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The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd
Richard Zacks
Captain William Kidd is remembered as an archetypal pirate, but Richard Zacks's absorbing 2002 book argues he was something more complicated—a respectable New York sea captain and licensed privateer who was set up, abandoned by his powerful backers, and hanged partly to serve their politics. Zacks dug deep into archives to reconstruct Kidd's disastrous voyage and, memorably, the career of Robert Culliford, the genuine pirate who helped ruin him. The result reads like a thriller while making a serious revisionist case about how the line between privateer and pirate was drawn by those in power. Lively, meticulously sourced, and often funny, it's popular history with an argument. For readers interested in piracy, empire, or a good miscarriage-of-justice story, it's a genuinely gripping account.
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The author
Richard Zacks is an American writer of narrative history with a taste for rogues and underdogs, known for books like The Pirate Coast and Island of Vice. He combines archival digging with a storyteller's pacing, and The Pirate Hunter is among his most praised works.
The book
Published by Hyperion in 2002, it reexamines Captain Kidd, arguing that this licensed privateer was scapegoated by aristocratic sponsors when his commission turned into a political embarrassment. Zacks contrasts Kidd with Robert Culliford, an actual pirate, to sharpen the point about who got to define the crime.
How it reads
The revisionist thesis is persuasive and the research substantial, though Zacks writes with a novelist's flourish that some historians find too confident. As a reappraisal and a page-turner it succeeds handsomely.
For more context
Kidd's 1701 trial and execution in London became a cautionary tale about the thin, politically drawn line separating sanctioned privateering from capital piracy.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Richard Zacks
- Publisher
- Hyperion
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 2002
- ISBN
- None
- Format
- Hardcover
- Shelf
- History
- Location
- Maine