History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s05e05 Episode Script
Captain Kidd's Treasure
Tonight, a mystery from
the golden age of piracy.
Anyone that's raised on the
Atlantic seaboard has grown up
listening to tales of Captain
Kidd and his lost treasure.
In 1698, Captain
William Kidd raids a ship
on the high seas and
seizes its vast treasure.
Gold bars, silver,
coins, rubies,
emeralds, diamonds,
and other treasures.
These other pirates now know
he's sitting on a fortune.
Captain Kidd wound up
the most wanted man
in the British empire.
What did the
notorious seafarer do
with all of his loot?
We'll explore the top theories
around Captain Kidd's
hidden treasure.
Where could Captain Kidd
have hidden this treasure?
It could be anywhere
as far as Madagascar,
potentially somewhere
in the Caribbean,
possibly somewhere
in the United States.
Here is a true,
buried treasure story,
Kidd's lost treasure.
What happened to Captain
William Kidd's lost treasure
and where is it now?
In 1696, William
Kidd is a celebrated veteran
of the British sea battles
against the French.
Kidd has risen to
the rank of captain,
working as a privateer,
plundering enemy ships
in the service of his
Majesty's government.
The only thing that
differed between pirates
and privateers was
a piece of paper.
That paper was
known as a letter of marque.
When you got a
privateering commission,
you got a letter of
marque from the government
that allowed you to capture
foreign ships legally.
This was not piracy,
this was privateering.
But now, the famed
privateer is a semi-retired,
53-year-old gentleman.
Kidd is living in New York.
He's married to a
wealthy woman, Sarah,
and they have a
couple of daughters.
He's got a perfect life.
He's well respected around town.
And then comes an offer
that he can't refuse.
He got this offer, this
opportunity to capture
French merchant ships
or any ship traveling
with a French letter of
passage to take their treasure
and then divide it
up with the people
who backed his mission.
Captain Kidd was backed by
four of the most powerful lords
in England and he also had
one of the wealthiest men
in New York backing
him, Robert Livingston.
He had the future governor of
New York and Massachusetts,
Lord Bellomont, backing him.
He had to assume this
was a legal mission.
These were very powerful people.
On September 6,
1696, Captain Kidd set sail
out of New York Harbor aboard
a swift, well-armed ship
named the Adventure Galley.
He's been given a
crew of over 150 men,
which will give him
loads of resources to rob
very large ships, guaranteeing
the most successful voyage
of his entire career.
But Kidd's promising voyage
is off to a troubled start.
About four months
into this privateering journey,
Captain Kidd is not having
the success he hoped for.
He hasn't found any pirate ship,
he's lost 40 men to disease,
and the only hope he has
is finding prey quickly.
They're under contract
to go after French ships,
but instead, they're
coming across Dutch ships,
and so Kidd is not
attacking them,
but the crew is starting
to demand this.
Kidd can't attack
a ship sailing under the flag
of a nation that's not
at war with England,
but his crew is
getting desperate.
Privateers generally
functioned under this idea
of no prey, no pay,
meaning if you do not
pursue and raid ships,
no one on board is
getting any money.
This puts Captain Kidd
in a difficult situation,
because of course, he
does need to pursue prey
in order to pay his crew, but
if he pursues the wrong prey,
then there will be no
distinction between himself,
as a privateer, and
a regular pirate.
Finally, the gunner of
the ship, William Moore,
basically confronts Kidd,
saying there's a huge Dutch ship
on the horizon, they
should attack it,
they'll get lots of money.
Kidd refuses and the two of them
end up yelling at each other.
Moore says,
"You've made us beggars."
And Kidd says, "You
are a lousy dog."
Captain Kidd takes
a bucket and cracks it over
the head of William Moore,
cracking his skull.
The next morning,
Moore dies of his injuries.
Kidd claims that he
didn't mean to do it,
but the surgeon has suspicions
that it was probably
done on purpose.
Many members of the crew
also start to believe this.
Captain Kidd knows right
away that this is dire.
He has now killed a member of
his own crew and he can hear
the murmurings among
the remaining crew.
He's losing them and
that's really dangerous
for him at this point.
He needs to take
a very large ship,
pay the crew to keep them happy
so he can keep his
captainship, avoid a mutiny,
avoid any more violence,
and also to keep the respect
of the British government.
After Moore dies, Kidd's
desperate to find a prize.
So he brings the Adventure
Galley around the horn
into the Arabian Sea, hoping
to find one of these prizes
under the protection
of the French.
Then, on January
30, 1698, nearly 16 months
after leaving New York
Harbor, Kidd is off the coast
of India when his crew spots
a large merchant ship ahead.
She's sitting low in the water,
which means she's
a heavy cargo ship.
She's flying a French color
and, for Kidd, this is perfect
because his letter of
marque entitles him to take
French vessels and the
assets that are on board.
This is a legitimate prize.
Kidd's ship
pulls up alongside its prey
with its guns loaded
and ready to fire.
The merchant ship
quickly surrenders.
Kidd's luck finally changes.
On board is a king's
ransom in treasure.
It's the ship Captain
Kidd has dreamt of.
It is filled with really
expensive textiles
such as muslins, calico,
silks, it's full of opium,
other items like tobacco
and teas, sugar and salt.
All of these goods might
amount to $12 million
in today's currency.
Now, his crew are gonna
have everything they want
and his investors are
gonna get the return
on their investment.
Kidd comes across
a very large chest
that is double
padlocked with iron
and to his absolute
astonishment,
it's filled with gold
bars, silver, coins,
rubies, emeralds, diamonds,
amounting to about $2.4
million in today's currency.
But the problem is, Kidd
is quite nervous about it
because he discovers this was
basically Armenian merchants
on an Indian ship with
a local crew and it has
an English captain who presents
a French letter of passage.
And he also says it's
a legitimate capture.
The Quedagh Merchant
is under the protection
of the French, he's
carrying a French pass,
but the Quedagh Merchant
is actually a vessel
belonging to the Grand Mogul.
The Grand
Mogul, Aurangzeb Alamgir,
heads the Mogul empire of India,
ruling a vast expanse
of South Asia.
Captain Kidd knows
that he is now possibly
under threat from all angles,
not just the Mogul who
this ship belongs to,
but the English who are going
to have to answer to the Mogul
for what Captain
Kidd has just done.
And he still needs to promise
that this treasure is going
to go to the crew that has
already proven to be mutinous.
That there might be some
question as to whether or not
this is a legitimate target
becomes clear to Captain
Kidd fairly quickly.
He needs to keep that
French letter as proof.
This makes it a
legitimate prize.
Kidd has the Adventure Galley,
the Quedagh Merchant,
and all this treasure.
He has to get this
treasure back to New York.
They start making stops
around the Arabian Sea,
selling off as much of
that cargo as they can
to turn it into hard currency.
What Kidd's doing now, is
he's liquidating these assets
and putting them
into gold and silver
and it makes it easier,
not only to transport,
but also pay his bills.
But the Adventure
Galley is in a bad way.
She's done a lot of miles
in harsh conditions.
She's leaking,
she's in bad repair,
so they're making for
the coast of Madagascar.
They sail south to
Sainte-Marie's Island
off the coast of Madagascar,
and it's a little pirate port,
and that's where Kidd went to
get ready for his voyage back.
During this stop in Madagascar,
long simmering tensions
between Kidd and his crew
come to a head.
With the amount of
money that they took
from the Quedagh Merchant,
they're surprised to find
that the amount of money
they're getting is
actually quite average.
They start threatening
to abandon Kidd
unless they get
their fair share.
There's a pirate ship
that's in the harbor
and it's got a very small
crew, very minimal crew.
Kidd orders his men to
go and attack the ship,
but his men respond
by saying, quote,
"We'd rather put two
pistol balls into you."
And they mutiny.
Kidd ends up losing 98 men who
go and join the pirate ship.
Leaving only a handful
still under Kidd's command.
That pirate ship is now
in position to attack Kidd
because he has no men to
work his guns or outmaneuver.
You can imagine he must
be feeling that he has
to get out of Dodge
really quickly.
