Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal

384 pages

Mike Farquharson-Roberts PhD (Mar Hist)

(aka Robert Muddysley)

This book opens in 1689 and closes with Kidd’s execution for piracy and murder in 1701. The author, Kidd’s ‘ninth great grandson’ [sic] has written it in an attempt to rehabilitate his forbear’s reputation. It is an extremely well referenced account, with 95 pages of end notes/bibliography available online (but no index).

It is easy as a book reviewer to list minor faults as a way of discrediting an entire book, facilitated by the recent tendency, presumably in the interests of making history more readable or ‘accessible’, for authors to add imagined events and conversations to historical events thereby turning the account into faction. For example, how can the author of this book know that on a particular occasion his ninth great grandparents “… made love; and afterwards as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, he filled her in on his activities…” (p.221). To compound matters, the author betrays an ignorance of naval life and history such as (p.126) referring to a commodore, “…wearing his immaculately pressed and spotless Royal Navy uniform…”. Royal Naval officers didn’t have a uniform until 1748. The commodore referred to, Commodore Warren apparently was captain of a “…fourth-rate flagship, the 70 gun HMS Windsor”… “with a 93 ship flotilla.” Warren’s squadron actually comprised Anglesea (44), Hastings (32), Harwich (48) and Lizard (24).[1] There are authoritative and detailed references to non-existent ships (e.g. p58 HMS Archangel – there has never been an HM ship of that name [2]). A central character is one Thomas Hewetson, apparently a close friend of Kidd’s “… recruited … [he was] commander of the Royal Navy ship Lion, armed with 48 guns and crewed by 150 men.” This has an extensively sourced endnote, but is plainly fiction, as on this date, there was no HMS Lion in commission and Thomas Hewetson was actually a privateer (later in the book he is described as a colonel) who had deserted his wife and children to go to the Caribbean. According to the record of the Court of Arches, she subsequently divorced him after his bigamous marriage in Barbados.[3]

Central to the book is Kidd’s letter of marque as a privateer and that he was sponsored by various of the gentry having previously proven himself successful. The author makes much of his sponsors turning on him after he ‘went’ pirate, as though that marked a class-based betrayal, particularly after his return to Boston with a considerable amount of ill-gotten gold and silver.

The author admits that Kidd was “not a 100 percent innocent man”, rather in his afterword concluding that he was an “old seafaring rascal”. An odd description for a pirate, but the author feels he was a patriot whose actions were those of “an incipient revolutionary American patriot fighting against Mother England and her draconian Navigation Acts” (which required the colonies to trade in British flagged ships). This latter would be easier to believe if Kidd had been a trader, rather than an avowed privateer (under the British flag), and subsequently an out and out pirate. In summary, this book is a readable addition to the extensive Kidd bibliography, but cannot be regarded as anything but a tendentious, even partisan account.

[1] Grainger John D, The British Navy in Eastern Waters: The Indian and Pacific Oceans (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2022) p. 55

[2] Colledge J.J (revised by Lt Cdr Ben Warlow), Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy from the fifteenth century to the present (Greenhill Books: London, 2003)

[3] https://monumentoffame.org/2017/03/03/court-of-arches-project-2-privateers-bigamy-and-cross-dressing/.