Latest / TheCampyTraveler / The Pirate Captain Kidd part 2: Moons are only good for romantic endeavors...

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The Pirate Captain Kidd part 2: Moons are only good for romantic endeavors... · TheCampyTraveler

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Imagine landing your dream job and marrying the love of your life in the same breath.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Everything looks better than it has ever looked.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: And then even before you can clock in on day one, it all starts to fall apart.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what happens to our hapless Captain Kid.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Captain Kid in today's episode, so buckle up because it's gonna get really good.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Holly the Campy Traveler.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Campy Traveler, and I'm joined by Arden.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit more about yourself.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: I am your child.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Here with my guest, Cutie Batootti Arden, as we rejoin Pirate Captain Kid, right as his life looks the rosiest, and then kind of watch it all slowly start to sink.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Dude, this guy should have been a Shakespeare play.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: He's star-crossed in his own, all by himself.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Follow along as Kid marries the love of his life, becomes a father, lands a career-defining promotion.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Powerful politicians hand pick him for this, and then the king signs off on it.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: He designs and commands one of the finest ships in all of England.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: And then before he reaches the open sea, everything falls apart.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: His crew is stolen out from under him.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Disease kills his sailor.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: It's part IT for a phone.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of normal for the time, but it happens.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: His men start plotting mutiny, and in one split-second decision, he does something historians still argue.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: But before we dive into it, we realized last time we got so excited to tell the story that we really didn't give you much about ourselves.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're a mother and a daughter, and she is supporting me in this, but also she's adorable.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and so smart.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: And just anyway, there's no one I'd rather travel with than her.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: She's been listening to my stories for forever, so she kind of knows.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: But also, she's not afraid to state an opinion, which I love.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of weird to introduce ourselves to you when we don't really know you and you don't really know us.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're kind of open books-ish.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: So drop questions or comments and ask because we'd love to interact with you.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: But at this point, we're just going to tell you the stories.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: This is only the second episode we've recorded.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: So hopefully, if you've been following along, you kind of understand what Campy Traveler is all about at this point.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: It's about taking a mental break.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: I want to give that to you in your day.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: This is a safe space full of whimsy and wonder and maybe just a little bit of darkness sometimes.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: But you know, the good kind of spooky darkness.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: It's fun.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: I can't help the dark humor.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: It just happens.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: So if I tried to be something else, it wouldn't really work.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, anyway, here comes pre-packaged.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: So, and unfortunately, actually, we'll just dive in.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get curious.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: If you're joining us for this episode, I'm really glad that you are.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I interrupted myself.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's the ADH neuro spicy thing going on.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: We got so excited in the very first recording that we never really introduced ourselves, which is what we're trying to do here.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'll have plenty to edit and pick and put in and out.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: But this probably will not be the episode, the very first episode that I publish.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: So if you've been listening along since episode one, this is probably actually going to be episode five or six.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: And so if you notice, like, wow, they got really weird all of a sudden, it's because this is the actual first practice.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: These are the first practice rounds.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Second, second practice round.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we're gonna kind of it's gonna look like we've gone manic, but hey, you know, there we go.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So if you're just joining us, I'm so glad you're here today as we're continuing the story of Captain Kid.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't listen to the last episode, you're okay.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be lost right here.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: There's but there's a lot that happened.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: So if you find that you want to know more about this dude.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: What's his name?
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Thomas?