These other pirates now know
he's sitting on a fortune.
So he basically takes off
as many of the stolen goods
off the Adventure Galley
as he possibly can,
burns the ship and sinks
it, and then takes off
on the Quedagh Merchant with
a very tiny crew that's left,
only about 13 people.
Kidd leaves Madagascar,
the Adventure Galley, and
an enduring mystery behind.
What happened to
the loot on board?
In the chaos of trying
to get rid of everything
off the Adventure
Galley and sinking it,
there's always the possibility
that Kidd may have left
some items behind,
some precious items.
Some people believe that Kidd
actually left treasure here
and maybe some was even left
on the Adventure Galley.
And so in 2000, the adventurer
and diver Barry Clifford,
he came to Madagascar.
I was thinking, well, if
Kidd had a lot of treasure,
what did he do with it?
I was always
interested in looking
for the Adventure Galley.
When Barry's diving the wreck,
he believes that he has found
part of Kidd's treasure.
One of the things he was
supposed to have had on the boat
was silver bars.
So I went over to where
the Adventure Galley was,
dove down and had
my detector with me,
and I started getting readings,
like, right under where
Kidd's cabin would've been.
The whole area
was hot with metal
and I found all of
these metal bars.
He believes that
he has found part
of the silver that
was allegedly on board
the Quedagh Merchant.
Barry Clifford
turns the bar over
to the Madagascar government,
who in turn sends it
to the United Nations for
investigation into what it is.
The results
of that investigation
are a disappointment.
The ingot is not
silver, it is lead.
And the experts doubt
that it even came
from Captain Kidd's ship,
but that it was most likely an
old pier that had gone down.
But legend persists of a hoard
that may have been left behind.
Did Captain Kidd's treasure
go down with the ship
in Madagascar, or did it
follow him to the Caribbean?
Is there any more buried
treasure out there?
On his voyage
home from Madagascar,
Kidd makes a stop on the
Caribbean island of Anguilla.
When everybody lands on shore,
they hear the horrible news.
Captain Kidd is now a wanted
pirate and will be sentenced
to hang if captured.
When Captain
William Kidd's prized ship,
the Quedagh Merchant, arrives
in a Caribbean port in 1698,
he learns shocking news.
The vessel's capture is now
considered an act of piracy
and not a legitimate act of war.
Kidd's freedom, and perhaps
his treasure, are now at risk.
He thought he would be welcomed,
but it was the exact opposite.
He was the most wanted
man in the British Empire.
And so, now he has
a huge decision.
If the Royal Navy catches him,
he knows what they
do to pirates.
I mean, he could be hanged
before he even gets back.
In his mind, he
knows this has to be
some sort of misunderstanding,
perhaps a problem
with communication
as news traveled
across the ocean,
perhaps by some
upset crew members.
To him, he followed every
rule of his letter of marque.
There were French passes,
the Quedagh Merchant
was protected
by the French government.
Surely, there is
absolutely no way
he could really be
considered a pirate.
But powerful forces are working
against Captain Kidd.
The Grand Mogul of India
owns the Quedagh Merchant
and he's angry that
Kidd took it as a prize.
The Mogul's displeasure
threatens British trade
in South Asia and the profits
of Britain's East
India Trading Company.
Captain Kidd wound up the
most wanted man in the empire
because the Indies was such
an important, new trade,
trading opportunity
for the British.
The English East India Company
was was the great future.
I mean, the present
was the Caribbean
and the sugar plantations,
but India was the future
and they only had, I think
it was 10 trading posts
at the time, but it was
starting to go very well
and it would lead
to empire and lead
to England taking over India.
By the late 17th century,
The East India
Company is already
one of the most powerful
conglomerates in the world.
They're establishing good
trading relationships
with the Indian Mughals, so
there is virtually everything
in the world at stake
for them to make sure
they can protect their trading
relationships with India,
so that way, the
East India Company
can continue to
survive and thrive.
So with the capture
of the Quedagh Merchant,
the Grand Mogul
wanted his ship back.
He wanted the goods
that were on board.
He wanted the products
and the treasure
and he wanted somebody
to pay the price.
Kidd was that man.
They threatened the East
India Company that if Kidd
is not captured and
not made an example of,
they will not only
cut off all trade,
they will consider
it an act of war.
It's costing millions
of pounds in trade.
This problem has to be
fixed, Kidd must be taken.
The British
government agrees to go after
their own man even if
he might be innocent.
So even with his
letter of marque,
even though he thought
he had the right
to take these vessels,
things have changed.
It's turned into
a political game.
So Kidd now is in an
impossible position.
He can't stay on board
the Quedagh Merchant
and he can't let
his treasure go.
So what he has to do is
find a way out of this.
He realizes that
he is on a vessel
that is easily recognizable and
in order for him to get back
and prove his innocence,
he actually needs to sneak
into New York and so
he needs to find a boat
that will let him enter the
harbor there without detection.
Kidd has to get rid
of the Quedagh Merchant,
so he needs to offload.
But first,
Kidd must part with some
of the Quedagh Merchant's
valuable cargo.
Kidd basically has to do
a fire sale and sell off
what he can and then
he needs to buy a ship.
And so he sells off enough
goods to have the money to buy
a ship called the San
Antonio and sail it back.
He can't take
everything that's left
on the Quedagh Merchant, but
he does bring some with him,
as much as he can fit
on the San Antonio.
Kidd still has
a very sizable treasure.
We think it was 75 pounds of
gold and 150 pounds of silver.
It had a chest of jewels.
Kidd leaves the
Quedagh Merchant in Anguilla
in the care of his
friend, Henry Bolton.
But what becomes of
the precious cargo
he may have left on board?
Kidd leaves the ship with
Bolton to go and clear his name.
Bolton starts to get worried
because he has the same fear
that Kidd does, now he's on
this ship that sticks out
like a sore thumb.
Bolton maneuvers
the Quedagh Merchant
into a nearby Caribbean
river called the Rio Dulce
where he abandons it
and sets it on fire.
Rumors abound as to
how much treasure
was actually left
aboard the ship
when it was burned and sunk.
For more than
300 years, the location
of the Quedagh Merchant and
its possible sunken treasure
remains a mystery.
Then, in 2007, some local
residents are diving
in shallow waters off an island
near the Dominican Republic
and come across an old cannon
lying on the ocean floor.
In a collaboration
between Indiana University
and the Dominican
Republic government,
we began assessing the
site and recovering data.
I happen to be hired on as
the historian for the mission.
I have the documents that say
how many cannons there were
and where they were placed.
And so the cannon pretty much
are just about exactly right.
This Is the first
clue that we may have
the Quedagh Merchant
on our hands.
The final piece of evidence
was when we uncovered
a much more significant section
of hull and we were able
to actually identify the
ship construction technique
described in the
historical document.
So, we found the
Quedagh Merchant.
So, the shipwreck
itself didn't have any
of what we normally
think of as treasure.
There was no gold,
no silver, no jewels.
Any of the organic materials
had most likely decomposed
or broken down like
the fabrics, the silks,
the muslins, the sugar.
None of the booty
was actually found.
One could assume
that, A, it was looted
before the ship sank, or B,
Kidd took everything with
him for this journey.
That there wasn't any of
Captain Kidd's treasure found
on the wreckage of the Quedagh
Merchant just doesn't prove
that all of that treasure
left the Caribbean.
His friend Henry
Bolton could have taken
some of that
treasure and kept it.
Kidd could have
buried some of it
to come back and get it later.
Some people have
speculated that Kidd
hid treasure in the Caribbean.
I mean, Kidd was there and
we know that for a fact,
'cause we have
eyewitness accounts.
Some of that treasure
could very well still be
somewhere in the Caribbean.
On May 15,
1699, Kidd sails northwest
aboard his new ship, the San
Antonio, bound for New York
and eager to prove
he's not a pirate.
He takes the
goods that he needs,
he takes the wealth that he
needs, and he gets a small sloop
and he starts to sail
towards North America
because the person he really
needs to talk to is going
to be his friend and
financier, Lord Bellomont,
the governor of New
York and Massachusetts.
