This day in history: William Kidd also known as Captain Kidd was born on this day in 1654. Kidd was a highly successful privateer, commissioned to protect English interests in North America and the West Indies.
In 1695, Kidd received a royal commission from the Earl of Bellomont, the governor of New York, Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, to hunt down pirates and enemy French ships in the Indian Ocean. He received a letter of marque and set sail on a new ship, Adventure Galley, the following year. On his voyage he failed to find many targets, lost much of his crew and faced threats of mutiny. In 1698, Kidd captured his greatest prize, the 400-ton Quedagh Merchant, a ship hired by Armenian merchants and captained by an Englishman. The political climate in England had turned against him, however, and he was denounced as a pirate. Bellomont engineered Kidd's arrest upon his return to Boston and sent him to stand trial in London. He was found guilty and hanged in 1701.
The belief that Kidd had left buried treasure contributed greatly to the growth of his legend. The 1701 broadside song "Captain Kid's Farewell to the Seas, or, the Famous Pirate's Lament" lists "Two hundred bars of gold, and rix dollars manifold, we seized uncontrolled".
It also inspired numerous treasure hunts conducted on Oak Island in Nova Scotia; in Suffolk County, Long Island in New York where Gardiner's Island is located; Charles Island in Milford, Connecticut; the Thimble Islands in Connecticut and Cockenoe Island in Westport, Connecticut.
Kidd was also alleged to have buried treasure on the Rahway River in New Jersey across the Arthur Kill from Staten Island.
Captain Kidd did bury a small cache of treasure on Gardiners Island off the eastern coast of Long Island, New York, in a spot known as Cherry Tree Field. Governor Bellomont reportedly had it found and sent to England to be used as evidence against Kidd in his trial.
Some time in the 1690s, Kidd visited Block Island where he was supplied with provisions by Mrs. Mercy (Sands) Raymond, daughter of the mariner James Sands. It was said that before he departed, Kidd asked Mrs. Raymond to hold out her apron, which he then filled with gold and jewels as payment for her hospitality. After her husband Joshua Raymond died, Mercy moved with her family to northern New London, Connecticut (later Montville) where she purchased much land. The Raymond family was said by family acquaintances to have been "enriched by the apron".
On Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy, as early as 1875, there were searches on the west side of the island for treasure allegedly buried by Kidd during his time as a privateer. For nearly 200 years, this remote area of the island has been called "Money Cove".
In 1983, Cork Graham and Richard Knight searched for Captain Kidd's buried treasure off the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc. Knight and Graham were caught, convicted of illegally landing on Vietnamese territory, and each assessed a $10,000 fine. They were imprisoned for 11 months until they paid the fine.
Edgar Allan Poe uses the legend of Kidd's buried treasure in his story "The Gold Bug" (1843).
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