What Happened to Captain Kidd’s Treasure?

On May 23, 1701, Captain William Kidd met his fate on the banks of the Thames River in London, leaving behind a controversial legacy and an ongoing search for his buried treasure. His execution was particularly gruesome: The rope broke on the first attempt, forcing the executioner to hang him a second time.

Denounced as a pirate in November 1698, Kidd surrendered himself to authorities, convinced he could prove his innocence. Instead, he was imprisoned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for nearly a year before he was transported to London for trial. In May 1701, Kidd was convicted of multiple counts of piracy and the murder of a crewman.

Just before he died, Kidd allegedly declared, “I have nothing to say except that I have been sworn against by perjured and wicked people.”

Was he really a pirate? Charlie Beeker, the underwater archaeologist who discovered the wreck of Kidd’s ship, the Quedagh Merchant, in 2007, describes him as “a privateer who got caught up in politics and was hanged as a pirate, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a pirate.”

It was ultimately Kidd’s abrasive personality that brought on his downfall, explains Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates, who adds that Kidd was “really arrogant.”

Here’s how Captain Kidd’s fortunes took a deadly turn and what we know about the treasure he left behind.

During his 1701 trial, Kidd stated that he was born in Dundee, Scotland. But Samuel Marquis, author of Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal and Kidd’s ninth-great grandson, believes Kidd was actually born in England around 1645 and moved to Scotland at a very early age. 

“Kidd probably talked with a thick Scottish brogue,” says Marquis, who believes he became a cabin boy around age 14 and set sail for the Caribbean, where he worked as a buccaneer.

Kidd arrived in New York after the English had defeated the Dutch in 1664 and renamed the city from New Amsterdam, says Woodard. Over the next few years, Kidd established himself in New York’s colonial society, making friends with rich families, including the Livingstons and Van Cortlandts, who would remain prominent in the city for generations. 

On May 16, 1691, Kidd married wealthy widower Sarah Bradley Cox Oort. By that point, Kidd’s actions in King William’s War against the French had made him a war hero, Marquis says. Between 1689 and 1695, he traveled back and forth from the Caribbean to North America as a merchant and occasional privateer, a sailor authorized to attack and seize enemy ships during wartime.

According to Woodard, Kidd wanted to use his status as a privateer to “join the elite, become rich and even get a knighthood like Sir Henry Morgan.”

In late 1695, Kidd secured the backing of Lord Bellomont, who would later become royal governor of New York, Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. Kidd was given two licenses to hunt down the increasing number of pirates and French ships. Aboard the Adventure Galley, he amassed a crew of 150 men and set sail from New York for the Indian Ocean on September 6, 1696.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong in the Indian Ocean,” Marquis says.

In December 1696, Kidd encountered a depleted Royal Navy squadron led by Commodore Thomas Warren. When Warren requested 20 to 30 of Kidd’s crewmen, Kidd refused and left that night under cover of darkness. His sudden departure raised Warren’s suspicions that Kidd had turned against the British and was a pirate.

When Kidd finally made it to the Indian Ocean in 1697, he struggled to find any of his targets. Because English politicians had funded the voyage, the longer he went without locating pirates or French ships, the more anxious Kidd's crew grew. Dozens of his men died from disease, Marquis says. Others became so frantic that they demanded Kidd turn to piracy and attack friendly vessels.

On October 30, 1697, gunner William Moore pleaded with Kidd to attack a Dutch ship. When Kidd refused, the pair argued, and Kidd threw a bucket at Moore’s head. “It cracked his skull, and Moore died the next day,” Beeker says. 

With the crew hungry and diseased, Woodard says Kidd used his commission letters to try and get supplies from East India Company ships in the Indian Ocean. On January 30, 1698, he captured the Quedagh Merchant as it was sailing under a French shipping license. However, the ship was captained by an Englishman, belonged to Armenian merchants and was full of gold, silver and other merchandise belonging to a Mughal nobleman and the East India Company, says Beeker.

“This became problematic for Kidd because the East India Company had so many trading outposts and they’re this multinational corporation controlling India,” Woodard says. 

According to Beeker, the owner of the ship threatened to sue the king of England, while the president of the East Indian Company complained to England’s justices, stating, “If we ever catch him, we expect restitution to the East India Company for all the troubles he’s caused.”

After returning to the Caribbean on the Quedagh Merchant in 1699, Kidd learned he’d been declared a pirate by the English crown. He returned to New York to hand himself over to Lord Bellomont and clarify the misunderstanding. 

“Bellomont promises Kidd a pardon and then turns on him,” Marquis says. “He has Kidd locked up for nine months in Boston.”

In February 1700, Kidd was shipped back to England. “He then has to wait another year for a trial,” Marquis says. “He’s almost dying because they’re trying to slowly kill him. He’s not allowed to see anybody. They don’t feed him.”

At the trial, Kidd repeatedly maintained his innocence. He was found guilty on five counts of piracy and the murder of Moore.

Before turning himself over to Bellomont, Kidd buried at least some of the treasure from the Quedagh Merchant on Gardiners Island, located just off Long Island, New York. “The Gardiners were well known for looking after other people’s money,” Woodard says of the owners of the island. “It was like a modern day Cayman Islands or Swiss bank account.”

After Kidd’s arrest, Bellomont ordered the treasure to be seized. Beeker says that “quite a bit of Kidd’s goods” were recovered on Gardiners Island. According to historical records, the haul included gold, more than 200 silver bars, a silver box containing diamonds, a diamond ring and 67 rubies.

But there have long been rumors that what was recovered represented only a fraction of the riches Kidd had taken from the Quedagh Merchant. Since Kidd’s death, speculation about other possible hiding places has persisted. Beeker notes that Kidd traveled to the Caribbean islands of Mona, Saona and Catalina before his arrest.

Kidd’s name has also become associated with Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, where treasure hunters have spent more than two centuries searching for the rumored buried fortune. According to local legend, a dying sailor who claimed to have served under Kidd confessed there was a vast treasure hidden on an island east of Boston.

“A couple of days before he was hanged, Captain Kidd is even believed to have said, ‘If you release me, I will get enough restitution for everybody,’” Beeker says. “So he knew he had goods out there. But they didn’t release him. So nobody knows to this day whether that’s been found or not.”