Quedagh Merchant

No image of the Quedagh Merchant is yet on display here; she is exhibited through the paper record alone.

The Quedagh Merchant is the capture on which Kidd's whole legal case turns.

She was an Indian-owned merchant vessel, taken by Kidd on 30 January 1697/8 off the Malabar coast near Cochin. She was carrying French protection papers, the documents now known as the French passes. Under Kidd's authority against French shipping, papers of French protection were the difference between piracy and lawful prize. Kidd renamed her the Adventure Prize; the jury at his trial found the taking to be piracy all the same.

The 1701 indictment fills in much of her identity: Armenian owners, an English commander named Wright, and a rich cargo of opium, raw silk, muslins, calicoes and sugar on a voyage from Bengal to Surat. What still varies across the records is the form of her name, which appears as Quedagh, Quedah and Cara Merchant, so the Archives keeps that spread visible rather than choosing one and hiding the rest.

Her hull outlasted the case. In 2007 a wreck identified as Kidd's prize was located in shallow water off Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic and placed under investigation by Indiana University. It is the only located physical evidence in the whole Kidd story, and it is this captured prize, not his own flagship the Adventure Galley.

One ship, one capture, two possible readings of its legality. The documents she carried decide between them, which is why they have their own room in this Collection.