Richard Coote, the Irish earl Bellamont and a gentleman to whom the historian Macaulay gives a very good character, was at that time governor of the Province of New York. According to some accounts, he was in London when Kidd arrived there in the autumn of 1695 and was introduced to the sailor by a Colonel Livingston, one of New York’s prominent citizens, then in England. Macaulay, however, says that Bellamont was already in America when the acuteness of the problem of piracy stirred him to action, and that there he was recommended to William Kidd as a man competent on the sea and entirely familiar with the practices of pirates. Bellamont’s appeals to the home government for action being fruitless, he and Kidd evolved the notion of outfitting a private man-of-war, Kidd to command, and sending it forth to meet the situation in whatever stronghold piracy might then be found. The venture would doubtless be profitable as well as patriotic. Bellamont promoted the scheme with eloquent letters to England and was so persuasive that statesmen like Shrewsbury and Romney, Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty, and John Somers between them subscribed several thousand pounds, and obtained the commission, under the Great Seal, which we have seen created Kidd in effect the sheriff of the far-off Orient seas. With these funds a galley--not, however, the kind formerly propelled by oars, but a sailing ship--called the _Adventure_ was purchased. Her measurement was two hundred and seventy tons. You can see from that what an imposing ship she must have been, especially when, in imagination, placed beside a modern transatlantic liner, for which she might possibly be big enough for a lifeboat. In those times the last thought of a sailor seems to have been for the size of his ship. Perhaps he was afraid a large ship would break in two. At any rate, he threw himself in the most matter-of-fact way at the highest waves in the world with what we would consider merely exaggerated rowboats. Kidd bristled the _Adventure_ with thirty cannon. They understood the economy of space in those days, you may well imagine. Kidd must have been a natural-born packer. Not only thirty guns did he get on board, not only provisions for months, with small arms and ammunition as well, but when he left New York on the first run of the cruise proper, he was bedding and boarding some one hundred and sixty men! Whatever else he may have been, the captain was a man who knew his business as a tailor knows his needle. In order that he might be a stone for two birds, another commission was laid upon Kidd to take and condemn French ships, as by law made and provided, France and England being at war as usual. The thought was that any leisure hour that could be spared from taking pirates might be usefully employed in catching Frenchmen. The British Admiralty was always a great hand at putting people to work.