William Kidd, better known as CAPTAIN KIDD (born. 1645, in Scotland.--died May 23, 1701, London), was a 17th-century British privateer and legendary pirate who became celebrated in English literature as one of the most colourful outlaws of all time. Fortune seekers have hunted his buried treasure in vain through succeeding centuries.

Kidd's early career is not easy to find out about. It is believed he went to sea as a youth. After 1689 he was sailing as a legitimate privateer for Great Britain against the French in the West Indies and off the coast of North America. In 1690 he was an established sea captain and shipowner in New York City, where he owned property. At times he was hired by both New York and Massachusetts to rid the coast of enemy privateers. In London in 1695, he received a royal commission to apprehend pirates who molested the ships of the East India Company in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean.

Kidd sailed from England on his ship, the "Adventure Galley".

. After his arrival there, Kidd decided to turn to piracy. He made an unsuccessful attack on ships sailing with coffee from Yemen but later took several small ships. His refusal two months later to attack a Dutch ship nearly brought his crew to mutiny, and in an angry exchange Kidd mortally wounded his gunner, William Moore.

Kidd took his most valuable prize, the Armenian ship "Quedagh Merchant", in January 1698 and scuttled his own unseaworthy "Adventure Galley". When he reached the Caribbean Sea, he learned that he had been denounced as a pirate.

He left his old ship at an island in the Caribbean Sea and sailed in a newly purchased ship, to New York City, where he tried to persuade the colonial governor of his innocence. But the governor sent him to England for trial. He was found guilty of the murder and five counts of piracy. Kidd was hanged.

In years that followed, the name of Captain Kidd has became the image of the swashbuckling pirate of Western fiction.