Pirate Hunter: Captain Kidd

Privateers

Converted for the Web from "Chapter One: Mission in New York City" from Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd."

A privateer was a kind of independent nautical mercenary, commissioned by a government to attack ships of an enemy nation in exchange for a piece of the spoils. Royal navies couldn't be everywhere, so countries in times of war turned to profit-hungry freelancers. In Elizabethan times, Drake and Raleigh had become national heroes as privateers attacking Spain. (Nearly a century after Kidd, during the Revolutionary War, the fledgling United States would commission a fleet of American privateers that captured more than 1,000 British merchant ships; while landlocked historians have dwelled on George Washington's battle plans, this economic strangulation by sea undeniably helped the colonies win their independence.)

Privateering, at its best, was a perfectly honorable profession, a unique blend of profit and patriotism. Typically, a group of investors banded together to finance a privateer mission to capture enemy ships and bring them back to port to be condemned as prizes and sold. The king might receive a tenth for granting the original privilege; the Admiralty might siphon off as much as a third for doing the paperwork and applying the stamp of legality. The investors would receive the rest and dole it out to themselves and the crew, according to a formula agreed upon before the voyage. Pirates, on the other hand, thumbed their noses at all these niceties; they weren't sanctioned by any government; they readily attacked ships of all nations and they didn't share their booty with any admires or kings. They were shipborne thieves, the "enemies of mankind and the trading nations."

Captain Kidd, the privateer, in his voyage over from England in the Adventure had already legally captured a French fishing vessel off the banks of New Foundland with a crew of four. The conquest had resembled more a ritual at a masquerade ball than a sea battle. Kidd's warship had borne down on the fishing vessel; when close enough, it plunked a cannonball nearby; the French ship surrendered and Kidd in a few minutes had paid for his transatlantic voyage. The Vice Admiralty Court in New York sometime in July condemned the ship as worth £350, the price of a couple of Manhattan buildings. The four French sailors were shipped to Boston to be exchanged for English prisoners held in Canada.

Kidd's mission -- as he'd said many times over many rums in Hawdon's and elsewhere -- provided sailors with a unique legal opportunity to steal from pirates and from the hated French.

And yet almost no one signed up for Kidd's voyage.

No employee surveys were done at the time, but apparently it boiled down to . . . money. Kidd wasn't offering any wages, just a share of the future profits from captures. The sailors back then nicknamed this approach: "No prey, no pay." If they didn't catch a pirate ship or French vessel, they might callus their hands reefing sails for years for absolutely nothing. However, it wasn't the "No prey, no pay" that bothered them; it was the division of spoils. Kidd's Articles, his "Help Wanted" poster, specified that the 150 crewmen would split up only a quarter of the treasure, after expenses -- that is, after they had repaid all the food, medicine, and weapons at prices set by the owners. The weapons' charge alone was £6 or three months of typical sailor wages.) Kidd told them the split was ordained by his blueblood owners in London; he said it followed more along the lines favored by the Royal Navy that first rewarded admirals, commodores, captains, lieutenants, before finding perhaps ten percent for the crew.

The New York sailors weren't the least bit swayed. Pirates, they knew, kept 100 percent and shared with no one back at the dock; en masse, the Manhattan mates opted to ignore the appeals of Kidd.

So, despite being blessed with a brand-new warship and a potentially lucrative commission, Captain Kidd couldn't go anywhere without a crew. The man was landlocked in sweltering New York City.

Copyright © 2002 Richard Zacks.