With the money and the
treasure that Kidd still has
on board the vessel, he wants
to take this back to New York,
so he has something to
bargain with his investors
and the governor.
He is certain that once
he explains the situation
to Lord Bellomont, that
he'll be able to prove
that he was operating
under the law
and that he was
absolutely not a pirate.
At the end of May 1699,
Kidd makes a pit stop
on his way to New York,
and this 10-day stay leads
to a new theory
about his treasure.
Kidd anchors off
Lewes in Delaware Bay
and this is where he
sends his men ashore.
We know Kidd stopped there
because it's actually recorded
in the Maryland archives as
well as in Kidd's journals.
Kidd stays in the
bay for about 10 days.
People believe that this is
where Captain Kidd offloads
a bunch of his
treasure and leaves it.
With the pressure Kidd's under,
maybe he's feeling that he
should be placing caches
of treasure that maybe he can
come back to at a later date.
Captain Kidd had the
means and the motivation
to hide treasure everywhere,
from Madagascar, the
Caribbean, the East Coast.
And part of the reason why
he would've wanted to do that
is because these
caches of treasure
could literally save his life.
They could be used for bribes,
for bartering, and just
the leverage that he needs,
not just to satiate his backers,
but to get himself out of jail.
If he was able to
beat the piracy rap,
he could come back and
collect that treasure later.
Captain Kidd's treasure could
be used to start a new life,
if he's lucky enough to keep it.
It would make sense for Kidd
to bury his treasure here
because he's been in
Delaware for so long
and he's under threat of
his identity being known.
He's been here for 10 days and
he needs to get to New York
to plead his case
to Lord Bellomont.
So, he needed to bury
it and then move on.
And there
may be compelling evidence
that points to this possibility.
So for centuries now,
coins from Kidd's era
have washed ashore in
the Delaware Bay area.
Some believe that this is part
of Kidd's hidden treasure.
Benjamin Franklin
said you couldn't walk
along the banks of the Delaware
River without stumbling
in pirate hunter holes.
People were digging
in Ben Franklin's era
and he claimed there
were holes everywhere.
And there's another dig in 1890
that provides a more
intriguing clue.
A contractor digging in
the area of Delaware Bay
comes across something hard.
He finds a large blue stone
in the shape of a rectangle.
When this rock was brought up,
there was the symbol K on
the underside of the rock.
And this is published in the
Delaware State Journal in 1890.
Having a rock, or
a sort of a marker
with a K carved into it, that
led many to believe that Kidd
actually did leave
behind some treasure
in order to come and
retrieve it later.
Does "K" mark the spot
where Kidd buried his treasure?
If so, nobody's found it yet,
but that's not the
end of the hunt.
Once Kidd leaves Delaware,
there is a paper trail and
this is where we start to get
some hard facts.
And one of those hard
facts is that he's got
gold with him, lots of gold.
Captain William Kidd is a
hunted man in June of 1699.
If caught, he faces
execution for piracy,
but he has one important
negotiating chip,
the location of the
treasure he seized
from the Quedagh Merchant.
Where is he hiding it and does
he still have more to hide
before he gets to New York?
Kidd is very worried about
going straight into New York,
even though that's
where his backers are.
He has this treasure with him,
but he doesn't know what kind
of welcome he's gonna receive.
So, he decides to
loop all the way
around the tip of Long Island
and back to Oyster Bay,
which is on the north
shore of Long Island.
Common sense says you should
put a little treasure here
and a little treasure there
in order to help yourself
escape in case things turn bad.
Kidd then contacts his lawyer
so that he can send messages
to his wife and messages
to Governor Bellomont.
He wants a guaranteed pardon
before he's willing to
deliver the treasure.
Kidd's ultimate goal is
to negotiate a surrender
with Lord Bellomont, governor
of New York and Massachusetts
and his friend and financier.
He needs to prove to
Lord Bellomont that he,
of course, is not a pirate.
In Kidd's mind, he should
be able to clear his name
and turn over the ship's
cargo and the treasure
to his benefactors
and hopefully that
will be the linchpin to
returning to normal life.
Kidd's lawyer James
Emmett contacts Bellomont
and demands a pardon in exchange
for the treasure being delivered
and Bellomont will not
remotely agree to that.
He, at first, won't even
put anything in writing.
He just sends a message
to Kidd verbally
that, "I welcome you back," and
that's not sufficient for Kidd.
So Kidd sends a message back
to him that I need something
in writing and that's
when Bellomont says,
if your story turns out
to be exactly as you say,
I will move heaven and
Earth to get you the pardon
you so richly deserve.
But he's dealing with a
very shrewd Lord Bellomont
and a very aggressive
Lord Bellomont.
Lord Bellomont also has
a personal stake in this.
As Captain Kidd's financier,
he feels he's owed money.
If there's a massive cache
of golds, and jewels,
and valuables, and other
treasures lying around,
or anything valuable, Lord
Bellomont is going to take
what he feels is his fair share.
Kidd is determined
not to give up his treasure
or its whereabouts
without a full pardon
and turns to a friend for help.
Captain Thomas Paine
lives in a big house
on Connecticut Island in
Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Like Kidd, Paine was a
merchant sailor and privateer,
and like Kidd, he also got
into some scraps with the law
over his privateering ventures.
Paine has a side business
as a banker to pirates.
Pirates can't use the normal
banking system so they go
to people like Paine who will
keep the transaction secret.
Paine rows out
to Kidd's ship for a meeting
with his old privateer
friend and firsthand accounts
reveal evidence of at least some
of Kidd's treasure
changing hands.
Kidd gives Paine three
pounds of gold for safekeeping
knowing that Paine will keep
this transaction a secret.
Around $90,000 in today's money.
The understanding is
that it is sort of akin
to burying it, another
way to hide treasure
to save him down the line.
Captain Kidd doesn't
know if he can
trust Governor Bellomont yet,
and so he's not going to give
up this incredible leverage
he has until he
knows that he's safe.
Authorities attempt to
shake down Paine but he denies
anything about having
anything from Captain Kidd.
They search his property
and all of his goods
and they find nothing.
Giddy up, giddy up!
As governor of
Massachusetts and New York,
Lord Bellomont has no
authority in Rhode Island
so he can do nothing further
with Paine as he tries
to track down the fugitive
Kidd and his hidden treasure.
Captain kid can't
imagine that he is
actually being
accused of piracy,
especially since he's backed
by four of the most
powerful men in England.
He thinks once the French
letters of passage
are delivered, everything
will be all right.
By the time Captain Kidd returns
to the British
colonies in New England
to prove he's
innocent of piracy,
he may have already left
portions of his vast treasure
in Madagascar, in the Caribbean,
or on a Delaware beach.
After leaving some of his
remaining gold in the care
of an old privateering
friend in Rhode Island,
Kidd may be looking to
stash the rest of his loot
with another trusted friend.
Kidd decides to stop and
visit his friend John Gardiner
on Gardiner's Island.
He hopes that John will assist
him in holding onto some
of the treasure as
a bargaining chip
for his release
should he be arrested.
Gardiner's wealthy family owns
a five-square mile strip of land
off the east end of
Long Island, New York.
He agrees to help.
So Kidd loads up gold,
jewels, and treasure
and has them transported
to Gardiner Island,
whilst he's in negotiations
with the governor
for his pardon.
I think Kidd drops
the motherlode
of at least 50 pounds of
gold on Gardiner's Island.
He was just hedging his bet.
He could not trust
Bellomont yet.
There's numerous
accounts of Kidd's sloop
going back and forth
to Gardiner's Island
and this is substantiated.
It is believed that Gardiner
actually buried
treasure for Kidd.
Now, Gardiner is taking
a great personal risk here
because this would
make him complicit
if Kidd is then
convicted of piracy.
But because Gardiner viewed
Kidd to be a gentleman
like himself, he agreed to
hold onto that treasure.
He needs to prove to
Lord Bellomont that he,
of course, is not a pirate,
But Lord Bellomont politically
cannot actually be associated
with anyone who might
be a wanted pirate.
So Lord Bellomont sort
of keeps Captain Kidd
on a string here.
