Captain Kidd’s Adventure Prize Found
The Adventure Prize, the last ship taken by the worst pirate in history, Captain William Kidd, was found in 10 feet of water a mere 70 feet from the shores of the Dominican Republic.
From Live Science here:
Charles Beeker of IU said his team has been licensed to study the wreckage and convert the site into an underwater preserve for the public.
It is remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location, just 70 feet off the coast of Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic in less than 10 feet of seawater.
“I’ve been on literally thousands of shipwrecks in my career,” Beeker said. “This is one of the first sites I’ve been on where I haven’t seen any looting. We’ve got a shipwreck in crystal clear, pristine water that’s amazingly untouched.”
To call Captain Kidd the Forrest Gump of Piracy would be an insult to Gump. After all, Gump tended to always land on his feet. Captain Kidd, on the other hand, went on a worldwide tour of personal destruction that started as soon as he left England with the intent to hunt real pirates.
His handpicked crew was gang-pressed into Royal Naval service on the River Thames, in sight of London. Virtually crewless, he had to hire new help in New York, and most of them died of cholera when he tried to go to Madagascar to look for pirates.
After several failures to catch a ship, Kidd angrily smashed a bucket upside the head of a crewman and killed him for mouthing off. Kidd wasn’t worried though, he thought he had powerful political friends that would protect him back home.
Desperate for a little action that would cover the debts that his investors had paid him for his miserable failure of an expedition, he turned pirate and took the Quedah Merchant from an Englishman Captain. The Quedah Merchant was loaded with silk, silver and gold, and he renamed the ship the Adventure Prize.
The rest of his crew later abandoned Kidd in favor of a real pirate, and Kidd returned to America to face the consequences of his actions. Kidd left the Prize in the Carribbean with instructions that it be burned. He tried to bury his treasure to use it as a bargaining chip in his trial, but his booty was easily discovered and entered into his trial as evidence against him. He was turned over to London to face trial by the admiralty.
Kidd was eventually hung at execution dock and his body was left dangling in a cage from London Bridge for two years as a warning to other pirates.
