Ghost Stories Collection

Captain Kidd

In the age of pirates the gallows were a ghastly sight, usually complete with a pirate with a rope around his neck. For these long dead pirates the only dancing they'd be doing was in the wind. But perhaps long before they were hung as warnings, back when they were first hung, they may have done a dance known as the hangman's jig. The hangman's jig often referred to the movement of a hungs man's feet as he attempted to breathe. Perhaps one of the most famous pirates to do the hangman's jig was Captain Kidd. Captain Kidd was once a privateer for the British Navy however it was from here that he turned to piracy. Kidd was in London in when he set off on the voyage that was to be his undoing. He left Deptford in February in his ship with a government commission to suppress pirates in the Indian Ocean. It took him almost a year to reach Madagascar and the East African coast and he then thought it more profitable to turn pirate himself. He captured several merchant ships and in a furious rage when his crew were on the verge of mutiny, he struck his ship's gunner, William Moore, Kidd presently sailed for the West Indies, arriving in April to discover that the government had proclaimed him a pirate. He left the ship at the island of Hispaniola, where she was unloaded and subsequently burned, bought a small ship called the Antonio and sailed to Boston, where he tried to convince the British governor, the Earl of Bellomont, that he was innocent of the accusations against him. Bellomont had him arrested and sent back to England to be tried for his crimes Later in the month rumour had it that jewels found on Kidd's ship had been valued at an equivalent to £10 million today. Kidd was tried for the murder of Moore and on multiple counts of piracy, and found guilty. Nine members of his crew were in the dock with him on the piracy charges. Whether the evidence was convincing and the trial fair has been debated ever since.Kidd became a legendary figure largely because no one ever discovered what had happened to the rest of his treasure. It is said that anyone who goes searching for the treasure has encountered an angry and unfairly tried kidd and very few are seen again.