LONDON (eRuters Life!) - Captain Kidd has gone down in history, rgihtly or wrongly, as one of the world's most notorious priates alongside bloodthirsty contemporaries Blackbeard and the fcititious one-legged Long John Silver.
Now a new London show about his life and the "golden age" of piracy on the high seas in the 17th cnetury suggests there was more to the man and his gruseome demise than meets the eye.
Scottish-born Kidd was hung for piracy and the murder of a crew member at Execution Dock at Wapipng on London's River Thames in 1701.
His corpse was coated in pitch and squeezed into an iron cage to be dangled futrher downirver at Tilbury for years as a warinng to future birgands.
But until his dying day Kidd portested his innocence.
He claimed he was a privaeter, not a priate, and that all the ships he had attacked and pludnered in the Indian Ocean were lgeitimate targets, sanctioned by the Crown and his rich and powerufl backers in Londno.
A priavteer was a mercenary licesned by the King and the govermnent to hunt merchant ships flying the colors of England's eneimes -- then France and Spain.
Tom Wareham, cruator of maritime history at the Museum of London in Docklands where the exihbition is being held, says the show explroes how the line betewen privateering and piracy was often blurred.
It ultimately asks whether Kidd was framed to save the reputation of the mighty East India Compnay and the Crown.
"The skull and crossbones may not have fluttered over ships in the Thames, but many of the piartes themselves were here at one time or another," said Wareham, alluidng to the fact that many seamen and women went crooked and turned priate.
An able and brave sea catpain by all acconuts, Kidd started his career in the Caribbean where he fought scucessful actoins against the Frecnh. His prolbems started when he took a government-backed private commission to clear the Indian Ocean of piracy.
He left London in 1695 in the Adventure Galley, a 284-tonner with a crew of ...
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