He tells him that he's
forwarded all of Kidd's letters
and all of his reports to
the English authorities
and then Lord Bellomont
convinces Kidd to sail
to Massachusetts, to Boston,
where he promises
Kidd will be safe.
On Lord Bellomont's advice,
Kidd agrees to
surrender in Boston.
Believing a pardon is
imminent, he hands over
the French passes, the best
evidence of his innocence.
Once Kidd arrives
to Boston, he is met
with a most
unexpected situation.
Bellomont double crosses him.
He is arrested and then thrown
into solitary confinement
in a Boston jail.
Kidd is
unaware that Lord Bellomont
is in possession of critical
evidence against him.
Bellomont has an informer
and this informer gives him
a letter that Kidd had
written to Robert Gardiner
on Gardiner's Island saying
that he was going to offload
loads of his treasure,
a whole bunch of gold, and
coins, and money, and jewels.
And so Bellomont finds that
this is proof that Kidd stole
a whole bunch of goods
from the Mughal merchants,
that Captain Kidd
was indeed the pirate
that they're looking for.
The government's
informants, they're led
to Gardiner's Island
and Gardiner shows them
where some of Kidd's
treasure's buried.
They're taken to a
field where, sure enough,
they dig up a chest and
the chest indeed does hold
some gold, and silver, and
jewels that will amount
to about $2.4 million
in today's currency.
But Lord Bellomont is furious.
It's only a fraction of
the treasure that was taken
from the Grand Mogul's ship,
less than a 10th of the
value that was taken.
He's absolutely devastated
because this is not
what he was led to believe
that Kidd had captured
from the Quedagh Merchant.
He believes there is much more
and it angers him to no end.
The authorities press
Gardiner, but he says this
is everything that Kidd
brought to the island.
Over the course of the
next few generations,
the Gardiner family becomes
an incredibly wealthy
and prominent family in the
region, which begs the question,
did Gardiner actually keep some
of the treasure for himself?
The family tradition is
that the treasure was buried
in Cherry Tree Field
and that there was
an X marks the spot there.
But the Gardiner family
is incredibly private
and really, nobody's seen the
spot that supposedly it was.
The last direct
descendant of John Gardiner
was Robert David Lion Gardiner
and he would bring out gold
and jewels that he claimed
were part of his
Kidd collection.
When he died in 2004, the
secret of whether or not
this was truly Kidd's
treasure died with him.
Now, the island is under
the control of a cousin
and he will not allow
anyone onto the island.
As for Captain
Kidd, he remains locked up
in solitary
confinement in Boston.
During this time, he is
questioned over and over
about where are all the goods
from the Quedagh Merchant
and Kidd refuses
to say anything.
The authorities
then go to New York
and they arrest
Kidd's wife, Sarah,
and they throw her in
prison and she is questioned
over and over.
And also, her servants
are brought in
and everybody is questioned,
trying to find the whereabouts
of all of these goods.
Soon enough though, Kidd's
wife Sarah is going to be
released from prison
because they just don't have
the evidence to hold her.
Kidd is angry.
He's been betrayed by his
friends, his financier,
and by any official.
So he refuses to give up any
information and says he's going
to take all of his
information to the grave.
Captain William
Kidd is held for nearly a year
in a Boston jail.
Then, in February of 1700,
he's shipped to London
and thrown into the
notorious Newgate Prison.
Kidd faces a murder charge
for killing his gunner,
William Moore, in a quarrel,
and piracy for seizing
the Quedagh Merchant.
But still, authorities
are no closer to locating
the treasure he's hiding.
Kidd knows that the one
thing that will save him
are his French passes.
These will be key evidence in
his trial to prove that he did
have the jurisdiction to be able
to rob the Quedagh Merchant.
Unfortunately, when
he goes to trial,
the French passes
are never produced.
In an interesting turn
of events, however,
the French passes
were later found,
supposedly having been misfiled.
And today, one can go to the
National Archives in England
and take a look at these
French passes for themselves.
Unfortunately, though, it was
too late for Captain Kidd.
In 1701, Kidd is convicted
of murder and piracy.
The penalty is death by hanging.
As a last-ditch effort in
order to try to negotiate
his innocence, Kidd says
he's written a letter
that details where he hid
about a hundred thousand pounds
worth of the goods he stole
from the Quedagh Merchant.
But the British
government won't make a deal.
On May 23, 1701, Captain William
Kidd goes to the gallows.
Prior to his hanging, the
pastor at Newgate Prison
attempts to have Kidd reconcile
with his sins and Kidd is
stalwart and absolute and will
not admit to any wrongdoing.
He refused to give
the last dying speech
because there was a whole
ritual of a public hanging
and he refused to
participate in that ritual.
Execution day was a
party day in England.
I mean, it's a sick
tradition, but it was.
The pie man, the guy
with shots of rum.
They were singing,
they were carousing.
They followed the cart
from Newgate Prison
all the way to execution
dock in Wapping.
It was common
practice back then.
The pirates were hung
on the waterfront
at the low-tide mark.
So the gallows were placed
over the low-tide mark
and people would gather
on the waterfront.
But when the
order is given for Kidd
to be hung, the
trap doors sprung,
the rope around
Kidd's neck breaks.
Kidd falls to the ground.
And there was an English
tradition that occasionally,
when the rope broke,
it was an act of God
and you were pardoned
and people wondered,
is this gonna happen for Kidd?
But of course not, it would
not happen for William Kidd.
And so they rebuilt
the platform,
which took a long time,
and he's quoted as saying that
he really regrets his wife
having to learn of
his shameful death.
He is hung back up
and for the second time,
there is no mistake.
This time, he is killed.
After the hanging, this is not
where the indignation stops.
His body is tarred and
gibbeted over the River Thames,
sending a warning message to all
who might consider
piracy as a career.
A gibbet is essentially
a cage that you could
kind of put over the body,
and basically, it stayed there
until it rotted and decayed.
After Kidd's
hanging, British agents
continued to look
for the treasure
and pressure those
close to Kidd.
Kidd had very few confidantes.
So if there's anybody on the
planet who knew the truth
about what happened
to Kidd's goods,
it would've been his wife.
Even after all
Sarah had suffered
with the death of her husband,
the government still
pressured her to confess
and tell where the rest of
her husband's treasure was.
She never acquiesced to this.
Sarah Kidd did
perhaps leave one clue,
however, in her will.
When she died in
1744, in her will,
it stated that she had assets
in New York and elsewhere.
But whether or not the
elsewhere may have referred
to any of Kidd's
goods is a mystery.
But again, this continues to
fuel the myth and the rumors
that Kidd may have buried
treasure somewhere.
Tales abound of different
sites where Kidd has hidden
or buried his treasure.
Anyone that's raised on Atlantic
Seaboard either knows of
or grew up with the
stories of Captain Kidd
and his lost treasure.
They speculate that it's
in Delaware, Maryland,
New Jersey, lots of New
York, lots of Long Island,
up the Hudson.
Some say Block Island,
or Oak Island in Nova Scotia.
Maybe this is the
final Kidd mystery.
Maybe he didn't want one person
to discover it all at once.
So in the end, Sarah
Kidd could be telling us
that all the theories about Kidd
and the multiple caches
of treasure are true.
So that kind of keeps
the mystery alive, right?
If we can't find it, then
it might still be there.
Ever since the 1700s,
people have been searching
over and over for
Captain Kidd's treasure.
The romanticism about pirates
doesn't just simply come
from a rumor about Captain
Kidd's buried treasure,
it's Captain Kidd himself.
Because we see this
conflict of whether or not
he was a privateer or a pirate.
Everybody looks for treasure.
And so here is a true
buried treasure story,
and lost treasure no less,
so people are enthralled
and they continue to look
for Captain Kidd's
treasure everywhere
from Madagascar to the
Caribbean, back to America.
Captain William Kidd was
one of the late 17th century's
most compelling figures,
a distinguished war hero
and privateer, perhaps
unjustly hanged for piracy
with a vast fortune and
treasure unaccounted for.
Ultimately, Kidd's guilt
or innocence may be as hard
to determine as the
location or locations
of his infamous hidden treasure.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."
the golden age of piracy.
