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- [00:01]
Anita Arnin
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:30]
Anita Arnin
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- [00:38]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:39]
Unknown
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- [00:40]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:44]
William Drimpel
Payment equivalent to $15 per month New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes.
- [00:49]
Unknown
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- [01:19]
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- [01:45]
William Drimpel
My name was William Kidd when I sailed When I sailed My name was William Kidd when I sailed God's laws I did forbid and so wickedly I did When I sailed I had a Bible in my hand When I sailed When I sailed I had a Bible in my hand when I sailed but my father's great command I sunk it in the sand when I sailed. Hello. Welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnin.
- [02:08]
Anita Arnin
Me William Dripple.
- [02:10]
William Drimpel
This is a part of a sea shanty which was written just after the death of a man who you will have heard the name thanks to Hollywood and fictionalization. William Kidd, one of the most famous pirates who has entered the public consciousness. But was he a pirate at all? Or was he a man who was set up by a bunch of avaricious politicians. That's what we're going to be talking about today. It's part of our piracy series. And I know you're obsessed with pirates, it turns out. I mean, who knew? You're back in India and you've suddenly discovered a shelf full of pirate books.
- [02:43]
Anita Arnin
I've got a whole shelf of pirate books here, including some quite sort of interesting and scholarly ones. There is a character that you and I need to have come across before, who was an extraordinary Raj archivist called Charles Gray, who for a long time, with the near duels in Ranjit Singh's Sikh army and produced an extraordinary book of all the mercenaries and misfits who were recruited into Ranjit Singh's force. And he's done a similar thing called Pirates of the Eastern Seas out of all the Indian archives. And it turns out there's a huge amount of files in Indian archives between Lahore, Calcutta, Delhi and so on of cases of piracy off the Indian coast. And there was a whole world of people who had stolen ships or gone awry, who particularly preyed on the Mughal Hajj traffic. You had all these people going from Gujarat over to what's now Saudi Arabia, and these guys preyed on them, caught the ships, took the gold and often enslaved the hadgies.
- [03:43]
William Drimpel
Let's do a whole episode on that.
- [03:45]
Anita Arnin
I think we should. I think it's the most extraordinary story.
- [03:47]
William Drimpel
Yeah. But let's talk about Kidd in this one, because it's a really complicated thing. You talk about archives and I think this is a man who's been quite badly served by archives that were produced near the time because of political agendas. But I'll tell you why. So, first of all, who is William Kidd, more commonly known as Captain Kidd? You're like this because he was Scottish, a Scottish sailor and privateer who lived during the late 17th century.
- [04:09]
Anita Arnin
It's a very interesting matter how much not only the pirates themselves were often Scots, but the mythologizers of pirates were Scots. Robbie Lewin Stevenson, for example, Treasure Island.
- [04:21]
William Drimpel
Well, I was just going to say Treasure island makes reference to Kidd, directly to Kidd.
- [04:25]
Anita Arnin
And Treasure island was written in my hometown of North Berwick, looking onto the Bass Rock. And it's always said in North Berwick lore that the Bass Rock was his model. When he drew a map of Treasure island, he was actually drawing a map of Bass Rock, same shape.
- [04:38]
William Drimpel
The Bass Rock, for those of you who've missed it, is basically, it's a very posh name for a thing made of seagull shit. It just sort of sticks out of the water.
- [04:47]
Anita Arnin
I'll give it a grander description myself. But, yeah, it has got a lot of gannets on it and a lot of gannet shit.
- [04:52]
William Drimpel
Yes, gannet shit island. But look, Stevenson was particularly affected by the story, because he must have grown up with the stories of William Kidd. He doesn't name him in Treasure island, but the whole idea of this buried treasure is directly taken from William Kidd's life because William Kidd was said to have buried a huge hoard of treasure, which people are still looking for even now, genuinely.
- [05:13]
Anita Arnin
Yeah. I mean, there are expeditions to find it. Yeah.
- [05:15]
William Drimpel
And Washington Irving, another writer who's written about Captain Kidd's treasure in 1820, wrote the sketchbook.
- [05:20]
Anita Arnin
Not just Washington Irvin, but another major American writer, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote a William Kidd short story. He was a very big figure in 19th century New York.
