Scapegoat, Will-o'-the-Wisp?

CAPTAIN KIDD & HIS SKELETON ISLAND --Harold T. Wilkins--Liveright ($3).

Give a dog an ill name, says the proverb, and he'll soon be hanged. Hang a man for piracy and he'll be known as a bloody pirate to all posterity. Captain Kidd, who ended his career in a gibbet on Execution Dock, has become the legendary archetype of brutal buccaneer. Says Biographer Wilkins: poor Captain Kidd was a much-maligned man. In a 411-page examination of the contemporary documents in Kidd's case, Sleuth Wilkins sniffs the cold, obscured trail like an eager beagle. His beaglish enthusiasm, indeed, takes Author Wilkins in a wide circle: after attempting to show that Captain Kidd was no rope-worthy pirate, he goes on to assert that Kidd's treasure island actually exists, and he knows where.

William Kidd was a Scotsman born (about 1645), though his parentage is as much in doubt as his early life. A seafaring man of some sort he became, and by the time he was 45 he was well known in the little colony of New York as a competent skipper and a man of substance. Where he learnt his competence and where he got his substance is conjectural: probably the East Indies. As a citizen of Manhattan, Kidd married a twice-widowed lady, built a house on the Hudson and traded in real estate. One of the lots he sold is now No. 56 Wall Street. When Trinity Church was being repaired, Captain Kidd lent a runner & tackle to hoist stones.

In the late ith Century piracy was a flourishing business--not only in the Spanish Main but off the North American coast, in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the East Indies. And the line between pirate and privateer was as thin as the line between hijacker and bootlegger. The scheme that led Captain Kidd to the gallows, according to Author Wilkins, was a technically legal venture in privateering. And it was not Kidd's idea in the first place. Robert Livingstone of Albany and Lord Bellomont, Governor of New York, concocted the scheme, got Kidd a letter of marque from William III and sent him out on the Adventure Galley to prey on pirates and incidentally make his backers some money.

With luck, Author Wilkins thinks Kidd might have stayed on the right side of the law. But his luck was out. His crew, a hard lot, was mutinous, more than half piratical from the start. And when he did bump into a pirate he sometimes embarrassingly turned out to be an old friend. At that Kidd managed to capture several apparently legal prizes.

Lord Bellomont wrote Kidd two weasel letters to lure him ashore, then clapped him in jail, sent him to London. At his trial Kidd was not allowed counsel. As evidence that the prizes he had taken were legitimate, he had kept their French "passes" (commissions); but these vital papers had been taken from him and he could not produce them in court. Their evidence would not have affected the verdict, thinks Author Wilkins. The British Admiralty was determined to make an example of him. Reason: India's Great Mogul, tired of English pirates, had threatened to drive out the East India Co. from his domain unless some scapegoats were hanged. For some unexplained reason, Kidd did not try to implicate his backers, who for their part sacrificed him without a qualm. So Kidd's life was ended at 56, and his immortal notoriety begun. At his execution he shocked the attendant parson by being "inflamed with Drink, which had discomposed his mind, that it was in a very ill frame."

No sooner had Kidd been laid by the heels than rumors of his buried treasure spread like wildfire, set amateur treasure-seekers (and still does) searching and digging. One reason: the "treasure" captured with Kidd was disappointingly small, indicated to optimists that more must be cached somewhere. Another: in a last attempt to buy his life, Kidd offered to guide a King's ship to hidden treasure worth -L-100,000. In the 19th Century nine different companies were formed to look for this legendary hoard. Author Wilkins believes Kidd's treasure is really there--somewhere--thinks he knows at last where it may be found.

In recent years a friend of his who collects buccaneering relics has acquired at different times four maps, ostensibly initialled and annotated by Kidd himself, of an island in "a certain remote Far Eastern sea." The first three maps gave no latitude or longitude; the fourth, strangely enough, gave both. Equally luckily for Author Wilkins and his friend, the island in question is not on any modern map or chart. Soon there will be another expedition to have another go at the will-o'-the-wisp of Captain Kidd's treasure. And Author Wilkins will sign on for the voyage.

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