Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd FROM THE PUBLISHER
When history's most famous pirate, Captain Kidd, was hanged in 1701, he left behind a trail of treasure and treachery that stretched halfway around the world. For undersea explorer Barry Clifford, the biggest prize of all would be to find the Adventure Galley, Kidd's legendary pirate ship. In the world of pirate archaeology, it was the Holy Grail. With the help of the Discovery Channel, Clifford fields an expedition that includes some of America's top experts in shipwreck recovery. Their goal is to find, identify, and possibly excavate the remains of history's most famous pirate ship. The search takes them to the exotic nation of Madagascar and a tiny island off its rocky coast known to historians as the model for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. There, amid pirate graveyards, broken porcelain intended for a European royal family, and native rituals that include blood sacrifice, Clifford and his crew find far more than they bargained for. The island's murky harbor is filled with sunken pirate ships, making it difficult to single out the Adventure Galley, and the shores are teeming with people who want the expedition stopped. The team races to find the ship before dark forces expel it from the island -- forces motivated by the same resentment and greed that caused Kidd's downfall. Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd weaves together two exciting stories: the saga of Captain William Kidd, one of history's most baffling and mysterious figures, and Barry Clifford's obsessive quest to find perhaps the most notorious pirate ship of all time. The result is a tale of treasure and adventure that ends in death -- both Kidd's and, three hundred years later, that of a rival archaeologist who attempts to stop Clifford's expedition.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The legendary Kidd (1654-1701) was a mass of intriguing contradictions. Initially a respectable husband and New York City entrepreneur, he succumbed to a lust for wealth and became a murderous, dictatorial pirate. Archeologist Clifford and co-writer Perry present a robust and chilling account of Kidd's barbaric exploits. The pirate material unfolds in alternating chapters with Clifford's search for the pirate's ship, Adventure Galley, an expedition funded by the Discovery Channel. Clifford describes his hunt meticulously, although his tale is overshadowed by the colorful portrait of a nefarious rogue who killed an innocent native on one of the Maldive Islands to establish authority and punished his crew so brutally they turned to mutiny. Stories about Discovery's tight schedules and frustrating efforts to procure excavation permits offer an in-depth view of obstacles expedition leaders and archeologists face, but Clifford's contemporary yarn gains emotional charge and tension when he deals with Dick Swete, a rival scientist with a longtime grudge, who struggles to deter Clifford. Swete, a descendant of pirate William Rogers, appears as a paranoid equivalent of Kidd and his fellow plunderers. The text's spare clarity brings alive the sea and Madagascar's Ile Sainte-Marie, a place where men could "buy clothing, weapons, drugs, alcohol, and women." Clifford finds his elusive ship, a far happier ending than Kidd found in his amazing saga's final phase, when he was hanged for his crimes and left to dangle in a London public square to warn those contemplating the pirate's life. 50 b&w photos. Agent, Nat Sobel. (On sale Oct. 21) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In 1999, Clifford, an underwater archaeologist who has located and excavated sunken ships, contracted with the Discovery Channel to locate the Adventure Galley, flagship of the fabled Captain Kidd. This volume is published in conjunction with this fall's accompanying documentary about the three-year expedition. Clifford cleverly alternates chapters about the expedition with chapters detailing the sordid adventures of Kidd, a 17th-century entrepreneur who obtained a commission from the English crown to capture French ships (the two countries were at war) and to destroy pirates. Kidd promptly set about attacking any ship that looked promising, regardless of flag, but despite his outsized modern reputation he was not a successful privateer. Kidd's crew mutinied and burned his ship near Madagascar, and he was eventually hanged at Wapping, England. Clifford located the wreck near Ile St. Marie off Madagascar's east coast, but his efforts to dive and record the site were complicated by corruption, disease, and intrigue. Altogether a lively and amusing story that, if not exactly sober history, is likely to be popular in public libraries.-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An enjoyable re-creation of Captain William Kidd's last days, twined with pirate-hunter Clifford's (The Lost Fleet, 2002, etc.) efforts to locate the captain's last great privateering vessel. Long a fascination of the authorﾽs, Kidd left enough of a historical record that Clifford felt he might be able to locate "the real Treasure Island and find an archaeological treasure, the sunken flagship of one of the world's most notorious and misunderstood pirates." His quest takes him to Ile Sainte-Marie, a current-day possession of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean, an island considered by Clifford to be the only true pirate island, and where he expects to find the remains of the Adventure Galley. This was where Kidd had been dumped by his mutinous crew after an ill-fated privateering effort put together by a company of colonial and British notables, including the King of England, later much to his embarrassment. Clifford tells the woeful Kidd story well, though it is difficult to appreciate Kidd as "misunderstood"—his ship committed acts of piracy, and he hung for it—or that he had undertaken his ruinous privateering mission to improve his "social standing," since he was already a man of considerable social and economic stature in New York City. But he was surely a rogue's rogue, and Clifford relates a number of shenanigans, including an episode in which he sent his men aloft to drop their drawers and moon a royal yacht. In alternating chapters, Clifford tells of his three expeditions in pursuit of the Adventure Galley and the endless struggles with Malagassy bureaucrats and a dreadful run-in with another dive team that opened up old rivalries. In the end, Clifford believes heﾽs locatedthe ship, an excitement leavened by a handful of mumbo-jumbo about being guided by a dream. . . . No matter: though his efforts to excavate the Adventure Galley are as tortured as Kidd's last days, Clifford still knows how to wring every drop of romance from his pirate-hunting.
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