Customer Reviews

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Richard Zacks's "The Pirate Hunter" is a lively adventure tale with the kind of twists and turns that prove the old adage that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Along the way, he sets the record straight and rehabilitates the reputation of Captain William Kidd, the late 17th Century privateer and gentlemen who set out to hunt pirates with noble backing and ended up branded as one. Kidd is a tragic hero of the first order. Honorable (at least, by the standards of the time), resolute and with an unshakeable faith in his own abilities, he was laid low by an incredible run of double crosses and sheer bad luck. Particularly touching were his devotion to his wife and his strong sense of duty, neither of which were ultimately enough to save him.

The book's other main character is the despicable Robert Culliford, an actual pirate who betrayed Kidd twice and whose fate was tied closely to the Captain. Culliford's villany stands in sharp contrast to Kidd, giving the story a strong counterpoint.

Along the way Zacks, who demonstrates himself to be a meticulous researcher, paints a vivid portrait of the lives of sailors and pirates during the period. Zacks's authentic descriptions of what it was like to be a real life pirate bears little resemblence to the modern literary and cinematic stereotypes. His prose is vivid and highly readable, and the book feels more like a novel than a work of history as a result. My only quibble is the Zacks occasionally gets a little TOO bogged down in the details, as evidenced by the narrative's 400 plus pages.
Nevertheless, overall "The Pirate Hunter" is an excellent read for those who enjoy nautical history tales.

This book is a surprising treasure that brings to life more than just the shocking life of Captain Kidd. The biography also takes an up close look at the late seventeenth century on the high seas and in the major harbor towns. Digging into the documentation, author Richard Zacks contends that Captain William Kidd was not a cutthroat killing pirate; but instead he was a family man renowned as a New York sea captain. Thus, merchants and politicians like the governor of the New York colony hired Kidd to chase down pirates like Robert Culliford to reclaim the booty they stole. THE PIRATE HUNTER: THE TRUE STORY OF CAPTAIN KIDD is a fabulous historical biography that never slows down and worth reading for as much as learning the real record as for how well Mr. Zacks tells a nonfiction adventure tale.

Harriet Klausner

Mention the name of Captain Kidd, and you can't help thinking of buried treasure, bloodthirsty tales of plunder, and general maritime mayhem. There was a real Captain Kidd, and he did sail among the pirates, but we all have the wrong idea about him, according to Richard Zacks, whose _The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd_ (Theia / Hyperion) sets the record straight. William Kidd was a master mariner who lived in New York, on Wall Street, no less, at the end of the seventeenth century. He had a wife and daughter. "He was no career cutthroat, no cartoon Blackbeard, terrifying his prey by putting flaming matches in his hair." Kidd was a respectable sea captain, who had enormously bad luck in his endeavors to hunt pirates for profit.

Kidd was no pirate, but a privateer, recruited by powerful Lords and merchants to rob from the pirates that had robbed from the merchants. He had a secret commission from King William III himself, who privately took a ten percent share of any profits that Kidd might come up with. Kidd sailed on _Adventure Galley_, a three-master built in England and launched in 1696 specifically for Kidd's mission, with a crew of 150. Many of the crew had been pirates themselves, and Kidd was putting himself in an uncomfortable management position. He had nothing but bad luck in finding pirates to rob, but even before he did so, rumors of his being a pirate himself had sprung up. After his crew mutinied, he tried to return to his home in New York, but discovered to his surprise that he was the most wanted man in America. He sneaked back towards New York, and in another unpiratical act, sought the help of his lawyer. He made overtures to Lord Bellomont, his prime backer, but the gouty and treacherous Bellomont, having learned of the extent and whereabouts of the haul Kidd had brought back, put him into jail. Kidd was shipped in chains to England. The corruption involved in his jail term and his trial are well detailed here.

Zacks has dug into account books, diaries, and forgotten, centuries-old governmental documents to bring out the truth about Kidd, but this is far from a dusty academic account. Zacks has fun telling us about how pirates really lived, how politics was conducted, the difficulties of shipboard life, and how different the times were from our own. For example, he writes of a messenger: "As he reached the East River, the Manhattan skyline loomed: a windmill and two church steeples towering over a seaside row of three-story gable roofs." Kidd's was a wild and eventful life, even if it wasn't the life of a pirate. My guess is that Zacks's book will never overcome the centuries of folklore that have accumulated around Kidd's story, but the true story is still a rousing treasure.