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Freaking Thomas.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Which Thomas are you talking about?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: The second mate who forgets.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, no, no, no.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: His name wasn't Thomas Culliver.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: I've got it written down here.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: We'll get when we get to it, but we'll know, yeah.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to know more about him and how he started out as an impoverished Scottish child raised in charity houses by a single mom and went all the way to be the hero of New York and captain of his own ship, that's episode one.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's good stuff there if you're curious.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, this chapter, stay tuned because there's a lot to go over.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: This chapter is still way too much to cover in this chapter to get all the way to the end of kids' story.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And it's a sad end, so maybe we don't want to rush it, but I don't want to rush the romantic drama, which is in this chapter.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh, of course.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm not necessarily a love story person, but these Star-Cross things are interesting and it's scandalous, which, you know, it's not the romance I want.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't want it's not the romance I want to stretch out.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: It's that scandal.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: So as you remember, in the last episode, we left him really flying high.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: He had just saved New York or been instrumental in saving New York from Leicester's rebellion, which was one of the rebellions leading up to the actual full-scale revolution in the United States.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: And he was solidly British, so you know, not great.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: But it was his times, it was his loyalty, and he did his duty, what he thought was his duties.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And that actually, keep that in your mind.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: He was fiercely loyal to Britain.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: In the end, anyway.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So today, Captain Kidd set sail in his capacity as an official privateer.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: In the first episode, he was a privateer, but it didn't have an official commission from the king.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: But because he was in such high notoriety, he had pockets full of cash, he had the ability to buy in, and he was friends with all the fancy pants nobles and governing bodies that were in the colonies.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: So he became officially official right down to the king signing off on his papers.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And that came with perks and privileges, a little bit of pressure and titles.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: So you can kind of decide for yourself if that was a sweet gig or not.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And there we go.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Lester's Rebellion and the glow of good fortune.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: And this is where he meets Miss Mrs.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't she have the five names?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Miss Mrs.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Sarah Bradley Cox Ort.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and we're gonna just party.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: And she is not exactly single, very eligible, according to Kidd, but not exactly single.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: And there's a little bit of scandal there.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Sarah was at this point still married to her second husband.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: But given how famously fickle life expectancy is in the 17ths.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Because they just kind of add the names.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: She gets to keep her own and they just her most recent husband was a successful merchant named Mr.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Oort.
7:01
unknown: Oort?
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Like the Oort Cloud.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I could go back and get his full name, but he's barely here.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: It's only significant that he was married to her.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: And then he died on May 14th, 1691, in a boating accident.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: And that becomes instrumental in the rumor mill later because Captain Kidd liked boats.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Captain Kidd likes boats.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And a side note on merchants in this era, they were kind of on a boom and bust cycle, especially when you were new and didn't have a lot of extra money on sequential, successful voyages, because their whole ability to make money depended on loading up a ship with its crew and its captain, getting it all the way across the ocean to where the sugar and the linens and all the crap was, bring it all the way back safely without losing it to storms or pirates or disease.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And then they could sell it, which really was a risky venture.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: So they put all the money in up front with no guarantee.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: And if several voyages were lost to pirates or sea or disease, then you may not have a whole lot in your own bank account except for debt.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Mr.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Ort was at this time.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: He actually had a few unsuccessful times and he had a lot of debt.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: So when he died, scurvy.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: No, it wasn't, it was a boating accident, it was legitimate, not a violent death, but it was a boating accident.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: So he wasn't die of disease.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: He was actually out on pleasure on a boating accident.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And the merchants leveraged these wealthy contracts to expand their customer base and finance new voyages.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Mr.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Ort had been doing.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: So he was in a cycle of debt and he had acquired a bunch of debt when he died.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: That's all that was left.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: And this is really unfortunate because he did have assets like his ships and his company, which theoretically Sarah could continue to operate because when the ships came in with their cargo, she could sell them.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: But because again, the 1700s of it all, the only thing Sarah really could inherit was the debt and the ships and the business.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: Great.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: I know.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: That's completely fair.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Who's gonna pay who's gonna pay it back?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: Her d her her uncle?
