Europeans that there was little if any impropriety or disgrace attaching to the ill-treatment and robbery of black men by white. ”

“ Twelve seamen, most [148] of whom had remained faithful to their commander, were now imprisoned with him, awaiting their trial for piracy. We shall never know how many of these were approached by the prosecution. What we do know is, that not one of them was induced to become King’s evidence. If Kidd had been guilty of the crimes of which he was accused, this in itself would have been a remarkable circumstance: for some of these poor men might have been expected to reconcile their consciences to the saving of their own lives by giving evidence against him. ”

“ Kidd seems to have been born in Scotland and to have spent the greater part of [6] his life in the American Colonies, neither of which circumstances was likely to stand him in good stead, either with the great men who employed him or with the London juries, by whom he was found guilty of murder and piracy. It is not alleged by his detractors that he had not borne an excellent character, until he was sent on his wild-goose chase after pirates, nor is there any reason to believe that he had any taste himself for piracy. ”

“ The Company must have taken the keenest interest in the measures designed for the repression of this piracy. With their practical knowledge of the difficulties to be encountered, it is unlikely that they at any time regarded the adventurers’ project as a very promising one. When they heard of the failure of the Admiralty to protect Kidd’s carefully selected crew from the press gang, and realised that the bulk of the ship’s company would have to be got from New York, it is impossible that they can have entertained any illusions as to the probability of its success. ”

“ For his pains, after giving himself into custody in reliance on the word and honour of his chief employer, a Whig nobleman, he was ignominiously executed and hung in chains, after nearly two years’ close incarceration, and has ever since been held up to execration as the arch pirate, who left behind him untold hoards of treasure taken from the murdered crews of peaceable merchantmen, and buried God knows where, on the innumerable coasts and keys of the West Indies, where they are popularly supposed to await discovery to this day. ”

“ At the time of the trial, impeachments were pending in Parliament against Orford, the late First Lord of the Admiralty, and Somers, for their participation in Kidd’s enterprise. No efforts had been spared by their political opponents to induce Kidd to make damaging disclosures against them. Thus far they had been unsuccessful. Kidd had remained faithful to his employers. But dead men tell no tales; and neither Orford nor Somers could have felt any security against untoward disclosures on his part so long as he remained alive. ”

“ The coast trade was carried on mainly in vessels manned by Asiatics with, in some cases, two or three Europeans on board. The wily Indian had by this time learned the advantage of carrying Europeans of more than one nationality in each ship, so that if caught by a ship carrying French colours, he might produce a Frenchman as the owner, and if caught by an English ship an Englishman. It was Kidd’s plain duty to take as prizes any French vessels he came across, and with that end in view to examine carefully every ship which he had reason to suspect was French. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that he and his men were placed at a great disadvantage by being all included in the same indictment for piracy, and that consequently not one of them could be called and examined as a witness for the defence. Kidd seems to have felt this keenly. On being told by the Junior Counsel for the prosecution, “Now, if you will ask this witness any question, you may,” he replied, “What signifies it to ask him any question? [176] We have no witnesses, and what we say signifies nothing.” ”

“ The only ground for suggesting that “he massacred peasantry” is the one case, when his cooper’s throat having been cut by the natives, he retaliated by ordering one native to be shot. This was the only time when it was ever alleged in his own day that he had burnt houses: and we have it on the authority of Palmer, the King’s evidence against him, that on this occasion Kidd had given express orders to his men to spare the houses that had white flags hoisted on them, because their inmates had helped to water his ship. ”

“ If there be a sudden falling out and fighting and one is killed in heat of blood, then the law calls it manslaughter, but in such a case as this, that happens on slight words, the prisoner calls the deceased a ‘lousie dog,’ and the deceased says, ‘If I be so, you have made me so,’ can this be a reasonable cause to kill him? and if you believe them not to be a reasonable cause of provocation I cannot see what distinction can be made, but that the prisoner is guilty of murder. ”

“ In considering his doings and those of his men here, and the construction placed on them first by the East India Company, and afterwards by the prosecution at his trial, several things must be borne in mind. At that time there were in India not only English, but Portuguese and French factories. Little love was lost between them, and there was open war between England and France. English and American pirates had been for some time past preying on the coast trade, and the Adventure Galley [51] might very reasonably be mistaken for a pirate by any ship which she chased. ”

“ Few, if any, of such men have less deserved their fate than Captain Kidd, one of the unluckiest men that ever lived, who left this world on Friday the 23d of May, 1701, after woeful experiences at sea of the doings of an unruly crew, and on shore of the schemings of unscrupulous politicians and [4] lawyers at Boston, Newgate, the Old Bailey, and the Execution Dock at Wapping.
To most of those who woo her, reputation is a coy and fickle mistress. ”

