The Epic of New York City (18 page)

In 1696 Governor Fletcher ordered Bradford to reprint an issue of
the London
Gazette
that reported progress in England's war with France. The same year Parliament passed another Navigation Act. New Yorkers were now told to buy all their manufactured goods from England or through England. These items could be brought here only in English-built ships skippered by English captains and worked by crews three-quarters of whom must be English-born. New Yorkers were forbidden to engage in manufacturing. In addition, because English authorities wanted to protect farmers in the homeland, only a fraction of the crops harvested in New York would be purchased. Yet the colonists were not allowed direct trade with any other nation.

All this added up to a boycott penalizing and paralyzing the city's trade. But wealthy merchants found ways to evade the laws. They felt justified in cheating the king of revenue whenever they could turn a profit. As a result, smuggling became an accepted way of life. Another factor favored contraband trade. England was so busy warring on France that it could not patrol the seas in the New World.

This situation led to the birth of the privateer—the owner of a private vessel preying on naval and merchant ships of an enemy in time of war. Any government official could issue a letter of marque to a privateer. These letters authorized the privateers to capture enemy ships. The word “marque” comes from the French and Provençal
marca,
meaning seizure or reprisal.

Unhappily for the English king, privateers were often men of easy conscience; they did not discriminate among enemy ships, neutral ships, or even ships belonging to their own kind. They halted, boarded, and plundered any craft that might be laden with treasure. Thus, many privateers became out-and-out pirates.

King William's warships were so busy in French waters that the Indian Ocean was left virtually unguarded, and it was there that the richest prizes were taken. Ships owned by the English and Dutch East India companies plied between their homelands and India. Now, with increasing frequency, pirates fell on them, killing and plundering.

After a pirate had captured one or more ships and taken aboard all the treasure he could carry, he sailed for New York. Here he would pull out of his pocket a tattered letter of marque and swear that he had acted as a lawful privateer in seizing this Oriental loot from a French ship. New York merchants, eager to buy goods denied them by the English Navigation Acts, never asked questions about the origin of a cargo.

Thus did New York City become the world's principal market for
the sale of pirates' wares. The freebooters knew that if they put into leading European ports, they themselves might be seized; their ships, impounded; their cargoes, confiscated. In New York, however, they were greeted warmly by colonists hungry for trade. For more than a decade the city's streets swarmed with swashbuckling pirates clad in blue coats trimmed with pearl buttons and gold lace, white knee breeches, and embroidered hose, with jeweled daggers flashing from their belts. They swilled liquor in taverns, spun lurid adventure stories, and tipped everyone from the potboy to the governor.

Governor Fletcher had found a new kind of graft. Although he was the king's man, he sold protection to the pirates. He controlled the harbor and cooperated with greedy merchants. Three thousand miles of water protected him from interference by home authorities busy prosecuting the war with France.

Local shops displayed Oriental rugs, carved teakwood tables, ivory fans, and vases of hammered silver and brass. New Yorkers became familiar with strange gold and silver coins—Arabian dinars, Hindustani mohurs, Greek byzants, French louis d'or, and Spanish doubloons. Excited by the influx of such wonderful wares and currency, local merchants sent their own ships to the island of Madagascar, where pirates had established their own colony.

Of course, voyaging between New York and Madagascar was risky business. Local ships might fall prey to other pirates or be captured by English or Dutch frigates as receivers of stolen goods. But the profits were too juicy to resist. A big cask of wine cost 19 pounds here, but Madagascar pirates were willing to pay 300 pounds. A gallon of rum worth only 2 shillings here brought 3 pounds there. In 7 years one New York merchant made $500,000 by trading with pirates. This Red Sea trade, as it was called, became the foundation of many a New York fortune lasting to the present day. Some of the city's current society leaders are descendants of black marketeers.

Many pirates and privateers who traded here were educated and well bred. Not only did they walk the streets safely, thanks to Governor Fletcher, but they also dined in wealthy homes and danced with eligible belles. In this category was the most notorious pirate of them all—Captain Kidd.

Born in Scotland about 1645 and thought to be the son of a Presbyterian minister, William Kidd went to sea, became an able mariner, sailed all over the world, and finally rose to the rank of captain. Eventually he owned several ships of his own. Not a breath
of scandal tarnished his name when he came to New York to live, in 1691. Everyone knew that he was a privateer because he paid fees to the king through the governor. Nonetheless, he was a highly respected citizen. Kidd served with credit against the French in the West Indies, chased a hostile privateer off the New York coast, and received 150 pounds from the city council. He helped build the first Trinity Church and bought a large lot for himself on the north side of Wall Street.