- [05:29]
William Drimpel
The Americans are obsessed with him. And that's partly you can tell because there's this fantastic. I rewatched it. I watched it ages ago. But it's a 1945 film starring Charles Lawton, you know, famous Charles Lawton, who played Henry viii. So Charles Lawton is Kid in this, and he does the role very seriously in the first one, and then he does it with Abbott and Costello again in 1952. But what I loved was the Charles Norton original film where he is this really, I mean, skullduggerous, nasty. You know, the opening scene of the film, Captain Kidd is him burying his treasure and then shooting a man and leaving the dead body on top. And he does these great lines like dead men can't talk and things like that. And he calls all his crew gallows meat and things like that. But the reason I wanted to talk about the film was because Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that it was Joseph Stalin's favorite film. He loved it.
- [06:21]
Anita Arnin
I did not see that coming.
- [06:23]
William Drimpel
No, I know. And do you know why it was his favorite film? Because Stalin identified with Kid, who in this film is actually quite a shitty fellow. He sort of comes up from, you know, the rough streets and wants to mingle in high society.
- [06:38]
Anita Arnin
I can see that. Because one of the things about Kidd's life, it's very difficult to tell what's true and what's not, but he seems always to be steering a line between hunting pirates and being a pirate himself. And that's very sort of Stalinesque. Stalin, you know, started off by robbing banks as a young man and ended up as president.
- [06:55]
William Drimpel
Yeah. And the whole film, I mean, you talked about, you know, the pirates in your shelf who were targeting Mughal treasure. And that's also the plot of the film. And actually there is truth in this because even, you know, pirates who were operating out of Scotland or privateers when they were hired as privateers. Often to attack enemy ships and to protect the East India Company trade. But some of them said, sod this, we know where the treasure is, it's on the Mughal ships. We're going to switch sides. So this is the backdrop to the piracy stories that we're telling.
- [07:26]
Anita Arnin
And I think beyond that backdrop, there's this fascinating idea of a world where at the beginning of this period in the mid 17th century, the British are absolutely on the margins of everything. And they can just be the wreckers, they can be the pirates who are just stopping to raid Portuguese and Spanish treasure ships, raid whatever they like of the Mughals. And they are basically a nation of pirates, which is what the Spanish ambassador calls the first crew of the East India Company, where they set off pirates, Pirates, pirates. But by the end of the story, though, the British are, you know, in charge and they now have to enforce their authority and there's no room for pirates.
- [08:04]
William Drimpel
What's interesting is that Britain is described variously as a nation of pirates and a nation of shopkeepers. You know, so the characterization of the. You know, Napoleon famously said that. But let's talk about Kidd. So William Kidd was born in Scotland, in Dundee, in 1645. And I think it's really important to talk about formative years. Although we don't know much detail, we do know what Dundee was like in 1645. Do you think it was a pleasant place to live, William, in 1645?
- [08:28]
Anita Arnin
Well, it has to say that there are different accounts, and there's another version of his early life, which is a measure of how elusive he is, which has him in Greenock on the other side of Scotland, and the son of a Presbyterian minister. So you've got these two completely different origin stories, which, like the rest of his life, you have to sort of pick and choose between completely different versions of events.
- [08:45]
William Drimpel
I'll go with the Dundee version, because more modern scholarship would place him in Dundee. And you're right, the early stuff just completely is all over the map, but where he was born. And this is a place that was ravaged by the war laws of the three kingdoms. So, you know, there were people who supported the Presbyterian Church in Scotland up against royalists who support King Charles the First. And there are religious difficulties. And so this is a place that's sort of ravaged by war. And also he's born into a time of plague. So, you know, there is a terrible plague rampaging through. So there is death and decay and war and loss of life. That is his sort of childhood imprint. We don't know everything about his Family. But again, modern scholarship would suggest that he had a relatively modest background. The son of a man called John Kidd, who is a sailor himself, and a woman called Bessie Butchart. I love that name. I hope I'm saying, right, is there a Scottish pronunciation for Butchart that I'm getting wrong? B U, T, C, H, A R T. But chart. But chart. Butchart sounds better than butt chart. And his father dies at sea when he's five years old. So he's with this mother who's struggling to bring up this child, and she remarries. And clearly that is not a happy situation for little William, because he runs away to sea when he's just a teenager. And again, this sort of throws you into this world where people grow up a lot faster in those days. And he first enters the record as a seaman in the 1680s, where he is on a ship where there is a mutiny. And this is a, you know, a privateership, which is supposedly under license. As, you know, we were saying, privateers were hired by the British government to go and protect British interests and attack Dutch ships, French ships in particular, and anybody else who was challenging this nascent trade that they were establishing with India. And he's on this ship, and there's a mutiny. And the mutiny occurs. And for some reason, young kid is seen to have leadership qualities. And it's the first time you sort of get the impression that there is something about this lad that, you know, people want to follow, and that's what happens. But by 1689, this young sort of skinny lad you imagine from, you know, not a very lovely background, goes, and he joins a privateer ship traveling the Caribbean under this man called Captain Jean Fantin. And this ship, again, you know, mutinies are really common because if you don't give your crew, and often the crews are sort of rough, old sorts who are gathered together from prisons. A lot of them, you know, only those people put up with life at sea. So a lot of, you know, people are sort of harvested from the Marshalsea or Newgate Prison. They're desperate fellows. And life at sea, and I know, you know about this life at sea was terrible. I mean, just remind people, in the mid 17th century, being on a ship for months at a time is not a pleasant thing.
