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Facts About These Notorious Law Breakers and Their Criminal History

Khalid Elhassan May 20, 2020 34 min

Al Capone - Bugsy Siegel — 1930s mobsters. Eugene Cannevari Collection

3. A Failed Pirate Hunter

In 1695, William Kidd’s mission was expanded. He was presented with a letter of marque signed by King William III, giving him a roving commission to attack pirates in the Indian Ocean- thus making him a sort of legal criminal. The voyage started inauspiciously: sailing out of London in a newly equipped ship, the 34 gun and 150 men crew Adventure Galley, Kidd offended a Royal Navy captain by failing to salute his warship. The captain retaliated by stopping the Adventure Galley, and seizing half of its crew to press into the Royal Navy.

Crossing the Atlantic short-handed, Kidd made it to New York, where he replenished his crew with whatever out-of-work seafarers he could find. Most of them were hardened criminals and former pirates. Sailing into the Indian Ocean, a third of Kidd’s crew died of cholera by the time they reached the Comoros Islands. To top it off, he was unable to find any of the pirates he had been sent to hunt down.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.