The Prize

On 30 January 1697/8 Kidd took the Quedagh Merchant, an Indian-owned merchant vessel and the one genuinely rich capture of the voyage.

She was carrying French protection papers. Under Kidd's authority against French shipping, that should have mattered decisively: a ship under French passes was arguably lawful prize, and the capture arguably sat inside his licence. The papers are real and confirmed. What they establish, and for which acts, is the careful question the next room takes up.

Notice what the capture did to the venture's politics. A rich prize meant the investors' arithmetic finally worked, if the capture was lawful. If it was not, the same prize converted their privateer into a pirate financed by names close to government. The Quedagh Merchant made Kidd worth arguing about. Before her, the voyage was a failure. After her, it was a problem.

The 1701 indictment documents much of her: Armenian owners, an English commander named Wright, and a cargo of opium, silk, muslins, calicoes and sugar. What still varies in the records is the form of her name, which appears as Quedagh, Quedah and Cara Merchant. Kidd renamed her the Adventure Prize. The ship's record carries the naming question and the 2007 discovery of her wreck off the Dominican Republic.