Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
Page 101
| thoroughly debauched. He enforced the laws of trade with rigid severity, put down smuggling, and checked in every way the unscrupulous greed of the great merchants. He also hunted away the pirates, and hung those whom he caught in chains on the different headlands of the coast; and it was while engaged in this pursuit that there occurred the curious incident of his connection with the famous Captain Kidd. The latter was a daring seaman who, when the earl first knew him, bore a good character, as seafaring characters went, and readily fell in with the earl’s plans for pirate-hunting. Finally the earl, in company with several other English noblemen, and with one New Yorker, Livingston, the founder of a line of manorial lords, agreed to fit out Kidd for a cruise against the pirates, whose haunts he well knew. All were to go shares in whatever plunder might be obtained from the ships of the captured freebooters. Kidd’s proposed enterprise attracted much attention, and as he was given a fine bark he found no difficulty in manning her with a crew better fitted for warlike than peaceful pursuits. He cruised after pirates for some time, but with indifferent success; whereupon he philosophically turned pirate himself, and became one of the scourges of the ocean. He still haunted the New York and New England coast at times, landing in out-of-the-way havens, and burying his blood-stained treasure |