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Like no Yeah, she had to anyway.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: So Sarah was left in financial ruin, basically.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: And this is when Kid comes in again.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: He is the hero of New York.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: He can do no wrong.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: He's got his pockets flush with cash.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: He's also a seaman and understands the opportunity here.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: He and Sarah Ort meet, and if they really did just barely meet, their courtship was incredibly short, like less than 24 hours.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Because on May 15th, 1691, Captain Kidd and Sarah Ort make it official with the ring and everything.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like a Disney princess story.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And this also kind of short-circuited the legal system because there wasn't much time for Ort to die and his estate to be divested.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: With Kidd coming in so quickly, he just kind of slid right into that role and got the assets and saved Sarah at the same time.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't a merchant, didn't want to be a merchant.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not where he stayed.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: He was offered a privateer contract.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: This was understandably prime material for the gossip rags, and not just because of the alarmingly short mourning period.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: For one thing, William was not Sarah's first husband.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: He was her third, and Sarah had already been married twice.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, the third time wasn't the charm, but we'll get into that later.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Sarah, for the record, is genuinely fascinating woman, and she really deserves a show of her own because she of the characters in here is the most resilient.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: She came back like nine lives to this woman.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: The girl's name Sarah, like Sarah Winchester, Sarah.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, we haven't talked to them about Sarah Winchester, which again, Sarah Winchester, we just came back from San Jose, this is the Winchester mystery house.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Kind of amazing.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Sarah Winchester was the bomb.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: And she married just days after.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: It also raised William's social standing considerably because Sarah, yes, William was well known, but he was still not one of them.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't born into it.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: But marrying someone like Sarah, who was born into the aristocracy, I think that it was more than anything a marriage of opportunity for both of them.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And there is plenty of evidence that they down the line actually did grow to love one another.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: And that it didn't remain just a convenient marriage.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: They actually were not married at the end of the day.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: Wanna go to the courthouse?
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: But because her second husband happened to die in a boating accident, the gossip mill had everything it needed to spin a juicy conspiracy of a secret affair, convenient timing, and kid clearing the path to matrimony by less than legal means.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because he likes boats and the husband died in a boat.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: Boat accident.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: But there is no real standing there.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And it might have been true, but because Kid, again, the timing of this, because Captain Kidd was such a hero in that moment, nobody looked too closely at any real legal wrongdoing.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And so they let it just be gossip that was good for entertaining people who liked to gossip.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: And you know, us later on.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: There's no actual evidence.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: The fact points to something far less scandalous.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Their business ran upfront investment, didn't pay off until the cargo was sold.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Staying unattached would have meant total ruin the moment the courts got involved, and Kidd offered the perfect solution.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: That was 1691 to 1695, and those were the good years.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: So he came back to New York, became a hero, married, and entered the upper crust, and had two kids.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, two kids.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can find them.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I wrote them down.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Kidd accomplishes a lot in these short years.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: He officially becomes prosperous merchant landowner in New York.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: And I'll put it in the show notes, but there's several um properties that are in New York to this day that Kid built, lived in, and invested in churches where he went.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'll talk about that.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go, if your curiosity means I gotta go touch it.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: That's my curiosity.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I always want to go.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I always want to go touch it.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Or lick it.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: A prosperous merchant, land over owner in New York, which should, in theory, give him rock solid stability.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, poor luck was Captain Kid's very most loyal companion right from the start.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Even with his papered status now equal to his aristocratic peers, the social and cultural biases of the era kept men like Kid, born common without money or connections, from ever being truly accepted.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: You were born with money?
13:53
SPEAKER_00: How could you?
13:54
SPEAKER_00: I know.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he can overstate how much this implicit implicit bias shaped what happened to him later on when these same powerful friends really needed a scapegoat.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not gonna, I'm gonna stay on track.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: The aristocracy does not love rags to riches stories the same way that we do.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: When push comes to shove, they protect their own.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And William Kidd ended up on the losing side of that prejudice.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: But for now, things are genuinely looking up between his own assets and what he inherited through Sarah, Kidd builds a lovely home or two.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: By the 1690s, he owns multiple properties and has enough wealth to help fund landmarks in New York, including Trinity Church.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: On top of his financial prosperity, William My words are just having issues today.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the politeness with which you're sitting there.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: If this wasn't being recorded, she'd be ripping me to shreds.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, me never.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: On top of the financial prosperity, Sarah and William seem genuinely happy.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: At least there's no well, there's no record to suggest otherwise.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Third time's the charm, it seems, for at least a little while.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: And they become the parents of two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Always the Sarah! And always Elizabeth.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: There really are no other names other than maybe Mary.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just as Kid settles into New Fatherhood, another opportunity lands in his lap.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: A Royal Privateering Commission.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: This is not a small thing, and the timing of it is significant.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: There's a reason why it happened a couple years later and not the minute he got back to New York.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Between his standing in New York society, his Caribbean reputation, and his role defending the Hudson during Leicester's rebellion, Kidd catches the eye of some genuinely heavy hitters in the Whig political party.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Whig W-H-I-G?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, W-H-I-G.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, the Whigs.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Not the Tories, the Whigs.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Edward Russell.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Ever heard of him?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I haven't.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: The first Earl of Ortford and the first Lord of Admiralty.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: I want to be the Earl of Ortford.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Ortford.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I said.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Orford.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: No T.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Who provided vital native and naval and political backing.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: John Summers, the first Baron Summers and Lord Chancellor of England.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: I kind of love these long titles.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Charles Talbot, first Duke of Strewsbury, the Secretary of the State.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's a bunch of them here, but I'm gonna get to the first Earl of Belmont.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: First Earl of Belmont.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And a prominent member of Parliament and newly appointed Royal Governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and critically a personal friend from of kids from the same New York social circles, and it almost certainly is that friendship that landed Kidd in the opportunity in the first place.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Was that all his title?