The true story of Captain Kidd? Very possibly the closest we may get. Zacks has done a compelling amount of research from the English archives to the colonial archives to some of the sites involved. He presents for comparison as much detail of the lives of two men living roughly parallel lives with the various points of divergence. It would have been hard to fill a book with the existing details of William Kidd's life without verging over into the boring realm of historical manuscript. Rather than take that path, Zacks, chose to compare and contrast William Kidd and Robert Culliford, contemporaries, whose paths crossed at several instances throughout their lives.

As a result, we have been given a lively narrative focused on the adult life of William Kidd, interspersed with the life of Robert Culliford, arch pirate. Given the research, we can forgive Zacks the suppositions and surmises he makes to flesh out the narrative. The story goes a long way toward dispelling many of the myths associated with the man, Captain Kidd.

If the book lacks in any way, it is the limited use of images, including any picture of William Kidd, although Zacks references one early on in the book. The maps used for reference are older period maps with the appropriate names, but of limited use and difficult to read. That said, this book has become a valued member of my pirate library and easily deserves the highest ranking.
P-)

I got this book not knowing much about pirates other than what I'd seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean." By the end of the book, I knew a lot more about pirates - and also about Captain Kidd, politics in early America, seafaring and a lot of other things.

The book is an exhaustive exploration of the adventures and exploits of William Kidd, who I am sure most of us think of as a dread and bloodthirsty pirate. Through painstaking research, Zacks proves that actually Kidd is just the victim of centuries of bad publicity and vicious word-of-mouth. He was nothing more than a privateer looking to make some money taking stolen merchandise FROM pirates - and he was backed by no less than some of the richest and most influential men in England, who of course left Kidd out to dry (literally) after he was brought back to England in chains.

The book is written in an utterly accessible, very engaging style that makes for easy reading. However, there is a LOT of detail in this book, and some parts, where Zacks tries to explain in minute detail the events of a particular day or timeframe, make for slow reading.

Overall, however, this is unquestionably one of the best historical profile books I have ever read. It's apparent that Zacks did his homework and over time, came to empathize with Kidd, as a simple man with a dream. I came to feel for him too, and his young wife, who was left a widow a third time when Kidd was executed. The bottom line is that Kidd trusted the wrong people, over-relied on his own faith in humanity, and had a bit too much bravado for his own good. Unfortunately, it cost him his life for crimes he didn't actually commit.

This is a relentlessly fascinating, detailed and accessible book. Highly recommended.

It is not too much to say that men like William Kidd made me a reader, and one suspects the same is true for many of my generation. In 5th
Grade an especially wise teacher exploited a glimmer of interest in explorers and pirates to get me to read just about every book I could find on the great European Age of Exploration and the attendant age of piracy. From Columbus to Ponce de Leon to LaSalle to Drake, I read them all with the promiscuity of the new enthusiast. Of course, one thing led to another and soon novels like Swiss Family Robinson and Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe and the Hornblower books were stacked up on bookshelves like planes at a busy airport, waiting their turns to land and disgorge their contents. And then you had the movies...besides versions of the books above you had Peter Pan, Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Blood, and, of course, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952) with Charles Laughton, better remembered as Captain Bligh, reprising his role from Captain Kidd. Even Cap'n Crunch cereal fed a kids fantasies of taking to the sea in a wooden ship and finding adventure there. Thus did sailing men, even the rascals and dastards among them, like Captain Kidd, light a fire in at least one young mind.

All of which makes it a particularly pleasant experience to read this entertaining and authoritative rehabilitation of Kidd by Richard Zacks. As Mr. Zacks shows in exhaustive, and perhaps a bit exhausting, detail, William Kidd was not really the scoundrel pirate of legend but a duly deputized privateer, sent out to capture pirates in exchange for a share of their loot. It was only through a series of unfortunate mishaps and the repeated intervention of a hitherto uncelebrated nemesis, Robert Culliford, that Kidd himself came to be accused of piracy and ended up dangling from the end of a rope. Mr. Zacks relates the sorrowful tale of Kidd's 1696 expedition, that set out from Manhattan aboard the Adventure Galley but ended on a London gallows in 1701.

Mr. Zacks is a zealous advocate for Kidd's innocence and his passion is contagious. But Kidd makes for a doomed and tragic hero, what with a mutinous crew, an unsturdy ship, feckless backers, and the bedeviling presence time and again of his rival, Culliford. Kidd's behavior, as presented here, is genuinely admirable, particularly his determination to clear his name after he'd been wrongly accused of piracy in the taking of two ships. Kidd essentially put his own neck in the noose by sailing back to New York to face the charges.