Anyone that's raised on the
Atlantic seaboard has grown up
listening to tales of Captain
Kidd and his lost treasure.
In 1698, Captain
William Kidd raids a ship
on the high seas and
seizes its vast treasure.
Gold bars, silver,
coins, rubies,
emeralds, diamonds,
and other treasures.
These other pirates now know
he's sitting on a fortune.
Captain Kidd wound up
the most wanted man
in the British empire.
What did the
notorious seafarer do
with all of his loot?
We'll explore the top theories
around Captain Kidd's
hidden treasure.
Where could Captain Kidd
have hidden this treasure?
It could be anywhere
as far as Madagascar,
potentially somewhere
in the Caribbean,
possibly somewhere
in the United States.
Here is a true,
buried treasure story,
Kidd's lost treasure.
What happened to Captain
William Kidd's lost treasure
and where is it now?
In 1696, William
Kidd is a celebrated veteran
of the British sea battles
against the French.
Kidd has risen to
the rank of captain,
working as a privateer,
plundering enemy ships
in the service of his
Majesty's government.
The only thing that
differed between pirates
and privateers was
a piece of paper.
That paper was
known as a letter of marque.
When you got a
privateering commission,
you got a letter of
marque from the government
that allowed you to capture
foreign ships legally.
This was not piracy,
this was privateering.
But now, the famed
privateer is a semi-retired,
53-year-old gentleman.
Kidd is living in New York.
He's married to a
wealthy woman, Sarah,
and they have a
couple of daughters.
He's got a perfect life.
He's well respected around town.
And then comes an offer
that he can't refuse.
He got this offer, this
opportunity to capture
French merchant ships
or any ship traveling
with a French letter of
passage to take their treasure
and then divide it
up with the people
who backed his mission.
Captain Kidd was backed by
four of the most powerful lords
in England and he also had
one of the wealthiest men
in New York backing
him, Robert Livingston.
He had the future governor of
New York and Massachusetts,
Lord Bellomont, backing him.
He had to assume this
was a legal mission.
These were very powerful people.
On September 6,
1696, Captain Kidd set sail
out of New York Harbor aboard
a swift, well-armed ship
named the Adventure Galley.
He's been given a
crew of over 150 men,
which will give him
loads of resources to rob
very large ships, guaranteeing
the most successful voyage
of his entire career.
But Kidd's promising voyage
is off to a troubled start.
About four months
into this privateering journey,
Captain Kidd is not having
the success he hoped for.
He hasn't found any pirate ship,
he's lost 40 men to disease,
and the only hope he has
is finding prey quickly.
They're under contract
to go after French ships,
but instead, they're
coming across Dutch ships,
and so Kidd is not
attacking them,
but the crew is starting
to demand this.
Kidd can't attack
a ship sailing under the flag
of a nation that's not
at war with England,
but his crew is
getting desperate.
Privateers generally
functioned under this idea
of no prey, no pay,
meaning if you do not
pursue and raid ships,
no one on board is
getting any money.
This puts Captain Kidd
in a difficult situation,
because of course, he
does need to pursue prey
in order to pay his crew, but
if he pursues the wrong prey,
then there will be no
distinction between himself,
as a privateer, and
a regular pirate.
Finally, the gunner of
the ship, William Moore,
basically confronts Kidd,
saying there's a huge Dutch ship
on the horizon, they
should attack it,
they'll get lots of money.
Kidd refuses and the two of them
end up yelling at each other.
Moore says,
"You've made us beggars."
And Kidd says, "You
are a lousy dog."
Captain Kidd takes
a bucket and cracks it over
the head of William Moore,
cracking his skull.
The next morning,
Moore dies of his injuries.
Kidd claims that he
didn't mean to do it,
but the surgeon has suspicions
that it was probably
done on purpose.
Many members of the crew
also start to believe this.
Captain Kidd knows right
away that this is dire.
He has now killed a member of
his own crew and he can hear
the murmurings among
the remaining crew.
He's losing them and
that's really dangerous
for him at this point.
He needs to take
a very large ship,
pay the crew to keep them happy
so he can keep his
captainship, avoid a mutiny,
avoid any more violence,
and also to keep the respect
of the British government.
After Moore dies, Kidd's
desperate to find a prize.
So he brings the Adventure
Galley around the horn
into the Arabian Sea, hoping
to find one of these prizes
under the protection
of the French.
Then, on January
30, 1698, nearly 16 months
after leaving New York
Harbor, Kidd is off the coast
of India when his crew spots
a large merchant ship ahead.
She's sitting low in the water,
which means she's
a heavy cargo ship.
She's flying a French color
and, for Kidd, this is perfect
because his letter of
marque entitles him to take
French vessels and the
assets that are on board.
This is a legitimate prize.
Kidd's ship
pulls up alongside its prey
with its guns loaded
and ready to fire.
The merchant ship
quickly surrenders.
Kidd's luck finally changes.
On board is a king's
ransom in treasure.
It's the ship Captain
Kidd has dreamt of.
It is filled with really
expensive textiles
such as muslins, calico,
silks, it's full of opium,
other items like tobacco
and teas, sugar and salt.
All of these goods might
amount to $12 million
in today's currency.
Now, his crew are gonna
have everything they want
and his investors are
gonna get the return
on their investment.
Kidd comes across
a very large chest
that is double
padlocked with iron
and to his absolute
astonishment,
it's filled with gold
bars, silver, coins,
rubies, emeralds, diamonds,
amounting to about $2.4
million in today's currency.
But the problem is, Kidd
is quite nervous about it
because he discovers this was
basically Armenian merchants
on an Indian ship with
a local crew and it has
an English captain who presents
a French letter of passage.
And he also says it's
a legitimate capture.
The Quedagh Merchant
is under the protection
of the French, he's
carrying a French pass,
but the Quedagh Merchant
is actually a vessel
belonging to the Grand Mogul.
The Grand
Mogul, Aurangzeb Alamgir,
heads the Mogul empire of India,
ruling a vast expanse
of South Asia.
Captain Kidd knows
that he is now possibly
under threat from all angles,
not just the Mogul who
this ship belongs to,
but the English who are going
to have to answer to the Mogul
for what Captain
Kidd has just done.
And he still needs to promise
that this treasure is going
to go to the crew that has
already proven to be mutinous.
That there might be some
question as to whether or not
this is a legitimate target
becomes clear to Captain
Kidd fairly quickly.
He needs to keep that
French letter as proof.
This makes it a
legitimate prize.
Kidd has the Adventure Galley,
the Quedagh Merchant,
and all this treasure.
He has to get this
treasure back to New York.
They start making stops
around the Arabian Sea,
selling off as much of
that cargo as they can
to turn it into hard currency.
What Kidd's doing now, is
he's liquidating these assets
and putting them
into gold and silver
and it makes it easier,
not only to transport,
but also pay his bills.
But the Adventure
Galley is in a bad way.
She's done a lot of miles
in harsh conditions.
She's leaking,
she's in bad repair,
so they're making for
the coast of Madagascar.
They sail south to
Sainte-Marie's Island
off the coast of Madagascar,
and it's a little pirate port,
and that's where Kidd went to
get ready for his voyage back.
During this stop in Madagascar,
long simmering tensions
between Kidd and his crew
come to a head.
With the amount of
money that they took
from the Quedagh Merchant,
they're surprised to find
that the amount of money
they're getting is
actually quite average.
They start threatening
to abandon Kidd
unless they get
their fair share.
There's a pirate ship
that's in the harbor
and it's got a very small
crew, very minimal crew.
Kidd orders his men to
go and attack the ship,
but his men respond
by saying, quote,
"We'd rather put two
pistol balls into you."
And they mutiny.
Kidd ends up losing 98 men who
go and join the pirate ship.
Leaving only a handful
still under Kidd's command.
That pirate ship is now
in position to attack Kidd
because he has no men to
work his guns or outmaneuver.
You can imagine he must
be feeling that he has
to get out of Dodge
really quickly.
These other pirates now know
he's sitting on a fortune.
