3. William Kidd is remembered as a pirate who left buried treasure around the globe
William Kidd was born in the mid-seventeenth century and during the latter part of the century served on privateer ships in the Caribbean, rising to the rank of captain of a privateer, likely by election by the crew. By 1691 Kidd was living in New York, married to a woman twice widowed who possessed one of the largest fortunes in the colony. In 1695 he was commissioned by the governor of the northern British colonies in North America, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, to attack pirate ships and French ships in the Caribbean and in other waters. Presented with a Letter of Marque, which established him as a privateer in the service of the British, Kidd outfitted his ship, Adventure Galley, in England, sailing for New York in 1696.
Kidd opted to concentrate on pirates operating in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar, attacking the ships of the East India Company. When he failed to surrender thirty seamen to a Royal Navy vessel early in the voyage he was declared a pirate by the ship’s captain. Other accusations of piracy were leveled by deserters from Kidd’s ship and sailors which he had punished. When Kidd learned he was wanted as a pirate he went to the Caribbean, sold what plunder he had acquired during his less-than-profitable voyage, and sailed to New York. From there he was tricked by Bellomont with promises of a pardon into coming to Boston. Arrested there, he was sent to London for trial, where the investors who had funded his voyage took revenge for the lack of profits, and Kidd was hanged for piracy. Remembered today as one of the most notorious of pirates, there is in fact little evidence to indicate he was a pirate at all.