- [11:29]
Anita Arnin
No, it's a very, very rough world. And very few people join the navy if they have any other options. It's very much bottom of the pecking order. And I think that's true elsewhere, too. I mean, obviously the Ottoman galleys at the same time are largely Filled with galley slaves. I mean, no one chooses to go to sea at this period.
- [11:46]
William Drimpel
So there's a mutiny on the ship against Tata and Kidd sort of rises up, and I think he renames the ship, he calls it the Blessed William.
- [11:55]
Anita Arnin
Very nice. Yeah.
- [11:55]
William Drimpel
And so he's off, sort of like a man in his own Ford Cortina for the first time, taking to the open seas or the open roads, and, you know, sort of quite muscular. And he actually, like many privateers at the time, becomes not enlisted formally, but asked to defend a British territory. So he's asked to defend Nevis from French ships, because they are surrounded by French ships. And, you know, he's young, he's strong, he's got a crew that likes him. He's on the Blessed William and he does it. He does it really quite well. So he starts attacking the French islands of Mary Gallant and destroying a town and looting because, you know, he's got these desperate men he needs to feed, you know, the more of their greed. And he gathers around 2,000 pounds sterling, which is an enormous sum of money.
- [12:44]
Anita Arnin
More than you could get in Dun D at that time, certainly, and the.
- [12:47]
William Drimpel
Poverty and the sort of misery that he's left behind. But he also gets rewarded by the authorities because if you are a successful privateer and if you are attacking French interests, you get rewards. So he gets £150 for successful privateering in the Caribbean. So this is a man who knows the waters, which are going to be very, very important around another great trading route that is being established around the Caribbean. And he starts getting a name for himself. But you know what? If you have mutinous men on your ship, who's to say they're not going to mutiny against you? And his crew eventually get sick of him as well, even though he's sort of quite successful for a while.
- [13:26]
Anita Arnin
And they dump him, they dump him.
- [13:28]
William Drimpel
And they sort of sail off with the Blessed William. And he is just like Johnny Depp trying to get the Black Pearl back. The man who's responsible for the dumpage is a man called Robert Culliford, who is a notorious pirate who steals his ship and his crew, who we will.
- [13:44]
Anita Arnin
Meet later on in this tale.
- [13:46]
William Drimpel
Yeah, we absolutely will.
- [13:47]
Anita Arnin
And it is very much like Pirates of the Caribbean. These characters who sort of do each other down somewhere in the Caribbean, bump into each other again somewhere quite different, like sort of Madagascar or off the coast of Kerala at Telecherry. And these guys are moving between these worlds, between preying on Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the Caribbean, fighting The French in the Caribbean, raiding French islands there or then sailing down trying their luck off the coast of India, off the coast of French islands, like what's now Reunion. And these guys are going backwards and forwards on their own trajectories. And at this point, he's basically with the law, isn't he? He's a privateer.
- [14:27]
William Drimpel
He is. So, shall I do the Anita question? What did he look like? Well, there is this portrait. You've got the portrait, I hope, in front of you. Describe William, because when I do, I get accused of being lascivious. I don't think you can be very lascivious about this portrait. But what does he look like in it?
- [14:41]
Anita Arnin
I don't think anyone would be very serious about this portrait. He looks like a sort of disgruntled clergyman who's just had his sermon snatched by a parishioner or something. He's got a sort of chin length wig, not the full wig, but a half wig, which I think you'd associate with a lawyer at this period or a clergyman. He's got a white kerchief around his neck, a sort of white cravat, and he's got a collarless jacket. And he looks exactly more like a lawyer or a clergyman than he does a pirate in this picture.