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: The first Earl of Belmont, prominent member of Parliament.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, William the Third probably did not personally know Kid.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Actually, we know he didn't.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: He didn't personally know him.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: But because all of these other powerful noblemen did, that's how William's William's like, he says my name must be cool.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: King William, Captain Kidd.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: They were not besties, but they were, you know, friends of friends.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a vague go find pirates and treasures assignment either.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Kid's orders named two very specific targets, Thomas Tugh and Henry Every.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Now remember, this is privateering.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: We talked about that at the beginning.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Privateering are basically deputizing not naval people to work for the Navy in the ocean hunting down specific pirates.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And if you can harass other enemies of the crown, yay, capture their stuff.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: So it was like that thin line between piracy and actual law-keeping.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: So their official thing was to hunt pirates, and these two pirates were significant: Thomas Tew and Henry Every.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I Every.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: I always seem strange to me the names that don't survive the trip through history.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea those people are.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Henry Every in particular was once known as the king of pirates.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Tew and Every together pioneered the Pirate Round.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: What's the Pirate Round?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: The Pirate Round was this sailing course that had, like you hear of like in movies, Tortuga, like these secret pirate coves that were pirates.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: They created the pirate round in the Caribbean, not the Caribbean, in the Indian Ocean, where they knew where the merchant ships would come through and then created hideaways to get away from law.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Did were was the Jolly Roger a real thing with pirates?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: What was that?
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Was the Jolly Roger a real thing with pirates?
18:42
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
18:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: I haven't dropped down that particular.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: I've heard rumors, but I can't speak about it intelligently.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: The Jolly Roger is the ship flag that has the skull and the body.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the skull and crossbones.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: But flags were a big deal.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: I know that flags were definitely a big deal and it comes into play later in this.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if they communicate between boats.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And also how you recognize friend from foe and those kinds of things.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: So that was really a big deal.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And to the pirate route, a sailing route around Africa that maximized profit and minimized the odds of getting caught.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: So they created that.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: At the time, they were arguably the most successful pirates alive.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Time just wasn't kind to their legacy.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Blackbeard and Captain Jack Sparrow simply had better marketing.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And okay, trust me, Blackbeard was a there's a reason we remember him.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: He would set his beard on fire when he went raiding chips.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: What?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: He would put firecrackers, and so he went literally flaming beard onto ships.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so wait, wait, so Jack Spear was a real real pirate?
19:40
SPEAKER_00: No.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: But he's a will, he's much a better known pirate than these pirates.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: I knew the beard.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: There's also a catch.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: This commission isn't a handout.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Kid had to fan financially buy in as an equal investor.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: I want to hunt down them.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: To help finance it, he sold his previous ship, and the construction officially began on his new vessel, the Adventure Galley.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: The Adventure Galley.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: He's not naming after himself.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Because Kid was putting his own money and would be the one at the helm.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: He got to oversee the construction down to the smallest detail, like size, fittings, armaments, and critically his crew.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: He handpicked every single member based on his personal knowledge of their character and skill.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Mutiny still happened?
