The paper carried an authority that the sea did not always acknowledge. William Kidd could unfold it before an officer, point to the seal, and invoke the eminent personages who had patronized his departure; yet when the wind died down and the crew demanded to know where the promised profits lay, he was obliged to find other answers.
He had been commissioned to hunt down pirates. A few years later, in London, he would stand trial for having become one.
Between those two stations lay a ship, prizes taken, mutinous acts, a man killed in a quarrel, and enough expected gold that everyone wished first for a share in the venture, and later for a prudent distance from its denouement.
A Recommended Enterprise
The scheme appeared brilliant. Pirates were preying upon commerce; a vessel would be fitted out to hunt them down, seize their goods, and apply a portion of these spoils to recompense those who had financed the pursuit. The security of the sea lanes and the gain of the underwriters would march hand in hand. In the chambers where the expedition was contrived, this alliance of public interest and private profit bore every mark of an advantageous economy.
Kidd understood navigation and the waters into which he was to be dispatched. The enterprise received the backing of powerful figures, among whom were men close to the Crown. Commissions authorized him to act against pirates and certain declared enemies, notably the French; they did not permit him to plunder at will whatever vessel carried a cargo capable of making the voyage more lucrative.
The Adventure Galley was armed and fitted. The signatures remained ashore; the troubles went to sea.
The Men Demand Their Share
The vessel crossed the Atlantic, completed her complement of hands, and reached the Eastern seas. Aboard, the prospect of prize-money sustained the patience of men who had not signed articles merely to admire foreign coasts. The expenditures, the hardships, and the squandered opportunities lent the question of profit an urgency that contracts need not experience to foresee.
A young seaman named Samuel overhears the older hands debating a vessel they had just permitted to sail away. One swears she carried enough freight to repay all their miseries; another asks what use a commission may be if it compels them to watch fortune pass by. Samuel lacks the experience to distinguish a forecastle grumble from the inception of a mutiny. He knows only that the men lower their voices when the captain appears.
Kidd maintains his authority. Yet he cannot ignore that every decision must henceforth satisfy two requirements that no longer easily coincide: to preserve an outward semblance of legality, and to yield some return to those who had sailed under his command.
“She is no lawful prize,” he says.
“Then tell us when we shall see one,” a man retorts.
Samuel gazes at the sea. The departing vessel perhaps never knew how narrowly her fate had hung in the balance of that dispute.
William Moore
The tension did not long remain confined to words. An altercation arose between Kidd and William Moore, one of the ship’s company. The captain struck him upon the head with an iron-hooped bucket; Moore died on the morrow. This homicide was to form a distinct indictment at his trial.
His name must not be lost amidst manifests and maritime controversies. One may dispute the lawful nature of prizes, the scope of commissions, and the political designs of those who prosecuted Kidd; one cannot dissolve the death of a man into a mere question of who owned a ship.
Samuel watches the body carried away. The hands who had stormed the day before find fewer words now. Each man measures the captain’s wrath anew, and this altered reckoning makes obedience no more secure: an authority that has established itself through terror may command silence without ever recovering trust.
The voyage continues. The sea grants no day of pause to men who have just slain one of their own.
The Merchantman Taken
The capture of the Quedagh Merchant lent the affair a graver significance. The vessel carried a considerable cargo; her owners were Armenians, while her command and papers involved other allegiances still. Kidd cited French passes to maintain that he had made a lawful prize. The reality of commerce offered a complexity far less accommodating than the categories into which a commander might wish to sort his encounters.
The capture, the disposal of the merchandise, and the division of the spoils brought no end to their distress. Men deserted Kidd; the expedition unraveled. He sailed back toward North America, hoping to justify his conduct to those whose patronage he had received.
In Boston, he was arrested. The names that had lent credit to his departure now belonged to men compelled to explain what they had authorized, what they had known, and what they could not be held responsible for having failed to foresee.
Samuel goes ashore elsewhere. He possesses a few coins, threadbare clothes, and a question that no division of prize-money can resolve: at what precise moment had he sailed aboard a pirate ship? The day of a capture, the day of a refusal, or the day of Moore’s murder? He would have wished for a clear date, which might divide his own conduct with equal neatness.
The Captain Before His Judges
Kidd was brought home to England. In May 1701, at the Old Bailey, the charges of murder and piracy were tried. The captain defended his actions, challenged the testimony against him, and invoked the commissions entrusted to his care. The court found him guilty. He was hanged in London on the twenty-third of May.
The affair enjoyed a posterity far more glittering than its inception: buried treasure, sea-charts, and the eternal hunt for hidden chests. The legendary pirate was destined to sail far longer than the mortal captain; he enjoyed this advantage over the real man, that no crew would ever again demand an accounting from him.
Samuel kept a scrap of paper bearing the articles of his engagement. He had folded it so often that the creases had worn away several lines. When a crimp offered him another voyage, he asked him to read aloud what he promised.
“Do you not trust me?”
The sailor set his finger upon the bottom of the page.
“I would only know who will remain to answer for it when we are far away.”
The agent thought the question needlessly suspicious. Samuel took back his paper. He had sailed once before under an enterprise whose profits had been most thoroughly explained before the anchor was weighed.