- [15:10]
William Drimpel
He does. And you know what? This painting is really interesting. God knows if it looks like him, because it was painted after he died by a man called Sir James Thornhill. Now, Sir James Thornhill, for those who know their art, was an English painter of great renown. But he never met the guy. He sort of, you know, did this painting. He's also sort of more famous for doing Isaac Newton and people like that. But he was sort of fascinated by kidding. He's also the man, by the way, James Thornhill, who did some of those enormous murals in the Royal Hospital in Greenwich. You can see he did those.
- [15:42]
Anita Arnin
I've never seen those.
- [15:43]
William Drimpel
They're impressive. And paintings on the inside of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, that's Thornhill's work. And you've got Thornhill doing sort of Chatsworth House and Wimpole hall and all these really important places. But he gives us this portrait of a man of means. Compare that to the image that actually most of us have of kid, a desperate pirate, bandana around his head, snarly face and earring.
- [16:05]
Anita Arnin
Johnny Depp.
- [16:06]
William Drimpel
Johnny Depp. And do you know where that comes from? It comes from a man. And again, I love the way this is a man who creates the images that then become historical truth. So that image of the Johnny Depp type pirate comes to us courtesy of a man called Howard Pyle. Howard Pyle was a children's illustrator. And some 49 years after kid died, he did illustrations for a story about Kidd. You know, sort of painted him as a snarling evil. He reeks of evil. He sort of looks a little bit sort of like Lucifer. And that is the image that passes into the public consciousness. And we also have Howard Pyle to thank, by the way, for repurposing Robin Hood.
- [16:43]
Anita Arnin
Really?
- [16:44]
William Drimpel
Yes. The hat, the feather, the pixie boots, the pixie outfit, the Peter Pan outfit. That, again, is a Howard Pyle creation because bet your butt he didn't look like that. But after these children's books, which, you know, all these other people would have read when they go on to make films or art in the future, that is the thing that sits in their childhood mind.
- [17:05]
Anita Arnin
I think we should actually even do a whole episode on how these stories, which are rough, tough, murderous stories of desperate men, end up bizarrely as children's literature.
- [17:16]
William Drimpel
Do you think that is unusual? Because we have kids who grow up on cartoons, even from the earliest age, where cartoons where people take a big mallet and hit a smaller creature on the head and squish it. Is it a children's need or our need to scare children? I don't know. What do you think?
- [17:32]
Anita Arnin
Interesting, isn't it? Yeah.
- [17:33]
William Drimpel
Yeah. But look, after he's sort of lost his blessed William to this terrible other pirate because there is no honor among thieves. That is clear in the pirating and privateering world. He ends up going to America, where he does become actually a reflection of that respectable portrait that you described before. Because he starts trade like other people. You know, he has maritime experience.
- [17:57]
Anita Arnin
And he marries an heiress, the richest.
- [18:00]
William Drimpel
Woman, some say, in New York. Sarah Ort. Is her name.
- [18:04]
Anita Arnin
That a Dutch name? Is that from the Dutch community in New York?
- [18:07]
William Drimpel
Does sound it, doesn't it? Around this time, I think it would have just stopped being New Amsterdam and become New York. So, yeah, that would make sense that she has a Dutch name. But Sarah and William moved to this rather huge townhouse on Wall Street. How can you get more respectable than that?
- [18:24]
Anita Arnin
Literally on Wall street itself.
- [18:26]
William Drimpel
On Wall Street, Actually on Wall Street. And I sort of did some digging to see what his life was like in New York. And he was a pillar of the community. There is a church on Wall street called Trinity Church, still stands to this day. And one of the people they have to thank for Trinity Church existing at all is William Kidd. Not, you know, the snarly pirate, but William Kidd, the respectable man who endows churches. Not just endows, helped to build it. So I was looking through. There's some records that go back to 1696 minutes of the vestry of Trinity Church. And it says, Captain Kidd has lent a runner and tackle for the hoising, it says, which I think should be hoisting up of stones. As long as he stays there. And a runner and tackle. Do you know what?
- [19:11]
Anita Arnin
That might be something to lift stones, wouldn't it?
- [19:13]
William Drimpel
Pulleys. Pulleys, like on a ship. And it says, while he lives here. But we know that the church had a relationship with Kidd. He probably never, ever sat in the church because it wouldn't have been finished. And he was already on the move by the time it was finished. But there was a rented pew in Captain Kidd's name. The most important pew, until years after he was. This is a Dalrymple spoiler. Hanged in disgrace. I know I did it.
- [19:40]
Anita Arnin
You telling the end?
- [19:41]
William Drimpel
I'm just giving you a little foreshadowing of the fact that, you know, this is not how he thought his life would go.
