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Title: The Pirate Hunter : The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks ISBN: 0-7868-8451-7 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 18 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (42 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Notorious Pirate Who Wasn't
Comment: Mention the name of Captain Kidd, and you can't help thinking of buried treasure, bloodthirsty tales of plunder, and general maritime mayhem. There was a real Captain Kidd, and he did sail among the pirates, but we all have the wrong idea about him, according to Richard Zacks, whose _The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd_ (Theia / Hyperion) sets the record straight. William Kidd was a master mariner who lived in New York, on Wall Street, no less, at the end of the seventeenth century. He had a wife and daughter. "He was no career cutthroat, no cartoon Blackbeard, terrifying his prey by putting flaming matches in his hair." Kidd was a respectable sea captain, who had enormously bad luck in his endeavors to hunt pirates for profit.
Kidd was no pirate, but a privateer, recruited by powerful Lords and merchants to rob from the pirates that had robbed from the merchants. He had a secret commission from King William III himself, who privately took a ten percent share of any profits that Kidd might come up with. Kidd sailed on _Adventure Galley_, a three-master built in England and launched in 1696 specifically for Kidd's mission, with a crew of 150. Many of the crew had been pirates themselves, and Kidd was putting himself in an uncomfortable management position. He had nothing but bad luck in finding pirates to rob, but even before he did so, rumors of his being a pirate himself had sprung up. After his crew mutinied, he tried to return to his home in New York, but discovered to his surprise that he was the most wanted man in America. He sneaked back towards New York, and in another unpiratical act, sought the help of his lawyer. He made overtures to Lord Bellomont, his prime backer, but the gouty and treacherous Bellomont, having learned of the extent and whereabouts of the haul Kidd had brought back, put him into jail. Kidd was shipped in chains to England. The corruption involved in his jail term and his trial are well detailed here.
Zacks has dug into account books, diaries, and forgotten, centuries-old governmental documents to bring out the truth about Kidd, but this is far from a dusty academic account. Zacks has fun telling us about how pirates really lived, how politics was conducted, the difficulties of shipboard life, and how different the times were from our own. For example, he writes of a messenger: "As he reached the East River, the Manhattan skyline loomed: a windmill and two church steeples towering over a seaside row of three-story gable roofs." Kidd's was a wild and eventful life, even if it wasn't the life of a pirate. My guess is that Zacks's book will never overcome the centuries of folklore that have accumulated around Kidd's story, but the true story is still a rousing treasure.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Compelling Account
Comment: The true story of Captain Kidd? Very possibly the closest we may get. Zacks has done a compelling amount of research from the English archives to the colonial archives to some of the sites involved. He presents for comparison as much detail of the lives of two men living roughly parallel lives with the various points of divergence. It would have been hard to fill a book with the existing details of William Kidd's life without verging over into the boring realm of historical manuscript. Rather than take that path, Zacks, chose to compare and contrast William Kidd and Robert Culliford, contemporaries, whose paths crossed at several instances throughout their lives.
As a result, we have been given a lively narrative focused on the adult life of William Kidd, interspersed with the life of Robert Culliford, arch pirate. Given the research, we can forgive Zacks the suppositions and surmises he makes to flesh out the narrative. The story goes a long way toward dispelling many of the myths associated with the man, Captain Kidd.
If the book lacks in any way, it is the limited use of images, including any picture of William Kidd, although Zacks references one early on in the book. The maps used for reference are older period maps with the appropriate names, but of limited use and difficult to read. That said, this book has become a valued member of my pirate library and easily deserves the highest ranking.
P-)
Rating: 5
Summary: Puts you right in the thick of it! ARRR
Comment: This book is phenomenal. Zacks does an extraordinary job of sending the reading back in time and recreating a New York City harbor swarming with pirates, trade routes thick with theives, and London full of entrepreneurs and waring social classes. I've never read a book that is so effective in recreating details and evoking feelings of an era long past. tremendous.
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Title: Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates by David Cordingly ISBN: 0156005492 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Batavia's Graveyard : The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash ISBN: 0609807161 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Blue Latitudes : Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz ISBN: 0312422601 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The History of Pirates by Virginia Mariners Museum, Angus Konstam, David Cordingly ISBN: 1585745162 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin ISBN: 048640966X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 26 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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