William Kidd petitioned King William III of England to become a Royal Navy Captain in 1695. Despite having a safe, comfortable life as a successful New York merchant captain, he actually wanted to serve his country.
For this purpose he traveled to London in 1695. Naively, he thought his experience would automatically convince the powers that be that he could lead men in service of the nation. Shortly after arriving in England, Kidd ran into another New Yorker, a merchant named Robert Livingston, who convinced him that the Navy was not the place for a man of his talents.
You see, Willilam Kidd had served England fighting as a privateer, a private contractor,...
...for England against France in the Caribbean before retiring to New York to marry a rich widow and become a member of early Manhattan's high society. A privateer was a private captain who served the nation in wartime for profit. Think independent contractors in Iraq. Both these merchant captains and the similar, modern mercenaries work somewhat independently of the government for an agreed purpose according to specific guidelines in exchange for the promise of riches. Just as executives and soldiers in these firms earn far more than officers and soldiers in the American armed forces, privateer captains and seamen could earn far more than those employed by the Royal Naval whose families often fell into poverty fighting the government to receive the miniscule wages that often arrived late while fathers and husbands, often serving extended terms as conscripts, risked their lives with neither the best arms nor orders. Privateers were merchant captains and their men who served their nation by capturing merchant vessels belonging to the enemy country. The idea was to strangle the trade of any enemy to force them to retreat or sue for peace. Privateers were not allowed to simply keep the soils of these captures, that would be piracy, but they were allowed to profit by taking the captured ship and wares to the nearest Royal Naval agent and auctioning them through him, giving much of the profits to the crown, some to the agent, and earning a profit for themselves. A large part of this profit would go to the captain and the rest would be divided amongst the crew. The captain's percentage and that to be shared by the crew was always negotiated and agreed upon prior to service. Some privateers became frustrated by the process of auctioning away much of their captured merchandise for reduced profit and succumbed to the temptation to turn pirate. William Kidd was not one of them.
Bear with me.
William Kidd, once he learned he would not become a captain in the Royal Navy, accepted a privateer comission signed by the king upon the urging of four lords to hunt pirates. Did he hope to make some profit? I imagine so. Like a soldier signing up to serve in Iraq who also hopes to earn a government paid college education after enlistment and honorable service, William Kidd agreed to share in the profits of the pirates whom he planned to capture. You see, William Kidd's comission from William of Orange, King of England not only empowered him to capture pirates and their profitable cargo, but it also allowed his lordly backers, those who funded the building of his ship, The Adventure Galley, to bypass the system of naval agents and auctions. Instead, these Entrepeneurial English Lords and King George, sorry, King William would keep the total profits of Kidd's capture (after giving a share to Kidd to split with his men) and become very rich, or richer, men.
To understand this idea, imagine a politician, a president or vice president perhaps, who formerly ran or owned stock in and whose friends and family still owned stock in oil companies receiving contracts in a conquered nation or in companies with exclusive, no bid, contracts to provide supplies and services to an occupying army. You see, the Royal Naval agent system drastically reduced profit by returning stolen goods to their original owners much like the reduced size of contracts awarded through bidding today saves the tax dollars of citizens to be returned eventually through either tax cuts, government services, or reduced federal debt.
Anyway, back to Captain Kidd. Captain Kidd traveled to the Indian Ocean to capture pirates. You see, the British East India company was making England fabulously rich, and thus politically and militarily dominant, by controling the majority of trade in Indian spices, silks and other exotic goods. Imagine if one modern nation guaranteed the safety of the government and royal family of one or more oil-rich nations and gained leverage in ensuring that its economy maintained access to that oil either through cheap importation of it or the development and extraction of it by that modern nation's own enterprising corporations.
Anyway, now imagine someone threatened that trade. Perhaps terrorists sought to overthrow the royal family or friendly government of an oil-rich nation and expel the profitable business interests of the powerful, modern nation. During William Kidd's time, European pirates terrorized English trade by capturing the silk and spice laden ships of the Indian subcontinent. This caused the powerful Grand Moghul of that land to threaten to expel the English East India Company's agents who guaranteed their company's and their country's great profit if they did not do something to stop these violent bands of hard-to-pin-down, asymetrical, terrifying fighters.
