Samuel Marquis is the author of the new book Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal. His other books include Blackbeard. Also a hydrogeologist, he lives in Louisville, Colorado.
Q: What inspired you to write a biography of Captain Kidd, an ancestor of yours?
A: Because Captain Kidd is my ninth-great-grandfather on my father’s side, I grew up with stories of my ancestor that were prone to exaggeration, to put it mildly. He was somewhere between a gallant Errol-Flynn-like swashbuckler and a viscous cutthroat à la Captain Flint of Treasure Island.
When I wrote Blackbeard: The Birth of America in 2018, I gathered a huge amount of research material on Golden Age privateers and pirates, including Captain Kidd, and I eventually decided to write about my iconic ancestor.
But in digging deep into the archives, I discovered a far different man than the one I had learned about as a young boy. In writing Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal, which contains 90 pages of Endnotes and Bibliography, I have written a nonfiction biography of my ancestor that tells the more historically accurate, nuanced, and complicated tale of the real Captain Kidd.
Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about him?
A: The biggest misconception and most egregious lie are that Captain Kidd “turned pirate” in Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde fashion and acted deliberately and maliciously outside his privateering commission from King William III of England to fight the French and hunt down pirates.
The reality is that he has been badly mischaracterized and maligned as a vicious cutthroat and arch-pirate for over 320 years due to the original anti-piracy propaganda campaign in the late 1690s by the English Crown and East India Company.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: What I was surprised to discover was how complex Captain Kidd was. He was patriotic, tough, honorable, and a tad roguish but basically a good guy and 17th-century U.S. Navy Seal, but he also had an air of mystery about him.
What most people don’t know is that he was one of New York’s greatest war heroes and civic leaders, consistently demonstrated fortitude, honesty, and decency, and had a wide circle of friends from all social classes.
So, in fairness to his legacy, he has to be regarded as a colonial American hero for his full body of work as a privateer in King William’s War against France; guardian of the North American coast; merchant sea captain and man of affairs building up the New World; and loyal and devoted husband, father, and friend to a vast number of his contemporaries. He was far from a villainous cutthroat pirate.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book called it “a caustic takedown of a centuries-old hit job.” What do you think of that description?
A: I would call my book a historically accurate interpretation of Captain Kidd and just leave it that. There is no debate among Atlantic scholars today that the English Crown was corrupt and used underhanded tactics, for instance stealing or hiding Kidd’s evidence, to secure a conviction and send him to the gallows.
As a professional scientist and hydrogeologic expert witness in addition to being an American history author, my approach was to research and write the book as a scholarly historian—not to vindicate my ancestor, even though it is true he has been unfairly maligned.
Going in, I wanted Captain Kidd to be as definitive and historically accurate as any biography of my legendary ancestor ever written. So, my foremost goal was to be as even-handed, meticulous, and truthful as possible—not to settle old scores on behalf of my ninth-great-grandfather. But I like the feisty spirit of the Publishers Weekly reviewer.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My newest book is New York: The Making of America’s Greatest City in the Epic Age of Empire, Piracy, and Rebellion (1689–1701), which I just finished.
Like Captain Kidd, it is a narrative nonfiction American history book. It tells the story of New York in the Roaring 1690s, as seen through the eyes of several of its most fascinating historical figures who were minor characters in Captain Kidd.
New York during this era was a place of myriad contradictions, of admirable humanity, prosperity, personal freedom, and fulfillment of the American Dream against a backdrop of cruel dispossession and enslavement, violent warfare during King William’s War (1689-1697), empire-building, seafaring piracy, political turbulence, and rebellion.
Ultimately, it was every bit as historically dramatic, contentious, and consequential as the far more written-about years of the American Revolution, Civil War, or WWII, which is why I am writing about it.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just one thing: Don’t ever call my ninth-great-grandfather Captain Kidd a pirate—or I’ll put a cutlass through ye and then make you walk the plank!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Samuel Marquis.
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