- [19:46]
Anita Arnin
Yes, in a sense, he's already lived an entire life trajectory. He's grown up poor, he's gone to the seas. He's then arrived in New York and ended up on Wall Street. You'd have thought that's the end of the story, but far from it, it isn't.
- [19:59]
William Drimpel
No, it would be for somebody. But he comes into the orbit of the Governor of New York. Because if you are an important man with money and you give money to the church and, you know, you're respectable and you've got a pew coming your way, by the way, it was a pew right at the front where all the important people sat for him and his family. But he meets the governor of New York and Massachusetts, a man called the Earl of Belmont. But the Earl of Belmont is having a right load of problems with ships being attacked. You know, this is a disaster because French vessels have been attacking British interests and these are still, you know, sort of British interests. And he needs somebody who knows the waters. So he says, look, I think we might need a man who has knowledge of those waters and also has worked with privateers and might have had a ship stolen out from under him, so knows these people can't be trusted to come and work for us. And this is where this idea sort of develops, not just between him, but other members, really important members of the British ruling class, including the Lord Chancellor, the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Master of Ordnance and the Secretary of State. So they all start sort of thinking we need, we need to get a man who is going to fight for us. And that man is William Kidd. Let's take a break because this is not how the story eventually goes.
- [21:23]
Unknown
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- [22:29]
Anita Arnin
Welcome back. So we're now at the point where William Kidd, respectable New Yorker, married to an heiress living on Wall street, is being tempted back into the privateer business. And in 1689 he is given what is called a letter of mark, which I have in front of me. And this is the text. Now know ye that being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and inasmuch as in us Lies to bring said pirates, freebooters and sea robbers to justice, we do hereby grant and give to said William Kidding a commission as a private man of war, bearing the date 11th day of December, 1695, and unto all who shall be under your command full power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into yours and their true and fully authorized lawful custody the said captains Tew, Ireland, Wake, Maize, and all other such pirates, freebooters, and sea robbers, being either of our own nations or other notions associated with them, which you shall meet upon the seas and coasts of America, or upon any other sea or coast, with all their ships and vessels, and upon all such merchandise, money, goods and wares as shall be found on board. So that's quite a letter to set you off.
- [23:52]
William Drimpel
It is quite a letter. So the letter of Mark was a real thing to co opt and legitimize people who may have been involved in private hearing to say, right, you're ours now, you work for us now. I never became the lawyer that my dad wanted me to be, but it is worth looking at the small print of that said contract, the Mark that you just said, because what it also does is it ties kit up with these very powerful people. He gets the letter of Mark when he travels to London and he travels in his own ship, a ship called the Antigua. But the Antigua is not fast enough, not big enough, not muscly enough to take on the pirates. So as part of the letter of Mark, there is a deal that is done that these very powerful rich men who are part of the Whig establishment are going to pay for this new ship that is going to be good enough and strong enough and fast enough with enough cannons to take on some of the very notorious pirates that were named in that letter of marque. Including True, who was really the worst of the worst, deemed to be in England because he'd been so successful robbing ships with British interests. So four fifths of the cost of building this new ship for kids, specifically for kidding, is going to be put up by the Earl of Orford, Baron Romney, the Duke of Shrewsbury and a man called Sir John Summers. But they don't want to come to the forefront. They're going to fund the money, they're going to stump up the money. Kidd is going to have to sell the Antigua and use some of his tobacco money to pay for the rest. But the small, small print of that letter of Mark is that whatever Kidd gets, whatever loot he gets, 10% of the loot is going to go to the King, to King William. It is reserved for the Crown. So, you know, basically it's a commission based system where the King also benefits, you know, so you can't get much more of a blessing from the Crown, from the government, from power than this, I thought.
- [25:39]
Anita Arnin
Very interesting thing in that letter is we've always talked about privateers. I've never seen it written out in full as a private man of war.
- [25:45]
William Drimpel
Yes, isn't it good?
- [25:46]
Anita Arnin
And that's what it is.
- [25:47]
William Drimpel
That is exactly what it is.
- [25:48]
Anita Arnin
And what's so interesting is the more we look at early British colonial stories, the more we find that it is the state privatizing stuff, whether it's to a corporation and leasing areas of Virginia and the right to start a foundation in Virginia or Hudson Bay or in India. But the same is going on with Naval activity. You don't send off the navy. You just get a businessman with business interests who has little knowledge of the sea to do his own private navy work. A private man of war.