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, kinda, but we'll get to that.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Mutiny absolutely still listen.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Now there is one caveat.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he was in charge of the design and the details, but the ship was actually built in England where he didn't live, so he wasn't there full time, and we'll talk about that in a second.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And that becomes a little bit significant.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: No.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, not intentional.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: The adventure galley is completed in December of 1695.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: But this is where you can already see that although Kid viewed himself as equal partner to the Whig lords bankrolling him, he very much was not.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: He had no input on when the ship was actually built and no room to negotiate financial terms once his letter of mark was in hand.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: So they're not going to give him any more money if things go wrong.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: And if his own bank runs dry, then that's no hazard pay.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And where it was built turned out to be a matter of great importance.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: It was not locally near New York, but in the shipyards of Deptford, England, a well-known yard just outside of London that built plenty of vessels, primarily for the East Area India Company.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that they were building just this one ship for this one captain, it is possible they did not put forth their best efforts on this ship.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Kidd had no real reason to object to the builder, solid reputation, seaworthy ships, but being unable to be hands on during construction 3,000 miles away from home put him at a disadvantage.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And also he didn't have the relationship with those shipbuilders.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: That he would have had in New York.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: So it's a little bit different.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: He just simply wasn't as powerful a client as the shipyard's other regulars, which may or may not have contributed to a few corners getting cut that weren't obvious even to an experienced sailor.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: So it did not look bad when he went to inspect it, but there were some problems.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into it.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Still, the finished ship was formidable.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: 34 cannons and handpicked crew of roughly 150 men, with his commission specifically targeting two and every, all kid needed now was to finish outfitting the ship and wait for the spring sailing season to set out after his bounty.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the direction of wind.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Because they're in.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: It's not just the wind, it's also the storms.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to sail out into winter storms.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: They sweater weather is on land.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Sweater leather weather is land weather.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: It's like um being an archaeologist where you go out and you go and you have it two weeks we're out there.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And you come back.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's pause here for a second because this really was a high watermark for kids' whole life.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: He'd risen from impoverished child to substantial wealth with a stellar reputation and a sea captain.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: He secured socially advantageous marriage.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Not that he didn't love Sarah, but definitely that factors in, that put him in the same room as aristocracy.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: He had his letter of mark, two daughters, and in the spring of 1696, rolled around, Kid probably felt like he had truly arrived.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: He was about to set out with his hand-picked crew on a lucrative mission.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And I've got to talk about the mission in a minute, but you need to know about every the king of pirates.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: With a lucrative mission to hunt pirates across what contemporaries called the Eastern Ocean and the Ethiopian Sea.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: We'd call it now the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Indian Oceans.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: But like the seas he sailed, there was a lot more going on beneath the surface than Kid realized.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And if he'd known, he might have avoided the fall from grace that was coming.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing we can do about it at this point.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: The dominoes are just a fallen.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Kid's letters of marks named the specific pirates, as we said a couple times.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And Henry every, yay, it was right there.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I was so I should have been patient just a little bit longer.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: The self-styled king of pirates, and he was famous for this one hall.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: He was very successful.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: He had other halls, but this one hall was the one.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: The Ganji Swane was a pilgrim ship.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And I need you to know that you can drop the image of impoverished pilgrims here.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: These were the bougie pilgrims because bougie.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Bougie pilgrims.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: There was absolutely bougie pilgrims.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: In the religion of the day, it was necessary to gain your exaltation and place in the afterlife.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: You had to complete a pilgrimage.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were super fancy and keeping up with the Joneses in your pilgrimage, this was across the oceans and the seas to Jerusalem and to places really far away.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: And it seemed like the further it was, the better your pilgrimage was, and the more fancy you could expect your afterlife to be.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: So these were bougie pilgrims.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And at that day, like when we travel, we've got our little debit card and our money's in this little plastic thing that we but no, that was not the case.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: So if you were going to go on a pilgrimage, treasure test.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: I didn't study this one, but for example, if you went from England to Jerusalem, like in the Crusades and those pilgrimages, it took three years.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: So you had to take enough money to get you there and back.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: So you had, no, that was three years total.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: So a year and a half.