Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents
History
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents
Pirates; Privateering; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Sources
Captain William Kidd declareth and saith That in his chest which he
left at Gardiners Island there was three small baggs or more of Jasper
Antonio or stone of Goa,[2] severall pieces of Silk stript with silver
and gold, Cloth of Silver, about a Bushell of Cloves and Nutmegs mixed
together and strawed up and down, severall books of fine white
callicoes, severall pieces of fine Muzlins, severall pieces more of
flowred silk, he does not well remmember what further was in it. he
had an Invoyce thereof in his other chest. all that was contained in
the said Chest was bought by him and some given him at Madagascar,
nothing thereof was taken in the ship _Quedah Merchant_. he esteemed
it to be of greater value than all else that he left at Gardiners
Island except the gold and silver. there was neither gold or silver in
the chest. It was fastned with a Padlock and nailed and corded about.
[Footnote 2: A fever medicine, consisting of various drugs made up
into a hard ball, lately invented in India by Gaspar Antonio, a lay
brother of the Society of Jesus.]
Further saith That he left at said Gardiners Island a bundle of nine
or tenn fine India Quilts, some of them Silk with fringes and
Tassells.
WM. KIDD.
_85. Lord Bellomont to the Board of Trade. November 29, 1699._[1]
[Footnote 1: Public Record Office, C.O. 5:861, no. 4. Endorsed as
received Jan. 19, 1700, and read at the Board Feb. 9.]
BOSTON the 29 November 99.
_My Lords_
I gave your Lordships an account in my Letter of the 24th of last
moneth[2] by the last ship that went hence for England, of my taking
Joseph Bradish and Tee Wetherley, the two Pyrates that had escaped
from the Goal of this town;[3] and I then also writ that I hoped in a
little time to be able to send your Lordships the news of my taking
James Gill[am] the Pyrat that killed Captain Edgecomb, Commander of
the _Mocha_ frigat for the East India Company,[4] and that with his
own hand while the Captain was asleep, and Gillam is supposed to be
the man that Incouraged the Ship's Company to turn Pyrats, and that
ship has ever since been robbing in the Red Sea and Seas of India, and
taken an Incredible deal of wealth; if one may believe the reports of
men that are lately come from Madagascar, and that saw the _Mocha_
frigat there, she has taken above two millions sterling. I have been
so lucky as to take James Gillam, and he is now in Irons in the Goal
of this town, and at the same time with him was sie[ze]d one Francis
Dole,[5] in whose house he was harboured, who proves to be one of
Hore's Crew, H[ore] one of Colonel Fletcher's Pyrates commissioned by
him from New York; Dole is also committed to Goal. My taking of Gillam
was so very accidentall that I cannot forbear giving your Lordships a
narrative of it, and one would believe there was a strange fatality in
that m[an's] Starrs. On Saturday the 11th Instant late in the evening
I had a letter from Colonel Sanford,[6] Judge [of] the Admiralty Court
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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