Pirate Hunter: Captain Kidd

Rumors and Shortages

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

The city at that moment in late July, as Kidd searched for crewmen, was tense with war rumors and bread shortages. Greedy merchants had exported most of the region's prized flour, leaving local bakers with little to bake. The shortage had gotten so acute that the City Council passed a law forbidding the home baking of biscuits or even cookies.

On August 2, an out-of-breath horseback rider ignored the city's "foot-tap" speed limit and galloped into Fort William on the southern tip of Manhattan. The rider delivered an "express" to Governor Fletcher that "Count Frontenac with a thousand French and two thousand Indians was overrunning the Country of the Five Nations," tribes loyal to the English, and had burned an Indian village at Oneida. The residents at Albany and Schenectady, the northern defense outposts for New York province, feared the French might attack their cities next. If those two forts fell, the Canadian force could float down the Hudson to New York City and fight their way past the crumbling wall on Wall Street.

That same day, August 2, a ship docked with the latest military intelligence from England, dated "Whitehall April 20" (in other words, a three-month-old report), that "the French were making Preparations by Shipping, and otherwise, for an attempt on some of His Majesties Plantations in America, and had put on board a considerable Quantity of Armes."

Governor Fletcher immediately issued a proclamation, hastily printed by William Bradford at his shop at the Sign of the Bible, putting the colony in a state of readiness, ordering all New Yorkers -- both citizens and soldiers -- to have their weapons "well-fitted" and "well-furnished with ammunition." Any person seeing three ships upon the coast was required to immediately inform the governor. The proclamation closed: "God Save the KING."

That same afternoon, Governor Fletcher rounded up part of the city's troop of soldiers to five-day march the 144 miles north (colonial figure) to Albany.

The citizens of New York City suddenly felt very vulnerable. The main English force had left the city; any coordinated attack by sea, delivering French and Indian troops, might have a fine chance against the 600 or so houses in Manhattan. The one Royal Navy ship in port, the HMS Richmond was a mess, with crooked masts and some dry rot. On August 4, the City Council passed an embargo forbidding any ships from sailing out of New York harbor, effective through September 1. This locked Kidd's warship in port for a month -- not officially hired, but clearly on call to protect the city.

At some point in August, a frustrated Captain Kidd made a momentous decision. At first glance, it might sound like a small point in an ongoing labor negotiation, but it goes to the heart of the man's recklessness, his damn-it-all desire to get things moving.

Captain Kidd had been ordered by his blueblood backers in London not to give the crew more than a one quarter share of the profits. Kidd decided to flip his privateering arrangement on its head. He decided to give the lion's share -- three quarters of the treasure -- to the crew and one quarter to the lords and other backers, such as Albany merchant Robert Livingston. He promised the men they would sign the new articles as soon as they were out to sea.

From any angle, this was a bold move, instantly tripling the projected take of each of the 100-plus men Kidd would sign up, and crippling the share of his shadowy backers in London.

Men now flocked to join up, coming from as far away as Massachusetts and Maryland. Governor Andrew Hamilton of East Jersey wrote, apologizing to Governor Fletcher, that he couldn't supply troops for the war effort, and he blamed the "large wages" available and that "several are gone aboard Captain Kidd." Fletcher pegged that at least fifty New Yorkers signed up -- from an ousted former sheriff, English Smith, to an impoverished, sleep-in-his-dinghy wood-cutter Irishman named David "Darby" Mullins.

The prospects for the voyage had so changed that New York merchants were now willing to lend money to strangers from Pennsylvania in exchange for a promised piece of their share in Captain Kidd. Three day laborers came from Philadelphia: Patrick Dremer, Micijah Evans, and Samuel Kennels. Merchant Joseph Blydenbaugh provided "shoes and stockings, rum and sugar, spices, combs, knives, handkerchiefs, spoons, ropes" and expected to receive from each "one third portion of his share in money, jewels or bullion, negroes or slaves, silks" (The men carried aboard that booze and spice to supplement a sailor's diet; the other trinkets formed a small trading stock to swap with far-away islanders to supplement income.) Thomas Clark, another original vestryman at Trinity Church, a man with the smuggler's nickname of "Whisking" a longtime friend of Captain Kidd, also loaned money to the sailors.

Governor Fletcher returned from Albany on August 20 with a glowing report of his own heroic doings. "Some escaped prisoners [said] that an Indian brought tidings to Count Frontenac that I was on march from Albany with an army as numerous as the trees of the woods, which hastened his retreat."

The city was more secure with its leader Fletcher back with the troops. People in this town known for its boozing celebrated the diminished threat of war in the way they knew best. (From the earliest days, Dutch breweries had been providing a delicious alternative to Manhattan's brackish well water.) On August 24, Captain Kidd and half a dozen veteran sea dogs who had already agreed to accompany him on the voyage were sitting around drinking in the tavern of Michael Hawdon.

New York barkeeps were famous for letting sailors run up huge tabs, because they knew that in that wind-driven world, some merchant or captain would need another sailor and would come pay it off. New York merchants grew so sick of erasing bar tabs that the Common Council -- mostly merchants -- had passed a law that a "Public House trusting any saylor shall forfeit all . . . and shall have no benefit of law." That was in 1691, this was 1696; sailors were still running bar tabs and captains were still paying them off.

At some point in the evening, tavern-owner Hawdon struck a deal with Kidd. He called over his young apprentice serving boy, Saunders Douglas, and told him he would be sailing round the tip of Africa and hunting pirates in the Red Sea. The laughing men teased the boy about how seasick he'd get and how he'd spend freezing nights in the crow's nest, picking icicles out of his hair. The agreement signed by Kidd and Hawdon states that the master Hawdon would receive half of one share of the booty for supplying his servant. Douglas would receive nothing except the knowledge that he had chipped away a couple more years off his indenture. (Young Saunders would be among the first to die on the voyage.)

At least half a dozen cabin boys would sail on the Adventure Galley. In times of battle, these teenagers would act as the powder monkeys, running the obstacle course of the slippery crowded deck to carry ladles of gunpowder from the powder magazine to the gun crews.

Captain Kidd himself would be served by twelve-year-old Richard Barleycorn from Carolina. Another, Robert Lamley, age fourteen, probably the son of a Southwark prostitute, tended to the ship's cook, Abel Owens. Lamley's apprenticeship agreement, besides requiring him to faithfully serve his master day and night, keep his secrets, nor waste his goods, specified: "Taverns, inns or Ale-Houses shall not haunt, at Cards, Dice, Tables or any other unlawful game, shall not play."

The apprentice contract of William Jenkins varied from Lamley's in one handwritten addendum: "Fornication he shall commit nor Matrimony contract."

Copyright © 2002 Richard Zacks.