William Kidd Left Colonial America as a Highly Respected Member of Society and Returned a Notorious Outlaw
By 1698, William Kidd had abandoned reluctance and any pretense that he was a lawful privateer, and turned full pirate. That year, he sealed his fate when he attacked a British East India Company ship. The powerful company exerted its influence in London, and Kidd was declared an outlaw of the sea. Unbeknownst to him, by the time he returned to the American Colonies, his public image had been transformed from a member of high society into that of an infamous pirate, the notorious “Captain Kidd”. Attitudes towards piracy had changed from the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, that had prevailed when he began his voyage.
Now, crackdown was in the air, and the powers that be were eager to make an example of somebody. The colonial authorities arrested Kidd as soon as he arrived in Boston, and sent him in chains across the Atlantic for prosecution in London. There, word of his previous connections with government elites caused a scandal, and the powerful supporters whom he had expected to defend him abandoned him in droves. He was swiftly tried and convicted, and on May 23rd, 1701, was hanged, after which his body was gibbetted and left to rot in a cage on the Thames for all to see.