William Kidd was sent to help stop this terror, guarantee the secure profit of his nation, and enrich the powerful lords who funded his mission. Of course, they funded his mission somewhat on the cheap. You see, William Kidd had no armada. He traveled to ameliorate the pirate menace with only his one crew and his one ship. Also, his backers expected this mission to be quick writing that he should return with profit within a year or so. They expected the trip to be short, simple, easy and to pay for itself. Offering a modern and of course hypothetical analogy, I ask that you imagine a modern, powerful nation's Vice President and/or Secretary of Defense suggesting, even nearly guaranteeing, that an invasion of an oil rich nation would last weeks, doubtfully as many days as to be measured in months, and that that country would pay for its own reconstruction and then become a friendly political and ecomomic partner in a region uniquely rich in the most valuable currency of the time, oil instead of silks and spices.
Anyway, William Kidd was commisioned by people like that. Once actually in theater, he encountered a far more difficult scenario then envisioned in the optimistic and quickly composed plan of his backers. The enemy was hard to find. It sailed under multiple and often civilian seeming flags instead of advertising its ill intent. He often came across ships possessing riches owned by allies. He could not allow his crew to plunder them without becoming a pirate. Kidd, at great personal risk, refused to go pirate. However, after months of nearly fruitless searching and great suffering, Kidd did capture a ship with a French passport. At the time, England was at war with France. This ship, according to the rules of privateering, would thus be fair game and could enrich Kidd, his crew, and his backers.
However, the enemy, the actual pirates, were resourceful. One pirate in particular, Robert Culliford, not only eluded capture by Kidd, but also eventually ended his mission sending him home crippled by great losses in crew and treasure when he seemed finally on the edge of success. With his ship leaking after service extended far belong the original agreement, Kidd serched for safe harbor stopping in a bay in Madagascar. The successful and rich pirate, Robert Culliford was also anchored in this bay. However, Kidd's ship was vulnerable and his allies in the crew were few. Long, harsh service with little success and profit had convinced Kidd's temporary allies, his independent-minded crew, that Kidd was not the man to ensure their personal mission to accumulate massive wealth. Culliford, seeing an opportunity, offered them them the chance to rampage across the Indian Ocean attacking any ship they wished if they would simply mutiny and join him. They did.
Kidd barely survived the mutiny by barricading himself in the safe, "green zone," of his cabin with a chest of jewels and a collection of pistols. With almost no crew and a smaller but still significant profit, Kidd headed home. Due to poor and hasty planning that sent an unprepared and undersupplied ship to do a larger than ever understood job, Kidd had captured no real pirates.
Once back in England, however, Kidd himself was accused of piracy. Many of Culliford's and other pirate's captures were attributed to him, and the Grand Moghul wanted someone punished or else he would revoke English East India Company agents' access to the subcontinent and seize their profits. The poor-planning backers, of course, did not step forward to accept any blame. Kidd, after a quick trial whose outcome was never in doubt, found himself in a hangman's noose dangling on the bank of the river Thames. Luck, however, was on his side. The rope broke. Luck was not enough. The hangman tied a new noose, and Kidd soon spent his last living seconds kicking and struggling to breathe under the amused gaze of an English crowd.
Of course, this is a pirate story. It bares no resemblance to any modern event. It is not at all a response to the recently released Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction's report, Hard Lessons, documenting billions in waste and fraud due to "blinkered and disjointed" planning before the war, a military structure "unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with" the violence that ensued after the initial invasion despite then-Bush 41 employee Dick Cheney's perfect explanation of that possibility in justifying George Bush's refusal to go further shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991. This story has nothing to do with the final evaluation of the investigation of Special Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen Jr., an obvious anti-Bush partisan who only served in the Bush-Cheney administration and transition team and the Texas governor's office under George W. Bush, that "The overuse of cost-plus contracts, high contractor overhead expenses, excessive contractor award fees, and unacceptable program and project delays all contributed to a significant waste of taxpayers' dollars." Who would pay any attention to that? Ask anyone, Iraq is a success. The surge worked.
Now that we've cleared that up, let's return to the pirate story.
So, what happened to the true terror of the Indian Ocean, the pirate Robert Culliford? He was tried and found guilty of piracy but freed due to a pardon, one of many such pardons offered by England at the time as bribes to convince pirates to go straight and stop their violent ways. Once freed, the thirty-something Culliford disappeared from the public record. I'm sure he became an upstanding citizen. I'm sure he never returned to terrorize merchants through further piracy. I'm sure he retired to live a peaceful life somewhere far out of the reach of the then world-dominating Royal Navy... northwestern Afghanistan maybe?
This article has been cross-posted on my site.