- [26:16]
William Drimpel
Yes, but there is a question that I'm grappling with, having spent a lot of time with William Kidd, which is why on earth would he want to do this? Because, you know, look, life on the sea is not as cushy as the life he's got on Wall Street. You know, it's just a fact. He's got money, he's got status, it is dirty, it is disease ridden on these ships. It is a rough life that he has known since he was a young teenager. Why would he. The answer that comes, you know, the picture of Captain Kidd is that he was this wanton robber on the seas. He was almost sort of forced to do it because once the King has asked you to do a thing, once the King has summoned you, can you say no? Can you come to London and be offered the letter of mark and then say, no, I don't want to do it?
- [26:55]
Anita Arnin
And is there a sense in which the British are taking advantage of this sort of colonial who's turned up in London?
- [26:59]
William Drimpel
Well, I mean, he's a Scot. He's a nouveau riche Scot. So I think they think, you know, they own him and he owes them. I mean, that's sort of the attitude of the aristocracy at the time.
- [27:09]
Anita Arnin
So these shadowy Whigs who are not putting their own names forward, who are in the background, are basically chancing his life rather than theirs.
- [27:16]
William Drimpel
Well, I mean, of course they're not going to go to sea, are they? I mean, it's horrible. So Kidd was going to be the captain of this new ship, this amazing new ship that is being built especially for him. And it's going to be called the Adventure Galley. And it's, it is good. It's a good ship that they're building from. It's heavily armed, it's got 34 cannons, which is considerable for those times.
- [27:38]
Anita Arnin
Yeah, that's the big ship.
- [27:39]
William Drimpel
You know, it has room for 150 men. So again, we're talking sort of a really hefty bunch of people. And it has oars, which at that time is, you know, sort of quite a, quite an important modification for ships that you don't just rely on the winds, you have oars so you can sort of take control and keep chasing if you need to. And you can maneuver better in battle against the French ships that largely don't have these oars at the time and you can sail in dead water. You know, there's some of the seas that they're going to have to go through. You can be sitting there for weeks without moving. Not a breeze to take you one.
- [28:14]
Anita Arnin
Inch becalmed, as they call it.
- [28:16]
William Drimpel
That's exactly right. So what Kidd says, he has one stipulation. He says, look, this is great. I'll do this and thanks for the ship and everything, but I want to select my own crew and I'm going to choose the very best of the best. And, you know, he's got experience, he knows people, he knows those who sail. So he wants to select the best sailors that he knows who will be loyal to him. And that's fine. They say, yes, of course, absolutely. But it screws up almost from the second that the Adventure Galley leaves British waters. It doesn't even leave British waters. It's a nutty thing. So he's sort of sailing out for the first inaugural voyage of the Adventure Galley, and they're going past a Navy yacht in Greenwich. And custom dictates that Kidd and his men should have saluted the naval captain. Not only William do they not salute, but when the Navy yacht fires a shot to say, oi, we're here. Hands on heads, please, what do they do?
- [29:21]
Anita Arnin
They turn and slap their backsides at the naval yacht. It's like a sort of bunch of Scots Trainspotters out of some Irving Welsh novel. They moon the Navy, right, Because they.
- [29:31]
William Drimpel
Think this is all hilarious. They're not. They're not sort of, you know, regarding themselves as, you know, the sort of the starched navy. But the naval captain does not like this. And he likes it so little that he decides he's going to take almost half of Kidd's crew and press them into service in the Navy to teach them a lesson.
- [29:51]
Anita Arnin
And does this actually happen there and then, or do they wait till they dock and there and then, yeah.
- [29:56]
William Drimpel
So poor kid, who's really carefully hand selected these men that he knows who are going to be loyal to him, has now only got half a crew. It's a disaster.
- [30:05]
Anita Arnin
Because he's mooned the Navy.
- [30:07]
William Drimpel
Because they mooned. I mean, they mooned the Navy.
- [30:11]
Anita Arnin
It's too good to be true.
- [30:12]
William Drimpel
It's true. So what he has to do, poor kid. I do feel sorry for Kidd, actually, for a lot of this story. He has to then get criminals to fill the places. So, like the film that I was telling you about where, you know, Charles Lawton goes deliberately to the roughest prison, Newgate Prison in the Marshalsea to select the most bloodthirsty of men for his crew. Kid doesn't want to do this, but he has no option because he's got no one to sail his brand new Adventure galley. And these are the only men that he can get who, you know, often have been guilty of piracy and thrown into prison and are facing the noose in some cases. So he gets this sort of crew of half the people that he wants.
- [30:49]
Anita Arnin
Complete ne'er do wells.
