Kidd on the Deck of the "Adventure Galley"

This illustration accompanies an article about Captain William Kidd, the late 17th century Scottish captain of the Adventure Galley, a ship commissioned by the English crown as a privateer - a private warship authorized by its government to plunder enemy vessels during wartime. When The English government judged some of Kidd's actions as outside maritime law, he was hanged as a pirate in 1701.