Kidd was furnished with two commissions, one appointing him a privateer with authority to capture French vessels, and the other empowering him to seize and destroy all pirate ships.  Kidd was ordered in his mission to keep a strict account of all booty captured, in order that it might be fairly divided among those who were stockholders in the enterprise, one-tenth of the total proceeds being reserved for the King.

Kidd sailed from England in the Adventure, a large ship with thirty guns and eighty men, and on his way to America he captured a French ship which he carried to New York.  Here he arranged to make his crew a great deal larger than had been thought necessary in England, and, by offering a fair share of the property he might confiscate on piratical or French ships, he induced a great many able seamen to enter his service, and when the Adventure left New York she carried a crew of one hundred and fifty-five men.

With a fine ship and a strong crew, Kidd now sailed out of the harbor with the ostensible purpose of putting down piracy in American waters, but the methods of this legally appointed marine policeman were very peculiar, and, instead of cruising up and down our coast, he gayly sailed away to the island of Madeira, and then around the Cape of Good Hope to Madagascar and the Red Sea, thus getting himself as far out of his regular beat as any New York constable would have been had he undertaken to patrol the dominions of the Khan of Tartary.

By the time Captain Kidd reached that part of the world he had been at sea for nearly a year without putting down any pirates or capturing any French ships.  In fact, he had made no money whatever for himself or the stockholders of the company which had sent him out.  His men, of course, must have been very much surprised at this unusual neglect of his own and his employers’ interests, but when he reached the Red Sea, he boldly informed them that he had made a change in his business, and had decided that he would be no longer a suppressor of piracy, but would become a pirate himself; and, instead of taking prizes of French ships only,—­which he was legally empowered to do,—­he would try to capture any valuable ship he could find on the seas, no matter to what nation it belonged.  He then went on to state that his present purpose in coming into those oriental waters was to capture the rich fleet from Mocha which was due in the lower part of the Red Sea about that time.

The crew of the Adventure, who must have been tired of having very little to do and making no money, expressed their entire approbation of their captain’s change of purpose, and readily agreed to become pirates.