- [30:50]
William Drimpel
Hardened criminals, my friend, who would slit your throat the soonest look at you. And they set sail for the Cape of good hope on the 6th of September, 1696. And it's all going well until they encounter a convoy of ships escorted by a man called Commodore Warren of the Royal Navy. Now again, this is a ship and the Royal Navy is up against it at the time, and I think it's worth repeating, William, you know, this is not the Royal Navy that we know. Now this was a fairly beleaguered force that really couldn't keep up with the privateers and the attacks on British settlements.
- [31:25]
Anita Arnin
Which is why the privateers were there.
- [31:26]
William Drimpel
Yeah. So I mean, Commodore Warren then says, look, I need your men. The kid's going, are you joking? He goes, I need some of your crew. I need to press them into service, we need escorts, we need our ships protected. So you know what, I'm just going to co opt you or at least half of your crew to come and do some work for me. And so what Kid does, he's like, bugger this. This has happened to me before. In the dead of night, he flees, leaving these ships prone and vulnerable. And so he starts to get this reputation.
- [31:57]
Anita Arnin
Not just a reputation. Commodore Warren actually takes revenge on him for scooting in the night by writing a damning formal report to the Admiralty that describes him as a pirate.
- [32:07]
William Drimpel
That's the first time he's described as a pirate. Because, you know, this impudent pup was issued a direct order by the Navy. But look, just think about it from kids point of view, okay? Again, he knows what mutiny feels like. He's experienced it himself a couple of times. He has promised these men, and especially the hardened criminals that owe him no loyalty whatsoever, that they are going to get rich off the back of this voyage. They are going to make money. But if they're not going to do that, if they're going to be pushed into some kind of drudge escort service, which is what, you know, the Commodore wants, they're not going to get wealthy. So this is why he runs away. In his head, he's been given a job, which is to hunt pirates, not to do the drudge work for some commodore from nowhere. And you sort of get this sense a little bit. And you can see why Stalin might have liked the Lawton film of a man who just doesn't see this authority as being over him. He's a self made man. He ran away from plague and war torn lands to sea and made himself and ended up in Wall Street. Who the hell are these people to push him around? So, yes, he gets the name of pirate. And the East India Company is very, very vocal in criticizing him because the ships that he was meant to be escorting, they were laden with East India Company goods. And so by abandoning them, you know, and not escorting them to Cape Town, which is what he was meant to do, he's now, you know, sort of not acting in British interests. So those are the letters that get back to London before he can even sort of, you know, put a pen to paper.
- [33:37]
Anita Arnin
And so far we can kind of sympathize with how he's feeling. He's lost one half of his crew already in England. Now he's being told he has to give up other half and he's got a job to do, as you say. So so far we're slightly on his side that there's no sense that he's gone completely off the rails yet.
- [33:53]
William Drimpel
But, you know, I sort of feel that luck is not on his side at all. From the moment he accepts the mark, everything in his life turns crap. So not only does he now sort of have the navy, the East India Company who hate him, London hearing that he's a pirate, not a privateer anymore, not somebody working for them, which is.
- [34:12]
Anita Arnin
A dangerous thing because it's putting a target on your head.
- [34:14]
William Drimpel
Yeah. You named four pirates who are on a death list that were given to him in his letter of mark. His name will be on one of those lists now because he too is deemed to be a pirate. Although in his head he's just carrying on doing what he's meant to be doing. But then something else happens to him. A third of his crew gets cholera. And this is again, you know, cholera in this era is the absolute devastation of a ship at sea. You get one person sort of coughing and spluttering under decks in close quarters and it could just decimate. So he heads for Madagascar, and we should talk about Madagascar because he needs a strong crew.
- [34:49]
Anita Arnin
That is a terrific part of the story. I love it.
- [34:52]
William Drimpel
Why don't you tell us A little bit about Madagascar at this time.
- [34:54]
Anita Arnin
Well, Madagascar is one of these places on the map that at this point in history is not claimed by any European empire. And therefore it's a place where every sort of ne'er do well is setting up and we have an entire world of pirates and he's heading there. And what we have to somehow work out from the very confusing sources we have is, is he going there to become a pirate and join in this sort of pirate utopia at Madagascar? It's a perfect place because no one's claimed it. There is lots of water, there's lots of land and there's this whole world of sort of, you know, rather like the pub in Pirates of the Caribbean where, you know, all these sort of ne'er do wells with peg legs and hook arms and.
- [35:35]
William Drimpel
Yeah, it's a little hook arm drinking, spilling beer by trying to hold in their hook hands.