It was in New York that the legend that he'd hidden his treasure arose, and Mr. Zacks shows us why. In fact, this is just one of many myths and legends that Mr. Zacks lays to rest, but part of what makes the book so enchanting is that the truths he reveals are just as compelling as the fictions they replace. In particular, despite the enduring image of ruthless captains wielding iron discipline, it's interesting to discover just how democratic the pirate society really was. But no truth is more beguiling than the real life Captain Kidd who we're introduced to. If the book is a bit too long and too minute by minute, which I believe to be the case, it is nonetheless carried along by Kidd and by our desire, though we know it futile, to see justice done him and barring that, our almost equally strong desire to see Culliford and some of the others who wronged Kidd get their comeuppances. But few do and as for Kidd :

William Kidd, born in Dundee, married in New York, hanged in London, was then hoisted in chains onto the oak gibbet at Tilbury. For years
afterward, men and women aboard all ships going to and coming from the trading metropolis of London could see him there swaying in the
breezes, the Admiralty's stark warning to anyone contemplating the merry life of piracy.

The poor benighted Captain would have to wait three hundred years for Richard Zacks to come along and set the record straight, which with the help of a painstakingly assembled historical record and a key piece of evidence uncovered in 1911 in the dense thickets of the British bureaucracy he does.

GRADE : A-

If you like a good yarn that happens to be factual and true than this book is for you. Read about how pirates lived their day to day lives and relive the trechery of New England scroundrels and how they ploted against the most honorable Captain Kidd. He was not a pirate at all, but he became the fall guy of convenience for the Crown in England. One of the most exciting naratives that I have ever listened to. Richard Zacks has unearthed little known facts, as well as major research in the life of William Kidd. I was overwhelmed by the day to day details of New York society in the 17th century and it' relationship with England. A must read and I promise on ole Captain Kidd's grave that you'll be glad you did!

"The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd" by Richard Zachs is an incredible work of nonfiction. He truly makes history come alive in this detailed account of Captain William Kidd's ill-fated scheme to capture pirates in the waters off of Africa, India, and the Middle East to make (illegal) money for his rich English backers, including the King of England himself.

Here is a pirate story that blows away all sorts of pirate myth and cliché. The major argument made is that Captain Kidd was no pirate himself, though he died a pirate's death and lives in history as one of the most notorious pirates ever. Poor Kidd was the victim of mutiny by real pirates, double-handed dealings, hurt pride, vicious gossip, and his own tragic mistakes. You can't help but feel sorry for the man as he drunkenly awaits his legendary fate with the gallows.

Zachs uses all sorts of historical documents, including Kidd's own writings, to retrace Kidd's incredible 3-year voyage, imprisonment, trial, and death. Along the way, we learn in vivid detail about life in colonial America and Britain, life at sea, and the many different cultures and customs the sailors (or pirates) encounter in different parts of the world, from Africa to Indonesia and back. It is almost exhausting in its detail, but it makes for a good story that you can practically see, hear, and smell.

The most fascinating aspect for me were the sections regarding Kidd's trial and the ridiculousness of the British court system. Even more fascinating was the crowd's take on public executions. I couldn't stop giggling at the horrible thought of people throwing dead cats and dogs, covered in feces, into the crowd for the fun of it. Truth, it turns out in this story, is stranger than fiction.

Anyhow, I recommend this book for anyone interested in pirates or for those of us who just want to read a good story from our past. It is history as it should be read - informative, intriguing, and fun.

For centuries, pirates like Captain Kidd have been portrayed in 'fairytale' fashion on the big screen and in literature. Finally now someone has done enough extensive research to compile a more accurate portrayal of pirate history, life onboard ship, and the life of the great Captain William Kidd, who was not the man we knew from fiction. Disney movies and candy-coated stories are fine for kids, but "The Pirate Hunter" actually skips back in time to the gritty life that pirates lived in the late 1600s. Zacks doesn't hold back. America, and the rest of the world was a different place 300 years ago. Packed with enough facts and documented accounts to please any historian, blended seamlessly with segues, and flavored with dramatical asides, "The Pirate Hunter" is a truely entertaining read!

Meticulously researched and masterfully told, THE PIRATE HUNTER transports the reader back in time so as to stand in the sea boots of the real Captian Kidd.

Richard Zacks does a marvelous job of weaving mountains of historical information into a compeling story of a wronged and misunderstood Captian Kidd. Extremely entertaining and loaded with whimsical insights into life of that time, both onboard the vessel and off. This well told tale will please any reader and is a must read for anyone who enjoys tales of sailing ships in a bygone era.