So he basically takes off
as many of the stolen goods
off the Adventure Galley
as he possibly can,
burns the ship and sinks
it, and then takes off
on the Quedagh Merchant with
a very tiny crew that's left,
only about 13 people.
Kidd leaves Madagascar,
the Adventure Galley, and
an enduring mystery behind.
What happened to
the loot on board?
In the chaos of trying
to get rid of everything
off the Adventure
Galley and sinking it,
there's always the possibility
that Kidd may have left
some items behind,
some precious items.
Some people believe that Kidd
actually left treasure here
and maybe some was even left
on the Adventure Galley.
And so in 2000, the adventurer
and diver Barry Clifford,
he came to Madagascar.
I was thinking, well, if
Kidd had a lot of treasure,
what did he do with it?
I was always
interested in looking
for the Adventure Galley.
When Barry's diving the wreck,
he believes that he has found
part of Kidd's treasure.
One of the things he was
supposed to have had on the boat
was silver bars.
So I went over to where
the Adventure Galley was,
dove down and had
my detector with me,
and I started getting readings,
like, right under where
Kidd's cabin would've been.
The whole area
was hot with metal
and I found all of
these metal bars.
He believes that
he has found part
of the silver that
was allegedly on board
the Quedagh Merchant.
Barry Clifford
turns the bar over
to the Madagascar government,
who in turn sends it
to the United Nations for
investigation into what it is.
The results
of that investigation
are a disappointment.
The ingot is not
silver, it is lead.
And the experts doubt
that it even came
from Captain Kidd's ship,
but that it was most likely an
old pier that had gone down.
But legend persists of a hoard
that may have been left behind.
Did Captain Kidd's treasure
go down with the ship
in Madagascar, or did it
follow him to the Caribbean?
Is there any more buried
treasure out there?
On his voyage
home from Madagascar,
Kidd makes a stop on the
Caribbean island of Anguilla.
When everybody lands on shore,
they hear the horrible news.
Captain Kidd is now a wanted
pirate and will be sentenced
to hang if captured.
When Captain
William Kidd's prized ship,
the Quedagh Merchant, arrives
in a Caribbean port in 1698,
he learns shocking news.
The vessel's capture is now
considered an act of piracy
and not a legitimate act of war.
Kidd's freedom, and perhaps
his treasure, are now at risk.
He thought he would be welcomed,
but it was the exact opposite.
He was the most wanted
man in the British Empire.
And so, now he has
a huge decision.
If the Royal Navy catches him,
he knows what they
do to pirates.
I mean, he could be hanged
before he even gets back.
In his mind, he
knows this has to be
some sort of misunderstanding,
perhaps a problem
with communication
as news traveled
across the ocean,
perhaps by some
upset crew members.
To him, he followed every
rule of his letter of marque.
There were French passes,
the Quedagh Merchant
was protected
by the French government.
Surely, there is
absolutely no way
he could really be
considered a pirate.
But powerful forces are working
against Captain Kidd.
The Grand Mogul of India
owns the Quedagh Merchant
and he's angry that
Kidd took it as a prize.
The Mogul's displeasure
threatens British trade
in South Asia and the profits
of Britain's East
India Trading Company.
Captain Kidd wound up the
most wanted man in the empire
because the Indies was such
an important, new trade,
trading opportunity
for the British.
The English East India Company
was was the great future.
I mean, the present
was the Caribbean
and the sugar plantations,
but India was the future
and they only had, I think
it was 10 trading posts
at the time, but it was
starting to go very well
and it would lead
to empire and lead
to England taking over India.
By the late 17th century,
The East India
Company is already
one of the most powerful
conglomerates in the world.
They're establishing good
trading relationships
with the Indian Mughals, so
there is virtually everything
in the world at stake
for them to make sure
they can protect their trading
relationships with India,
so that way, the
East India Company
can continue to
survive and thrive.
So with the capture
of the Quedagh Merchant,
the Grand Mogul
wanted his ship back.
He wanted the goods
that were on board.
He wanted the products
and the treasure
and he wanted somebody
to pay the price.
Kidd was that man.
They threatened the East
India Company that if Kidd
is not captured and
not made an example of,
they will not only
cut off all trade,
they will consider
it an act of war.
It's costing millions
of pounds in trade.
This problem has to be
fixed, Kidd must be taken.
The British
government agrees to go after
their own man even if
he might be innocent.
So even with his
letter of marque,
even though he thought
he had the right
to take these vessels,
things have changed.
It's turned into
a political game.
So Kidd now is in an
impossible position.
He can't stay on board
the Quedagh Merchant
and he can't let
his treasure go.
So what he has to do is
find a way out of this.
He realizes that
he is on a vessel
that is easily recognizable and
in order for him to get back
and prove his innocence,
he actually needs to sneak
into New York and so
he needs to find a boat
that will let him enter the
harbor there without detection.
Kidd has to get rid
of the Quedagh Merchant,
so he needs to offload.
But first,
Kidd must part with some
of the Quedagh Merchant's
valuable cargo.
Kidd basically has to do
a fire sale and sell off
what he can and then
he needs to buy a ship.
And so he sells off enough
goods to have the money to buy
a ship called the San
Antonio and sail it back.
He can't take
everything that's left
on the Quedagh Merchant, but
he does bring some with him,
as much as he can fit
on the San Antonio.
Kidd still has
a very sizable treasure.
We think it was 75 pounds of
gold and 150 pounds of silver.
It had a chest of jewels.
Kidd leaves the
Quedagh Merchant in Anguilla
in the care of his
friend, Henry Bolton.
But what becomes of
the precious cargo
he may have left on board?
Kidd leaves the ship with
Bolton to go and clear his name.
Bolton starts to get worried
because he has the same fear
that Kidd does, now he's on
this ship that sticks out
like a sore thumb.
Bolton maneuvers
the Quedagh Merchant
into a nearby Caribbean
river called the Rio Dulce
where he abandons it
and sets it on fire.
Rumors abound as to
how much treasure
was actually left
aboard the ship
when it was burned and sunk.
For more than
300 years, the location
of the Quedagh Merchant and
its possible sunken treasure
remains a mystery.
Then, in 2007, some local
residents are diving
in shallow waters off an island
near the Dominican Republic
and come across an old cannon
lying on the ocean floor.
In a collaboration
between Indiana University
and the Dominican
Republic government,
we began assessing the
site and recovering data.
I happen to be hired on as
the historian for the mission.
I have the documents that say
how many cannons there were
and where they were placed.
And so the cannon pretty much
are just about exactly right.
This Is the first
clue that we may have
the Quedagh Merchant
on our hands.
The final piece of evidence
was when we uncovered
a much more significant section
of hull and we were able
to actually identify the
ship construction technique
described in the
historical document.
So, we found the
Quedagh Merchant.
So, the shipwreck
itself didn't have any
of what we normally
think of as treasure.
There was no gold,
no silver, no jewels.
Any of the organic materials
had most likely decomposed
or broken down like
the fabrics, the silks,
the muslins, the sugar.
None of the booty
was actually found.
One could assume
that, A, it was looted
before the ship sank, or B,
Kidd took everything with
him for this journey.
That there wasn't any of
Captain Kidd's treasure found
on the wreckage of the Quedagh
Merchant just doesn't prove
that all of that treasure
left the Caribbean.
His friend Henry
Bolton could have taken
some of that
treasure and kept it.
Kidd could have
buried some of it
to come back and get it later.
Some people have
speculated that Kidd
hid treasure in the Caribbean.
I mean, Kidd was there and
we know that for a fact,
'cause we have
eyewitness accounts.
Some of that treasure
could very well still be
somewhere in the Caribbean.
On May 15,
1699, Kidd sails northwest
aboard his new ship, the San
Antonio, bound for New York
and eager to prove
he's not a pirate.
He takes the
goods that he needs,
he takes the wealth that he
needs, and he gets a small sloop
and he starts to sail
towards North America
because the person he really
needs to talk to is going
to be his friend and
financier, Lord Bellomont,
the governor of New
York and Massachusetts.