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: So you had massive amounts of treasure.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: And this is where the Knight Temple are.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: We will talk about the Knights Temple are, but this is where they come into the story.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: But this was before then, you had to get there and back, and you had to carry all your money there and back.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Heavy, like thick coins.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And since you're going there, you may as well invest a little bit more and bring some of that nice treasure back, cutting out the middleman.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: So the Gangeswani, this pilgrim ship, had just filled up with all of their treasure and were just starting home.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: So it was at the peak of what you could probably expect.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: Potential energy that's all dynamay.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: These programs carried enough wealth to fund their tiny entire journey.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: The ship was loaded with loose diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, gold and silver coins, jewelry, golden cups, and plates, because you know bougie people like to eat off of bougie plates.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Basically, anything you picture tumbling out of a well-stocked treasure chest was on that ship.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: The hall was worth over 500,000 British crowns, somewhere around 200 million dollars today.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: So not only was this a huge treasure ship, it was also owned by royalty.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: So the pirate responsible was British, and this would become a genuinely international incident.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: The Emperor Arangzeb A-N-G-Z-E-B.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: He was the owner of the ship.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and he was furious.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: So we have a British ship, we have an Indian ship owned by royalty in India, but pillaged by a British pirate pirate.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And this emperor was furious enough to threaten cutting off all trade with the East India Company.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: In response, the crown launched the first ever global manhunt with massive bounties.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: First ever global manhunt.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: And no one remembers his name.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Captain Every.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And to capture the stolen treasure.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: So these were the turbulent political waters that kids sailed into.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Britain's on the shit list with India.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: They're threatening to shut down the money pipeline that has funded their entire global dominance at this point.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: So this is huge.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: I think Britain's on the number one shit list.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: So he sailed into this when he boarded the adventure galley in spring of 1696.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And his number one target was to get Captain Every.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So he's part of the Hunters in the Golden Global Night.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Kid departs in the spring of 1696.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And as he's sailing down the Thames, his official mission is to hunt the River Thames because he's in England, and that's where it was.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: So the Thames went up into inland of the British Isle, and he'd sail down the Thames to get to the ocean, to then sail to Africa and onto the Indian Ocean.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: As Kid Okay.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: His official mission was to get the specific pirates, but he can also take any French ship because constant beef between France and England.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take long for Kid's luck to turn.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he doesn't even make it out of the Thames.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Kid and his crew, and this is a hand-picked crew, so what were they doing?
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Kid and his crew sail down the river toward open waters.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: They pass a royal naval ship, and something goes badly wrong, and it's petty as crap.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Whether Kid was a poor judgment of character or the naval captain was having a particularly bad day, or his crew's high spirits simply got the better of them, accounts differ exactly what happened.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Some of the crew failed to salute, is what some say.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Because you were required to show proper respect to the naval ship.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: So petty.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: So some say the crew failed to salute, others say they turned around and mooned the neighbors entirely.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: So it's crazy.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's a little bit more than not.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it was, it caused it caused genuine offense, and the naval retaliated by forcibly conscripting the majority of kids' crew into naval service on the spot.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: So his trusted crew that he has picked and paid is gone.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: It's obviously disaster.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: He left with his far too few skilled sailors to make the voyage and is trying to get replacement, but his financial backers refuse to release any more money for wages.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: So undeterred, he scrapes together a skeleton crew and sails back to New York, hoping to negotiate this in person.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't go well.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: He didn't get any more help.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: He still couldn't attract skilled laborers, skilled sailors on his budget, and his appeals to Lord Bellamont and his other backers for more money fell on deaf ears.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Do they get money from him if he gets?
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they're also not sailors and they don't work.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: They don't understand it.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: But if they're not going to get any money from him if he can't make money, if he can't sail.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: You have to get into the aristocracy mind.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: They don't care how much money you make, you don't need to make any more money than you make.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: And this is what I'm offering you.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: So make it work.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Because the world revolved around these men.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: They were so powerful, they didn't have to really think beyond that.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: The smart ones did, but the other ones did, they just couldn't get into the mindset of not being rich and not I mean it's entitlement, right?
31:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just it's just is okay.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Kid's own finances were stretched too thin that for him to bridge the gap.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And so he did the best he could, but the crew he ended up with was nowhere near as trustworthy or well known to him as the one that he lost.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Daniel was from.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: So frankly, most of these men weren't in it for the mission.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: They were in it because boarding any ship and getting out of town was a good idea for them personally.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: And they did not really care about being on the legal side of things.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: So they're like, running from l-all.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: By the time Kid finally got underway, his ship might have looked bright and shiny still.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: His crew was decidedly not.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: In 1696, with considerably less impressive crew in tow, he set sail for the Indian Ocean.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the voyage was somewhat of a disaster, and it was less comical than the one on the Thames.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: The voyage went from a somewhat comical disaster on the Thames to an outright disaster before Kid even reached his hunting ground.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: The crossing the Atlantic alone of roughly 7,000 nautical miles could take four to five months in good conditions, leaving in September 1696.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: It was not.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have ideal weather, and his crew still made decent time arriving in Madagascar, but they were sick and weak, and they went to Madagascar to get supplied.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, there wasn't disease and lemurs in Madagascar.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: No, the Madagascar really had a lot of sailor ports at the time.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Lots.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: The good travel time was about the only thing that went right.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Once in Comoro, the crew was struck with cholera.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: So they made it across the seas.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: They got cholera.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Sickness on long voyages isn't unusual and is typically eased once a crew reaches port and can restock with fresh water and supplies, but not this time.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: By the time the outbreak swept through the ship, a full third of Captain Kidd's crew was dead.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Third?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: 33.3%?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, they got they sail and they're sick and they know they're going to be sick.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: That's just what happens.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: They sail for months, they get there, but the port they arrived at was sick.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't healthy.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: So they went from sick to sick and they couldn't get the fresh supplies that they needed.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is again where flags come in.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: There was over time a flag that would be raised in a port that would identify whether the port was sick so that ships could sail on to healthy spaces.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know whether he was desperate enough that he had to stop or the flag wasn't put up that day, but he didn't get the message that cholera was there.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Kid, already struggling with the size and skill of his crew, losing a third of the remaining fighting men, put the whole mission in serious jeopardy.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: He would spend the next two years fighting far more disease than actual pirates or eligible merchant ships.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Kidd didn't do much to endear himself to his men who survived either.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Whether out of frustration or an unusually heavy load, he earned the reputation during this stretch as a rough taskmaster, constantly at odds with his crew, and they were repeatedly on the brink of mutiny.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: In October of 1697, spirits briefly lifted when a merchant ship's mast appeared on the horizon.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Kid, ever cautious, held off, giving the order to attack the ship.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: His commission only allows him to take ships of pirates or ones that are at war with England.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And this one, once they could see it, was flying Dutch colours.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is where the flags come in.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: They can see the flag, they don't attack.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: This is off limits.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: King William of England himself was Dutch-born.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Attacking a Dutch ship was about the last thing Kid could afford politically, and he knew it.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: He was smart.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: His gunner, William Moore, did not care.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Moore had been at sea for nearly two years, was sick and exhausted.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Remember those funding problems?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: The crew's low wages had been offset by promises of the cut of the plunder.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Months in, and they still hadn't taken a single ship.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: They hadn't found any pirates.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: The only thing they found was disease.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Moore wanted to attack legal technicalities, be damned.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: He just wasn't, and he wasn't alone in the view that anything.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't alone in that view.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: If anything, he spoke for the majority of the crew.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Kid, sensing exactly how dangerous that majority opinion was, tried to shut it down fast.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Tempers flared.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: Kidd called Moore a lousy dog, which again, and remained and reminded him who the captain was.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Moore shot back.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: I am a lousy dog.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Kate.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I am a lousy dog.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: You have made me so, you have brought me to ruin, and many more.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Before tensions could escalate further and crew rallied behind Moore even more solidly, Kid grabbed a wooden bucket with still bands and struck him.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a flimsy modern bucket.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, shipboard.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think these buckets you see.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: Cinderella's got a good one.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: She's anyway.