Synopsis: The breakneck adventure of war, romance, politics, and betrayal, where noble gentleman privateer William Kidd becomes a scapegoat, and Crown and crew sink to unfathomable depths to brand him pirate enemy #1.
Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious “pirate” outlaws ever, but his notorious legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Captain Kidd has captivated imaginations for over three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, but was he really a criminal? Just how many ships did he plunder, how many men did he force to walk the plank, and how many throats did he slit? Or is the truth more inconvenient, that he was a buccaneer’s worst nightmare, a revered pirate hunter turned fall guy for scheming politicians?
In Captain Kidd, his ninth-great-grandson, writer Samuel Marquis, reveals the real story. Kidd was an English-American privateer and leading New York husband and father, dubbed “trusty and well-beloved” by the King of England himself and described by historians as a “worthy, honest-hearted, steadfast, much-enduring sailor” who was the “victim of a deliberate travesty of justice.” With honors far more esteemed than the menacing Blackbeard or any other sea rover at the turn of the seventeenth century, how can Kidd be considered both gentleman and pirate, both hero and villain?
Marquis’ biography clears the foggy haze of five centuries of legend and British propaganda to illuminate the seafaring adventurer and civic leader. He scrupulously recreates Kidd’s perilous world of explosive naval warfare, the daring integrity he exemplified as a pirate hunter, and the political scandal that entangled Kidd in British-American history, rocking the New World and the Old and threatening England’s valuable trade with India.
Captain Kidd is both thrilling and tragic. Behind the legend is a real man woven into the tapestry of early America, rendering him a unique colonial hero and scapegoat, whose life story was fascinating, exciting, bizarre, and heartrending.
~ ~ ~
Kidd was " ... hanged for doing so, whilst so many who did infinitely worse that he died in their beds in the odor of sanctity ... "
This is undoubtedly a well researched tome by the subject's ancestor, demonstrating to the reader the many facets of Captain Kidd's character, in an era of grey and blurred lines.
Marquis documents Kidd's career as a highly successful privateer, commissioned to protect English interests in North America and the West Indies, through to his fateful final voyage where he failed to find many targets, lost much of his crew and faced threats of mutiny. By the late 17th Century, the political climate in England had turned against him, and he was ultimately betrayed by his backer Bellomont, Governor of New York (and his own crew), and was denounced as a pirate.
The bulk of the narrative then focuses on Kidd's arrest and trial, with the author offering his personal opinion on Kidd towards the end of the book, before delving into the legend, the legacy and long-lost loot.
Overall, a worthy tome.
No comments:
Post a Comment