(dramatic music) (cannon blasts)
- 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?
(dramatic music)
(tense music)
- [Laurence] In 1696, William Kidd is a celebrated veteran
of the British sea battles against the French.
(cannon blasts)
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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] But Kidd's promising voyage
is off to a troubled start.
(tense music)
- [Rebecca] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Richard] Moore says, "You've made us beggars."
And Kidd says, "You are a lousy dog."
- [Rebecca] Captain Kidd takes a bucket and cracks it over
the head of William Moore, cracking his skull.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] 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.
(intense music)
- [Laurence] Kidd's ship pulls up alongside its prey
with its guns loaded and ready to fire.
The merchant ship quickly surrenders.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
(tense music)
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] Kidd leaves Madagascar,
the Adventure Galley, and an enduring mystery behind.
What happened to the loot on board?
(dramatic music)
- 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.
(splashing)
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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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?
- [Laurence] 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.
(suspenseful music)
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Richard] 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.
- [Laurence] 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?
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Man] Giddy up, giddy up!
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(suspenseful music)
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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Jamie] Once Kidd arrives to Boston, he is met
with a most unexpected situation.
- [Laurence] Bellomont double crosses him.
- He is arrested and then thrown
into solitary confinement in a Boston jail.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
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.
- [Laurence] 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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.
(dramatic music)
- 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."
(dramatic music)