- [35:41]
Anita Arnin
And so this is the point where we begin to see this ambiguity. He has this cover story that he is looking for pirates, but I think it's true.
- [35:49]
William Drimpel
I don't think it is a cover story. I think he's still promising his cholera ravaged, hated by everybody crew that, you know what, we're going to take other ships and we're going to take their booty and you will be rich. Just, you know, stay with me, boys. We are going to and where best to find pirates then Madagascar. I'm sort of arguing the case from the other side that, you know, the story is that he goes to Madagascar because he wants to be with fellow pirates, but actually he's going to hunt pirates. He's got the letter of mark. That's how he's going to be rich. That's how he will be rewarded.
- [36:18]
Anita Arnin
But if you were arguing the case for the prosecution.
- [36:21]
William Drimpel
Yeah, let's argue.
- [36:22]
Anita Arnin
You can say that he's going there because, you know, he's one of these pirates. He's now on the list. So it's a very ambiguous situation. Tell me, Anita, about this sort of pirate utopia that we hear about occasionally in this Libertalia. Tell me about that.
- [36:35]
William Drimpel
Libertalia, or Liberatia, depending on. On what you read, is meant to be this pirate colony that has a pirate king and it's said to be under the leadership of a man called Captain James Mission, or just Mission, and he sets up supposedly this place, Liberatia or Libertalia. It's mentioned first of all, by the way, in this book in 1724, which is called A General History of Pirates with a y P Y R A T E S in volume two. And it describes this man, Captain Mission, who wants to have this whole new utopia, which actually sounds a little bit maga, to be honest, because it has. They don't like big government, they don't like laws and rules, they don't like organized religion. It is a place that Mission supposedly wants to have. Anybody from any background, from any strata of society, with any caste or creed, can come and be a free man here.
- [37:29]
Anita Arnin
And they divide all the treasure and the cattle equally among themselves. It's a sort of socialist utopia.
- [37:36]
William Drimpel
So it's. Yes, it's a strange thing. You know what, though? It's probably all bullshit. It's written in this, and again, people sort of go and run with it, but there isn't any archeological evidence. And people have gone there, you know, historians have gone desperate to try and find the children and grandchildren, great grandchildren, of anyone from Libertalia. Nobody's been able to find anybody.
- [37:57]
Anita Arnin
And is it meant to be in Madagascar?
- [37:58]
William Drimpel
It is. It's meant to be in Madagascar. The truth actually looks as though there were different pirate ports around Madagascar. Little places.
- [38:06]
Anita Arnin
It's a big island.
- [38:06]
William Drimpel
It's a big island and little pirates, sort of. Not encampments, but little sort of towns that pirates set up. But not this one great pirate king and this pirate utopia where everybody drinks and slaves are freed. You know, that's where that idea of these people don't see black and white on the pirate king's utopia and Libertalia, that you are a free man, even if you are a formerly enslaved person, you can come to Libertalia and be free. It means freedom, you know, it means freedom from all control.
- [38:33]
Anita Arnin
But as we know from later on in this story, sadly, that story of a freed slave utopia is very, very far from the pirate scene. And there was a story, I remember that Murray Pittock once told me that there was a whole bunch of Scottish pirates in Madagascar who trying to do a deal with the Jacobites, if I got this right. And they were going to use the slaves that they had gathered as collateral. So, contrary to this lovely myth of a socialist utopia, in actual fact, these guys are vicious slavers. They are enslaving the locals and they're prepared to trade them and offer the money to the Jacobites. So there's a whole variety of different sort of worlds colliding here and different myths being popped. And I think it's a pretty nasty world. But let's leave kid there because this is a crucial moment. He's about to go definitely over to the dark side, or maybe over to.
- [39:28]
William Drimpel
The dark side, maybe, because I think he's going over there to catch him some pirates. He's going pirate fishing because this is where, you know, the waters are thick with pirates. You just put your net in and you scoop them all up and you hang them and you come back and you get a bounty and you keep your ship and you think, he's crossed over to the dark side. So let's just leave it there and join us for the next episode of Empire, where we sort of examine this a little bit better and have a bit more evidence of what happens to King. And you know what? If you can't wait for the next episode, you don't have to. All you have to do is sign up for our club. Come and be in our club. Come and be in the cool gang empirepoduk.com and you'll get all sorts of offers. A fantastic newsletter, which is amazing, with book lists and all sorts of things and offers on books that we feature on this podcast. So till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan, and.
- [40:19]
Anita Arnin
Goodbye from me, William Drimpel.