With the money and the
treasure that Kidd still has
on board the vessel, he wants
to take this back to New York,
so he has something to
bargain with his investors
and the governor.
He is certain that once
he explains the situation
to Lord Bellomont, that
he'll be able to prove
that he was operating
under the law
and that he was
absolutely not a pirate.
At the end of May 1699,
Kidd makes a pit stop
on his way to New York,
and this 10-day stay leads
to a new theory
about his treasure.
Kidd anchors off
Lewes in Delaware Bay
and this is where he
sends his men ashore.
We know Kidd stopped there
because it's actually recorded
in the Maryland archives as
well as in Kidd's journals.
Kidd stays in the
bay for about 10 days.
People believe that this is
where Captain Kidd offloads
a bunch of his
treasure and leaves it.
With the pressure Kidd's under,
maybe he's feeling that he
should be placing caches
of treasure that maybe he can
come back to at a later date.
Captain Kidd had the
means and the motivation
to hide treasure everywhere,
from Madagascar, the
Caribbean, the East Coast.
And part of the reason why
he would've wanted to do that
is because these
caches of treasure
could literally save his life.
They could be used for bribes,
for bartering, and just
the leverage that he needs,
not just to satiate his backers,
but to get himself out of jail.
If he was able to
beat the piracy rap,
he could come back and
collect that treasure later.
Captain Kidd's treasure could
be used to start a new life,
if he's lucky enough to keep it.
It would make sense for Kidd
to bury his treasure here
because he's been in
Delaware for so long
and he's under threat of
his identity being known.
He's been here for 10 days and
he needs to get to New York
to plead his case
to Lord Bellomont.
So, he needed to bury
it and then move on.
And there
may be compelling evidence
that points to this possibility.
So for centuries now,
coins from Kidd's era
have washed ashore in
the Delaware Bay area.
Some believe that this is part
of Kidd's hidden treasure.
Benjamin Franklin
said you couldn't walk
along the banks of the Delaware
River without stumbling
in pirate hunter holes.
People were digging
in Ben Franklin's era
and he claimed there
were holes everywhere.
And there's another dig in 1890
that provides a more
intriguing clue.
A contractor digging in
the area of Delaware Bay
comes across something hard.
He finds a large blue stone
in the shape of a rectangle.
When this rock was brought up,
there was the symbol K on
the underside of the rock.
And this is published in the
Delaware State Journal in 1890.
Having a rock, or
a sort of a marker
with a K carved into it, that
led many to believe that Kidd
actually did leave
behind some treasure
in order to come and
retrieve it later.
Does "K" mark the spot
where Kidd buried his treasure?
If so, nobody's found it yet,
but that's not the
end of the hunt.
Once Kidd leaves Delaware,
there is a paper trail and
this is where we start to get
some hard facts.
And one of those hard
facts is that he's got
gold with him, lots of gold.
Captain William Kidd is a
hunted man in June of 1699.
If caught, he faces
execution for piracy,
but he has one important
negotiating chip,
the location of the
treasure he seized
from the Quedagh Merchant.
Where is he hiding it and does
he still have more to hide
before he gets to New York?
Kidd is very worried about
going straight into New York,
even though that's
where his backers are.
He has this treasure with him,
but he doesn't know what kind
of welcome he's gonna receive.
So, he decides to
loop all the way
around the tip of Long Island
and back to Oyster Bay,
which is on the north
shore of Long Island.
Common sense says you should
put a little treasure here
and a little treasure there
in order to help yourself
escape in case things turn bad.
Kidd then contacts his lawyer
so that he can send messages
to his wife and messages
to Governor Bellomont.
He wants a guaranteed pardon
before he's willing to
deliver the treasure.
Kidd's ultimate goal is
to negotiate a surrender
with Lord Bellomont, governor
of New York and Massachusetts
and his friend and financier.
He needs to prove to
Lord Bellomont that he,
of course, is not a pirate.
In Kidd's mind, he should
be able to clear his name
and turn over the ship's
cargo and the treasure
to his benefactors
and hopefully that
will be the linchpin to
returning to normal life.
Kidd's lawyer James
Emmett contacts Bellomont
and demands a pardon in exchange
for the treasure being delivered
and Bellomont will not
remotely agree to that.
He, at first, won't even
put anything in writing.
He just sends a message
to Kidd verbally
that, "I welcome you back," and
that's not sufficient for Kidd.
So Kidd sends a message back
to him that I need something
in writing and that's
when Bellomont says,
if your story turns out
to be exactly as you say,
I will move heaven and
Earth to get you the pardon
you so richly deserve.
But he's dealing with a
very shrewd Lord Bellomont
and a very aggressive
Lord Bellomont.
Lord Bellomont also has
a personal stake in this.
As Captain Kidd's financier,
he feels he's owed money.
If there's a massive cache
of golds, and jewels,
and valuables, and other
treasures lying around,
or anything valuable, Lord
Bellomont is going to take
what he feels is his fair share.
Kidd is determined
not to give up his treasure
or its whereabouts
without a full pardon
and turns to a friend for help.
Captain Thomas Paine
lives in a big house
on Connecticut Island in
Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Like Kidd, Paine was a
merchant sailor and privateer,
and like Kidd, he also got
into some scraps with the law
over his privateering ventures.
Paine has a side business
as a banker to pirates.
Pirates can't use the normal
banking system so they go
to people like Paine who will
keep the transaction secret.
Paine rows out
to Kidd's ship for a meeting
with his old privateer
friend and firsthand accounts
reveal evidence of at least some
of Kidd's treasure
changing hands.
Kidd gives Paine three
pounds of gold for safekeeping
knowing that Paine will keep
this transaction a secret.
Around $90,000 in today's money.
The understanding is
that it is sort of akin
to burying it, another
way to hide treasure
to save him down the line.
Captain Kidd doesn't
know if he can
trust Governor Bellomont yet,
and so he's not going to give
up this incredible leverage
he has until he
knows that he's safe.
Authorities attempt to
shake down Paine but he denies
anything about having
anything from Captain Kidd.
They search his property
and all of his goods
and they find nothing.
Giddy up, giddy up!
As governor of
Massachusetts and New York,
Lord Bellomont has no
authority in Rhode Island
so he can do nothing further
with Paine as he tries
to track down the fugitive
Kidd and his hidden treasure.
Captain kid can't
imagine that he is
actually being
accused of piracy,
especially since he's backed
by four of the most
powerful men in England.
He thinks once the French
letters of passage
are delivered, everything
will be all right.
By the time Captain Kidd returns
to the British
colonies in New England
to prove he's
innocent of piracy,
he may have already left
portions of his vast treasure
in Madagascar, in the Caribbean,
or on a Delaware beach.
After leaving some of his
remaining gold in the care
of an old privateering
friend in Rhode Island,
Kidd may be looking to
stash the rest of his loot
with another trusted friend.
Kidd decides to stop and
visit his friend John Gardiner
on Gardiner's Island.
He hopes that John will assist
him in holding onto some
of the treasure as
a bargaining chip
for his release
should he be arrested.
Gardiner's wealthy family owns
a five-square mile strip of land
off the east end of
Long Island, New York.
He agrees to help.
So Kidd loads up gold,
jewels, and treasure
and has them transported
to Gardiner Island,
whilst he's in negotiations
with the governor
for his pardon.
I think Kidd drops
the motherlode
of at least 50 pounds of
gold on Gardiner's Island.
He was just hedging his bet.
He could not trust
Bellomont yet.
There's numerous
accounts of Kidd's sloop
going back and forth
to Gardiner's Island
and this is substantiated.
It is believed that Gardiner
actually buried
treasure for Kidd.
Now, Gardiner is taking
a great personal risk here
because this would
make him complicit
if Kidd is then
convicted of piracy.
But because Gardiner viewed
Kidd to be a gentleman
like himself, he agreed to
hold onto that treasure.
He needs to prove to
Lord Bellomont that he,
of course, is not a pirate,
But Lord Bellomont politically
cannot actually be associated
with anyone who might
be a wanted pirate.
So Lord Bellomont sort
of keeps Captain Kidd
on a string here.