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Shipboard buckets of that area were heavy, iron bound, and built to last.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: The blow caught Moore off guard, fractured his skull, and killed him.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, this effectively ended the mutiny on the spot and restored a tenuous order to the ship.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: It also was, as we'll see in the next episode, planted the seed of a murder charge that would follow Kidd for the rest of his life.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't kill him.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: But arguably it was in the course of a mutiny, which would have been legal.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: And this is the paradox of Kidd, is you can l argue legal arguments both ways.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: In 1698, the KDA merchant, between 1697 and January 1698, it was the same grim pattern on repeat.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Disease, no pirates in sight, general mis misery, but then money.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: By now it was a familiar routine.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Kid held off on any attack order until he was certain a target was legally fair game.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: His crew was weak, both physically and in numbers, and he wanted zero ambiguity about whether the catch was legal, and he also wanted to size them up.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: But he also knew his crew was desperate, and he wasn't about to let a promising ship simply sail away unchallenged.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Having identified this vet okay, so they get close enough, and this ship is finally French flag.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, fair game.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Let's go off, Kay.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And having identified the vessel as a merchant ship of French origin, Kidd ordered a ruse.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Strike the British colours, so in other words, take down the British flag and run up a French flag instead.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: The French vessels were fair legal plunder.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: This was tactically clever and it worked.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Believing the Mercada merchant sailed in close and dropped anchor.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Its gunner, doubling as a translator, rode over to meet who he assumed were fellow countrymen and handed Kid the ship's official commission papers.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Which that's it.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Official commission papers, they were French.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: I can only imagine how cool Kid played it this moment.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: His own desperate crew tense behind him, the need to keep the deception airtight, and then the payoff.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: The papers are in his hand, are French.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: French! Not just the flag, everything about the French.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: French French.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: It was the exact proof he needed to seize the ship legally without firing a single shot.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: Kid ordered the false French color struck and his own flag raised, reportedly declaring, By God, I have got you, you are a legal prize.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: The crew poured out to take stock of their hull, and they were not disappointed.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: The ship was loaded with gold, silver, silks, satin, muslins, sugar, and opium.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't quite Henry Every's legendary score, but 70,000 crowns, something in the million, something in the neighborhood of two excuse me, two, twenty million dollars today, is nothing to sneeze at.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: No.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Kidd had led his crew to victory, cunning and decisive, and gave his hungry crew their promised prize.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And for one golden moment, aboard the deck of a captured ship, soaked in silk and stolen sugar, William probably believed he'd won.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: He had his prize, his proof, his legal cover, everything a man could want to walk away clean.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: He had no idea he was standing at the very top of the fall.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Because that ship, the Kadon merchant, wasn't the trophy that would save him, it was the evidence that would hang him.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Next time we watch the wheels come off completely.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Old enemies resurface in a pirate's paradise, alliances rot, and the same crown that handed Kid his commission starts quietly deciding he's more useful to them dead, or at least convicted.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: The man who spent two years chasing pirates is about to become the most famous one in history, whether he ever truly earned the title or not.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Join us next week as Captain Kidd sails home and straight into the news.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Wait, but it was a front ship.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: Robert Culliford.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: That's the pirate we were thinking about earlier.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't appear here, but he does next time.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: That's the scallywag in the Caribbean.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: And I told you he was here, but he wasn't.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember the name you said Robert or not at the beginning.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm not gonna leave you high and dry.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: If you're still curious, there are a number of places you can actually go touch.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And I'll put those places in the show notes.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: So go down and see that.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: And then I also have um several movies and books if you want to do more research on your own, as well as the contemporary ones we talked about in the first that Kid is the quintessential modern pirate.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: There's actually a lot of books and movies made about him.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: So those are also in the show notes.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going to let you look at the show notes if you're interested in those, because they're gonna be dry if I just read off a list of a bunch of places.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: But they're all over.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: There's they're in England, they're also in New York, and they're also in the Caribbean.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: And the movies are streaming.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: You can find them still.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's rabbit hole.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: Show notes and real world places to visit are linked below.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Go fall down it.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Tell a curious friend, follow all the things, and we'll see you next time as Captain Kid's story sails right into its final and darkest chapter.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Until next week, stay curious.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Stay curious.