When a Scottish pirate pulled off a major heist near Cochin

Given the sheer magnitude of loot and plunder that took place in India over the centuries, the name William Kidd would not ring a bell for those familiar with infamous characters of yesteryear.

The Dundee-born sailor came to be known as the pirate Captain Kidd at the end of the 17th century when he seized an Armenian-hired merchant vessel which contained gold, silver, muslins, satin and other goods purchased from India.

Born in 1645, Captain Kidd was initially hired by the British as a privateer to engage in ‘commerce raiding,’ a form of naval warfare used to destroy the logistics of the enemy in the open sea by attacking merchant ships. After a successful stint to protect English interests in the Americas in the 1690s, Kidd was tasked with hunting down pirates and French ships in the Indian Ocean.

His main base was the Malabar Coast until 1697, where he continued to serve his English masters. In a 1925 article, the Cleveland Plain Dealer described his capture of a merchant vessel. “The lot fell on a Moorish ship, out from Surat, under the command of a Dutch skipper,” the paper said. “On sighting her, Kidd went to the flag locker where had a bundle of symbolic aliases and picked out the flag of France, and flung it brightly from his topmast.”

They pursued the ship and sailed along it, and lured the crew into a false sense of security as the latter felt it was a French ship that was there to protect them. Many ships plying that route had French clearance papers at that time.

Once Kidd boarded the ship, he claimed he was seizing it for the English. There weren’t too many items of value on the Moorish ship. “Two horses, some quilts and odds and ends of cargo,” the paper said. “He kept the ship with him until his next trip to Madagascar; probably according to his custom, putting the officers ashore at Malabar and recruiting his forces with any of the captives who wished to go along with him.”

At this point, Kidd’s successes were the toast of Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont, the governor of the English colonies of New York, Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. This was about to change as the privateer decided to ‘turn pirate.’

In 1698, in the seas of Cochin, Captain Kidd spotted the 400-ton Quedagh Merchant, a ship hired by Armenian traders to transport high-value cargo to West Asia and beyond.

Kidd used the same modus operandi with the Quedagh Merchant as he did with the Moorish ship, tricking the former with a French flag. Once captured, the Scot boarded the ship and staged a ‘drama’ that was documented by the Cleveland paper:

“So soon as Kidd came up the side, the Armenians rushed towards him and with loud cries and prayers besought him to return them their ship. They thrust at him the respectable ransom of twenty thousand rupees. Kidd waved their offer away, remarking that it was a very small parcel of money. He then called his men and instructed them to go off on the forecastle and hold a mimic conference together, wherein they were to pretend to vote upon the fate of the captured craft. With solemn stupid faces, they grouped off by themselves, the while the plaints of the distracted Armenians assailed their hairy ears.”

The group then returned to the captain and said they would retain the ship. Kidd then expressed helplessness to the Armenians. “He was acting the part of an English officer taking in a suspect enemy ship,” the paper said. “The farce of the crew’s conference was a by-play to divert the Armenians’ clamour from one to many heads, and perhaps to show the incorruptibility of these patriotic British seamen.”

Kidd had no intention of depositing the stolen goods with the Crown and took them to Madagascar.

News of this loot reached the Earl of Bellomont, who later had Kidd arrested in a covert operation in Boston. The now-disgraced privateer stood trial in London and was found guilty and hanged.

The stolen wealth was never recovered and many treasure hunters went to Madagascar in pursuit of the gold and silver from India. Captain Kidd was later portrayed romantically in popular fiction and the press.