![]() ![]() The ship, which Kidd said was a legitimate prize because it was under French control, had an English captain and a cargo owned by Indians. In 1698, he took his greatest prize, the Quedah Merchant, a Moorish trading vessel from Armenia laden with gold, jewels, silver, silks, spices and guns. The Crown was supposed to get 10 percent of privateers’ pickings, but Kidd was accused of keeping most of the loot. Late in 1696, he attacked a British East India Company convoy and was branded a pirate. He left London in 1695 in the Adventure Galley, a 284-tonner with a crew of 150 and 34 cannon. His problems started when he took a government-backed private commission to clear the Indian Ocean of piracy. “The skull and crossbones may not have fluttered over ships in the Thames, but many of the pirates themselves were here at one time or another,” said Wareham, alluding to the fact that many seamen and women went crooked and turned pirate.Īn able and brave sea captain by all accounts, Kidd started his career in the Caribbean where he fought successful actions against the French. It ultimately asks whether Kidd was framed to save the reputation of the mighty East India Company and the Crown. Tom Wareham, curator of maritime history at the Museum of London in Docklands where the exhibition is being held, says the show explores how the line between privateering and piracy was often blurred. ![]() He just needed to get it home.A privateer was a mercenary licensed by the King and the government to hunt merchant ships flying the colors of England’s enemies - then France and Spain. He still had gold, bales, sugar and iron. Culliford then sunk the floundering Rouparelle, careened his own ship for a few more days, and headed to the island of Johanna.įor the next four months, Kidd was left fiercely guarding the Quedagh Merchant and Adventure Galley, with only a handful of crew waiting for the literal and actual winds to shift in his favour. That they were William Kidd’s men was even better. He had also lost a large portion of his crew to disease so he readily accepted the new arrivals. It turned out Culliford was very pleased to welcome this fortuitous turn of events. Then, leaving Kidd behind on the beach, the mutineers took off in search of Culliford in the Malagasy village. The vote came back 100 to 15 to mutiny against Kidd and keep the Quedagh Merchant and Rouparelle ’s loot for themselves.įrustrated, Kidd managed to persuade the mutineers to at least let him retain the share for himself and the investors. Then Kidd summoned his men: now they could take on Culliford, he announced.Ī deafening silence ensued. A week later, the Quedagh Merchant arrived. Even worse, its occupants not loyal to Kidd quickly disappeared into the local Malagasy village. It had not fared well on the voyage and looked dreadful. Kidd decided the only option was to wait for his two prize ships to arrive. The Adventure Galley was falling to pieces around him and its occupants exhausted and sick. The remnants of his crew, dispersed across Adventure Galley and the nowhere-to-be-seen Rouparelle and Quedagh Merchant, were in no shape to take on Robert Culliford. Unfortunately, it was a disaster for William Kidd to meet Robert Culliford, the first genuine pirate Kidd had seen the entire voyage, anchored right in front of him in the Sainte Marie’s harbour. The passengers and crew of Great Mohammed had suffered terribly at Chivers and Culliford’s hands the men viciously tortured and the women brutally raped. This haul was four times the size of Kidd’s from the Quedagh Merchant. At the time of his arrival at Sainte Marie’s, he had worked in collusion with a Dutchman called Derick (or Dirk) Chivers in the ship Soldado to take one of the largest Red Sea prizes to date: the Great Mohammed, worth at least £130,000. Since then Culliford had turned pirate, ransacking ships in the Indian Ocean. Captain William Kidd first encountered Robert Culliford several years earlier when the man had stolen his ship and left him stranded on an Antiguan beach. ![]()
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