Follow the thread
Follow the money
Who paid, who profited, who bore the loss and who wrote the shares down, in thirteen records.
Piracy in this period was a business with investors, suppliers, victims, insurers and a written constitution for dividing the take. This trail follows the money rather than the men: the syndicate that funded Kidd, the merchants of New York and London who supplied and profited, the Mughal ship whose plunder shook a company, the treasure fleet whose wreck fed a surge, the articles and the quartermaster who governed shares, and the paperwork of the people who lost.
- 1 Event The Kidd Privateering Venture Formed (1695) A venture with shares, deadlines and sureties; look at who held what before a single prize was taken.
- 2 Institution The New York Merchant Networks The port whose merchants supplied the Madagascar trade and brought its returns home.
- 3 Institution The London Merchant Networks The City interests behind the companies and the privateering ventures, with no charter and no seal.
- 4 Event Henry Every and the Ganj-i-Sawai (1695) The prize that shook a company, and the crisis that followed in India.
- 5 Institution The East India Company The corporate victim, complainant and lobbyist, and what it demanded of the Crown.
- 6 Institution The Mughal Imperial Administration An empire with no navy, and the two levers it used instead: embargo and hostages ashore.
- 7 Ship Quedagh Merchant A prize as property: who owned the ship and cargo, and what the claim was worth.
- 8 Event The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet A fleet of registered bullion on a Florida beach, and the men who would not give the salvage back.
- 9 Theme Pirate Articles The written constitution of a company: shares, discipline and compensation for injury.
- 10 Theme Quartermasters and Divided Authority The elected officer who held the purse and stood against the captain.
- 11 Source Merchant Depositions and Insurance Claims The victims' paperwork: depositions, protests and the claims of the insured.
- 12 Institution The Atlantic Insurance Markets Where the risk was priced, and how little of that market's own paper survives.
- 13 Institution The Royal African Company A monopoly company as target and as courtroom: the Guinea forts and the 1722 trial.
At the end of the trail
Of everyone in this trail, who came out ahead? The Archive's evidence page lets you filter every claim by the kind of source it rests on; try it for company records and depositions.