He tells him that he's
forwarded all of Kidd's letters
and all of his reports to
the English authorities
and then Lord Bellomont
convinces Kidd to sail
to Massachusetts, to Boston,
where he promises
Kidd will be safe.
On Lord Bellomont's advice,
Kidd agrees to
surrender in Boston.
Believing a pardon is
imminent, he hands over
the French passes, the best
evidence of his innocence.
Once Kidd arrives
to Boston, he is met
with a most
unexpected situation.
Bellomont double crosses him.
He is arrested and then thrown
into solitary confinement
in a Boston jail.
Kidd is
unaware that Lord Bellomont
is in possession of critical
evidence against him.
Bellomont has an informer
and this informer gives him
a letter that Kidd had
written to Robert Gardiner
on Gardiner's Island saying
that he was going to offload
loads of his treasure,
a whole bunch of gold, and
coins, and money, and jewels.
And so Bellomont finds that
this is proof that Kidd stole
a whole bunch of goods
from the Mughal merchants,
that Captain Kidd
was indeed the pirate
that they're looking for.
The government's
informants, they're led
to Gardiner's Island
and Gardiner shows them
where some of Kidd's
treasure's buried.
They're taken to a
field where, sure enough,
they dig up a chest and
the chest indeed does hold
some gold, and silver, and
jewels that will amount
to about $2.4 million
in today's currency.
But Lord Bellomont is furious.
It's only a fraction of
the treasure that was taken
from the Grand Mogul's ship,
less than a 10th of the
value that was taken.
He's absolutely devastated
because this is not
what he was led to believe
that Kidd had captured
from the Quedagh Merchant.
He believes there is much more
and it angers him to no end.
The authorities press
Gardiner, but he says this
is everything that Kidd
brought to the island.
Over the course of the
next few generations,
the Gardiner family becomes
an incredibly wealthy
and prominent family in the
region, which begs the question,
did Gardiner actually keep some
of the treasure for himself?
The family tradition is
that the treasure was buried
in Cherry Tree Field
and that there was
an X marks the spot there.
But the Gardiner family
is incredibly private
and really, nobody's seen the
spot that supposedly it was.
The last direct
descendant of John Gardiner
was Robert David Lion Gardiner
and he would bring out gold
and jewels that he claimed
were part of his
Kidd collection.
When he died in 2004, the
secret of whether or not
this was truly Kidd's
treasure died with him.
Now, the island is under
the control of a cousin
and he will not allow
anyone onto the island.
As for Captain
Kidd, he remains locked up
in solitary
confinement in Boston.
During this time, he is
questioned over and over
about where are all the goods
from the Quedagh Merchant
and Kidd refuses
to say anything.
The authorities
then go to New York
and they arrest
Kidd's wife, Sarah,
and they throw her in
prison and she is questioned
over and over.
And also, her servants
are brought in
and everybody is questioned,
trying to find the whereabouts
of all of these goods.
Soon enough though, Kidd's
wife Sarah is going to be
released from prison
because they just don't have
the evidence to hold her.
Kidd is angry.
He's been betrayed by his
friends, his financier,
and by any official.
So he refuses to give up any
information and says he's going
to take all of his
information to the grave.
Captain William
Kidd is held for nearly a year
in a Boston jail.
Then, in February of 1700,
he's shipped to London
and thrown into the
notorious Newgate Prison.
Kidd faces a murder charge
for killing his gunner,
William Moore, in a quarrel,
and piracy for seizing
the Quedagh Merchant.
But still, authorities
are no closer to locating
the treasure he's hiding.
Kidd knows that the one
thing that will save him
are his French passes.
These will be key evidence in
his trial to prove that he did
have the jurisdiction to be able
to rob the Quedagh Merchant.
Unfortunately, when
he goes to trial,
the French passes
are never produced.
In an interesting turn
of events, however,
the French passes
were later found,
supposedly having been misfiled.
And today, one can go to the
National Archives in England
and take a look at these
French passes for themselves.
Unfortunately, though, it was
too late for Captain Kidd.
In 1701, Kidd is convicted
of murder and piracy.
The penalty is death by hanging.
As a last-ditch effort in
order to try to negotiate
his innocence, Kidd says
he's written a letter
that details where he hid
about a hundred thousand pounds
worth of the goods he stole
from the Quedagh Merchant.
But the British
government won't make a deal.
On May 23, 1701, Captain William
Kidd goes to the gallows.
Prior to his hanging, the
pastor at Newgate Prison
attempts to have Kidd reconcile
with his sins and Kidd is
stalwart and absolute and will
not admit to any wrongdoing.
He refused to give
the last dying speech
because there was a whole
ritual of a public hanging
and he refused to
participate in that ritual.
Execution day was a
party day in England.
I mean, it's a sick
tradition, but it was.
The pie man, the guy
with shots of rum.
They were singing,
they were carousing.
They followed the cart
from Newgate Prison
all the way to execution
dock in Wapping.
It was common
practice back then.
The pirates were hung
on the waterfront
at the low-tide mark.
So the gallows were placed
over the low-tide mark
and people would gather
on the waterfront.
But when the
order is given for Kidd
to be hung, the
trap doors sprung,
the rope around
Kidd's neck breaks.
Kidd falls to the ground.
And there was an English
tradition that occasionally,
when the rope broke,
it was an act of God
and you were pardoned
and people wondered,
is this gonna happen for Kidd?
But of course not, it would
not happen for William Kidd.
And so they rebuilt
the platform,
which took a long time,
and he's quoted as saying that
he really regrets his wife
having to learn of
his shameful death.
He is hung back up
and for the second time,
there is no mistake.
This time, he is killed.
After the hanging, this is not
where the indignation stops.
His body is tarred and
gibbeted over the River Thames,
sending a warning message to all
who might consider
piracy as a career.
A gibbet is essentially
a cage that you could
kind of put over the body,
and basically, it stayed there
until it rotted and decayed.
After Kidd's
hanging, British agents
continued to look
for the treasure
and pressure those
close to Kidd.
Kidd had very few confidantes.
So if there's anybody on the
planet who knew the truth
about what happened
to Kidd's goods,
it would've been his wife.
Even after all
Sarah had suffered
with the death of her husband,
the government still
pressured her to confess
and tell where the rest of
her husband's treasure was.
She never acquiesced to this.
Sarah Kidd did
perhaps leave one clue,
however, in her will.
When she died in
1744, in her will,
it stated that she had assets
in New York and elsewhere.
But whether or not the
elsewhere may have referred
to any of Kidd's
goods is a mystery.
But again, this continues to
fuel the myth and the rumors
that Kidd may have buried
treasure somewhere.
Tales abound of different
sites where Kidd has hidden
or buried his treasure.
Anyone that's raised on Atlantic
Seaboard either knows of
or grew up with the
stories of Captain Kidd
and his lost treasure.
They speculate that it's
in Delaware, Maryland,
New Jersey, lots of New
York, lots of Long Island,
up the Hudson.
Some say Block Island,
or Oak Island in Nova Scotia.
Maybe this is the
final Kidd mystery.
Maybe he didn't want one person
to discover it all at once.
So in the end, Sarah
Kidd could be telling us
that all the theories about Kidd
and the multiple caches
of treasure are true.
So that kind of keeps
the mystery alive, right?
If we can't find it, then
it might still be there.
Ever since the 1700s,
people have been searching
over and over for
Captain Kidd's treasure.
The romanticism about pirates
doesn't just simply come
from a rumor about Captain
Kidd's buried treasure,
it's Captain Kidd himself.
Because we see this
conflict of whether or not
he was a privateer or a pirate.
Everybody looks for treasure.
And so here is a true
buried treasure story,
and lost treasure no less,
so people are enthralled
and they continue to look
for Captain Kidd's
treasure everywhere
from Madagascar to the
Caribbean, back to America.
Captain William Kidd was
one of the late 17th century's
most compelling figures,
a distinguished war hero
and privateer, perhaps
unjustly hanged for piracy
with a vast fortune and
treasure unaccounted for.
Ultimately, Kidd's guilt
or innocence may be as hard
to determine as the
location or locations
of his infamous hidden treasure.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."