“ That there were great men in the business, far greater men than Bellamont, is indisputable. That great men in those days were wont to use their great power more arbitrarily than they dare to do now-a-days is also indisputable. ”

“ The disastrous suggestion that Kidd should be sent out in command of a ship, provided at the expense of persons of consideration, and manned by a scratch crew of undisciplined men, emanated from Livingstone, and was assented to by the King as a pis-aller. At the worst the King could not lose a farthing by it. If it succeeded, he would not only gain his object, but pocket a substantial share of the plunder. The adventurers might pocket more, but they would run some risk of parting with their money and getting no return for it. ”

“ To quote but one passage from Macaulay’s indefensible and inexcusable travesty, “With the rapacity he had the cruelty of his odious calling. He burnt houses: he massacred peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked cutlasses, in order to obtain information about their concealed hoards. One of his crew, whom he had called a dog, was provoked into exclaiming in an agony of remorse, ‘Yes, I am a dog: but it is you that have made me so.’ Kidd in a fury struck the man dead.” ”

“ He is very fit to be made an evidence of the King. Perhaps there can be no other in this case than such who are in his circumstances.”
In other words, those of the crew who had faithfully stood by their captain, and helped [88] him to bring his prize home to America in the interests of their employers, one of whom was the King himself, could not be relied on as witnesses. The only witnesses who could be trusted to swear through thick and thin against Kidd, were two men who by their own admission had deserted their colours and joined Culliford in open piracy against the ships of all nations. ”

“ The pertinacious Livingstone, as might have been expected, was not to be staved off in this fashion; and before long he hit upon a new project. “He did propose to the Earl, that if persons of consideration might be induced to join in the expense of buying and fitting out a proper ship, he had such an opinion of Kidd’s capacity and good meaning, and so great a desire that some stop might be put to these practices that he would be one of the undertakers” (incurring little risk so long as he stood in with [28] persons of sufficient consideration) ”

“ In the grant [1] made to the adventurers by the King of the pirates’ goods and wares to be taken by Kidd, it was expressly stated that his ship, the Adventure Galley, had been, with the King’s knowledge and royal encouragement, fitted out to sea at the great and sole charge of the Earl of Bellamont and Sir Edmund Harrison, and four obscure personages, Samuel Newton, John Rowley, George Watson, and Thomas Reynolds, not one of whom had advanced a penny of their own upon it ”

“ In those days colonial governorships were less sought after than they are now; and it was hopeless to expect any man of mark at home to accept one.
From an “Account of the proceedings in relation to Captain Kidd in two letters from a Person of Quality to a kinsman of the Earl of Bellamont,” published in 1701, the year of Kidd’s death, with the avowed object of vindicating the memory of Bellamont, who was then dead, it appears that New York had at that time, rightly or wrongly, earned a bad name in England. ”

“ Now to make the killing of a man to be murder, there must be malice prepense either express or implied. The law implies [164] malice, when one man without any reasonable cause or provocation kills another. You have had this cause opened to you. What mutiny or discourse might be a fortnight or month before will not be any reason for so long continuance of passion.” (Had the Lord Chief Baron ever been in command himself of a mutinous crew, he might have thought otherwise.) “But what did arise at the time, the witnesses tell you.” ”

“ The lords justices had sent instructions to the governors of all the English colonies in America “to apprehend him [92] and his accomplices, whenever he or they should arrive in any of the said plantations,” and “to secure his ship and all the effects therein, it being their Excellencies’ intention that right be done to those who have been injured and robbed by the said Kidd, and that he and his associates be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.” ”

“ The prevailing popular opinion seems to have been that the four great ministers had sent Kidd out in the Adventure Galley to commit acts of piracy on their behalf; and that they had naturally selected for this purpose a past-master in the art of piracy. Some would have it that Somers, to prevent unpleasant disclosures, had already set the great seal to his pardon. ”

“ The ship and goods as you have heard, are said by the witnesses” (i. e., by the King’s evidence) “to be the goods of Armenians and other people that are in amity with the King: and Captain [181] Kidd would have them to be the goods of Frenchmen, or at least that the ship was sailed under French passes. Now if it were as Captain Kidd says, it was a lawful prize and liable to confiscation: but if they were goods of persons in amity with the King, and the ship was not navigated under French passes, it is very plain it was a piratical seizing of them.” ”

“ Say, at the Marshalsea. This witness, on being told by a friend that Bradenham had been Kidd’s surgeon, had observed: “There is a mighty noise about Captain Kidd,” on which Bradenham admitted that he had been with Kidd at Madagascar, but expressed his opinion that Kidd “had done nothing but what he could answer for, and nothing that could do him any hurt.” The truthfulness of this evidence was not questioned by the prosecution: but it was swept aside contemptuously by the Lord Chief Baron. “Mr. Bradenham,” he said, “was with him there. There is no doubt of that. ”