Adventure Galley
History | |
---|---|
England | |
Name | Adventure Galley |
Builder | William Castle, Deptford? |
Cost | 8,000 pounds sterling |
Launched | 4 December 1695 |
Fate | Sunk, April 1698 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | oared frigate |
Tons burthen | 287 |
Length | 124 ft (38 m) (keel) |
Beam | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
Draught | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
Propulsion | Sails, one bank of oars |
Sail plan | Ship rig |
Speed |
|
Complement | 160 men |
Armament | 34 light cannon |
Adventure Galley, also known as Adventure, was an English merchant ship captained by Scottish sea captain William Kidd. She was a type of hybrid ship that combined square rigged sails with oars to give her manoeuvrability in both windy and calm conditions. The vessel was launched at the end of 1695 and was acquired by Kidd the following year to serve in his privateering venture. Between April 1696 and April 1698, she travelled thousands of miles across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in search of pirates but failed to find any until nearly the end of her travels. Instead, Kidd himself turned pirate in desperation at not having obtained any prizes. Adventure Galley succeeded in capturing two vessels off India and brought them back to Madagascar, but by the spring of 1698 the ship's hull had become so rotten and leaky that she was no longer seaworthy. She was stripped of anything movable and sunk off the north-eastern coast of Madagascar. Her remains have not yet been located.
Design and purchase
The vessel was acquired for Kidd by a consortium of investors who backed a scheme to hunt down pirates, recover their booty and redistribute it among the investors. He had enlisted the support of
The vessel was purchased for £8,000 (£968,571 today) in August 1696.
Adventure Galley was well-armed with a complement of 32 guns (saker or light cannon).[3] It is not clear whether she was in fact a new vessel or had originally been intended for the navy; she may have been a commercial vessel under refit at Castle's yard before she was acquired by Kidd's consortium. She does not appear to have been particularly well-built, to judge from the problems that Kidd faced with her seaworthiness during her short career in his service. It was not uncommon for shipyards to cut corners and use sub-standard materials, and to pocket the difference in costs as extra profit.[5] Although no picture has survived of Adventure Galley, HMS Charles Galley, which was recorded in contemporary paintings, provides a good example of how the English adapted the oared frigate design for warfare.[3]
Voyages of Adventure Galley
After leaving Deptford on 6 April 1696,[6] Kidd brought Adventure Galley along the coast to Plymouth in south-western England. He set sail from there on 23 April, bound for New York, and reached the city around 4 July. The ship was accompanied by a French fishing vessel that Kidd captured during the Atlantic crossing. He had the French boat condemned in New York as prize, and recruited more crewmen and set sail again on 6 September,[7] heading for the Indian Ocean. Adventure Galley called at Madeira (reached on 8 October) and Boa Vista, Cape Verde (on 19 October) to pick up supplies en route.[8] The long voyage down the western coast of Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope took the rest of the year and it was not until 27 January 1697 that Adventure Galley made landfall at Tuléar (now Toliara), Madagascar.[9]
By this time Adventure Galley was in need of fresh sail and rigging. The fact that the ship's existing supplies had barely lasted eight months suggests that the dockyard may have installed substandard equipment. After staying a month in Tuléar, Adventure Galley sailed on to Johanna (now Anjouan) in the Comoros on 18 March, where East India Company ships often refitted. However, Kidd was unable to obtain credit from local merchants to buy new rigging or sails, and chose instead to take Adventure Galley to another island – either Mayotte or Mohéli – for careening, to clean her hull of encrusted barnacles and weeds.[10] This was accomplished successfully over the course of a month but up to a third of her crew died in an outbreak of an epidemic disease, possibly malaria or yellow fever. Kidd sailed back to Johanna to find replacement crewmen and this time was able to raise the credit for new sails and rigging.[11]
According to Kidd's testimony, he "steered for India" on 25 April 1697.
Adventure Galley's next and final stage of her voyage took her to the
No more is currently known about the ship's fate and last position. The
References
- ^ Donnelly, p. 9
- ^ a b Donnelly, p. 10
- ^ a b c d Graham, p. 106
- ^ Fumerton, p. 89
- ^ Graham, p. 107
- ^ Paine, p. 1
- ^ Thompson, p. 29
- ^ a b c d Kidd's Narrative, p. 82
- ^ Lane, p. 176
- ^ Graham, p. 117
- ^ Graham, p. 118
- ^ Donnelly, p. 12
- ^ Graham, pp. 148–9
- ^ Van Den Boogaerde, p. 171
- ^ "Pirate Capt Kidd's 'treasure' found in Madagascar". BBC. 7 May 2015. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
- ^ "Mission to Madagascar". UNESCO Scientific and Technical Advisory Body assists Madagascar. Archived from the original on 17 July 2015. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
Bibliography
- Donnelly, Mark P.; Diehl, Daniel (2010). Pirates of New Jersey: Plunder and High Adventure on the Garden State Coastline. Stackpole Books. ISBN 9780811706674.
- Fumerton, Patricia (2006). Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226269566.
- Graham, Harris (2002). Treasure and Intrigue: The Legacy of Captain Kidd. Dundurn Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1-55002-409-8.
- Lane, Kris E. (1996). Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500 – 1750. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 9780765630834.
- Paine, Lincoln P. (2000). Warships of the World to 1900. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780547561707.
- Thompson, Harold William (1979). Body, Boots, and Britches: Folktales, Ballads and Speech from Country New York. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815601609.
- Van Den Boogaerde, Pierre (2011). Shipwrecks of Madagascar. Strategic Book Publishing. ISBN 9781612043395.
- "Kidd's Narrative". The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 6. New England Historic Genealogical Society. January 1852.
- "Mission to Madagascar". UNESCO Scientific and Technical Advisory Body assists Madagascar. Archived from the original on 17 July 2015. Retrieved 14 July 2015.