The year of his arrival, Captain Kidd married the beautiful and twice-widowed Sarah Oort Cox. His wedding certificate styled him Gentleman. The newlyweds settled down in a handsome stone house one block east of Hanover Square, then a fashionable part of town. They owned 104 ounces of silverware, and Mrs. Kidd boasted the first big Turkish rug ever seen in New York. Their other household items included a dozen Turkey-work chairs, a dozen double-nailed leather chairs, two dozen single-nailed leather chairs, one oval table, three chests of drawers, four feather beds, three chafing dishes, four brass candlesticks, three barrels of cider, and a fine wine cellar.

The Leislerian party in the city accused Governor Fletcher of complicity with pirates and accepting bribes from them. He protested his innocence. Then various East Indian governments, irked by the piracy practiced at the expense of their subjects, threatened reprisals against the English East India Company. In turn, this firm complained to the British government. About the same time King William began to wonder why the prosperous colony of New York produced such scanty revenues.

After a discussion with Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, and with other Privy Council members, the king decided to act. He would replace Fletcher with Bellomont and send his new governor to New York with explicit orders to stamp out piracy. The king also planned to outfit a frigate and dispatch it to the Indian Ocean to protect legitimate English merchantmen and appease the angry Indians.

Visiting London just then were Captain Kidd and a respected New York merchant, named Robert Livingston. Bellomont told Livingston about the king's proposed expedition. The New Yorker then suggested to the nobleman that Captain Kidd, “a bold and honest man,” should lead it. Bellomont reported this recommendation to the king. On October 10, 1695, an agreement was signed in London between Bellomont, on the one part, and Livingston and Kidd, on the other.

The king was to get 10 percent of all profits from Kidd's foray into the Indian Ocean, with the balance to be divided between Bellomont,
Livingston, and Kidd. Bellomont and a syndicate of rich men financed four-fifths of the venture, the rest being paid by the other two partners. Kidd was ordered to render a strict account of all his prizes. Livingston posted a bond guaranteeing that Kidd would live up to the contract. From the king Captain Kidd received a commission to arrest and bring to trial all pirates he captured, plus a letter of marque entitling him to seize French vessels.

Kidd then outfitted a 275-ton 36-gun frigate, the
Adventure Galley,
and hired enough crewmen to sail her from Plymouth to New York. Here he recruited a full complement of sailors, buttoned himself into the handsome uniform of a British naval officer, and bade farewell to his wife and small daughter. Escorted by merchants and public officials, Captain Kidd marched to Wall Street and the East River, where he boarded his cannon-bristling ship and set sail for the Indian Ocean.

Bellomont, the colony's new governor, didn't arrive here until 1698. Immediately the nobleman aligned himself with the Leislerians, the democrats. He began cracking down on pirates and on New York merchants working hand in hand with them. The more deeply Bellomont probed, the more convinced he became that many local aristocrats had accumulated their wealth dishonestly.

While this aristocrat battled aristocrats, New Yorkers learned of Captain Kidd's astonishing behavior. The pirate hunter had turned pirate. Finding no French ships in the Indian Ocean, he captured native trading vessels, pretending they held French passes and so were fair prizes. Furthermore, he attacked and plundered ships indiscriminately. Sailors landing on the quays of London and New York told blood-chilling stories about Captain Kidd's raising the dreaded black flag, burning ships, plundering the Madagascar coast, setting fire to homes, pillaging, and slaughtering. It was said that he tortured Moors and Christians, Englishmen and Americans, until they revealed the site of hidden treasures.

All this, of course, embarrassed King William and Governor Bellomont, who issued orders for Kidd's arrest. Kidd abandoned the
Adventure Galley
and sailed for America in one of his prizes, named the
Quedagh Merchant.
Upon landing in the West Indies, he deserted this ship as well, transferred his booty to a sloop, and proceeded to Gardiners Island at the eastern end of Long Island.

There have arisen many legends about what Kidd did next. Apparently he buried part of his treasure on the island, and from there
he wrote to Bellomont, professing innocence. Kidd was arrested, sent to England, and tried for the murder of one of his sailors and also for piracy. Found guilty on all charges, he was hanged at Execution Dock in London on May 23, 1701. His wife and daughter continued to live in New York.

With the opening of the eighteenth century the province of New York, despite its prosperity, lagged behind Connecticut and Massachusetts. In wealth and population Connecticut was at least twice as great as New York. Massachusetts also grew faster and built more ships than New York and prided itself on Boston, undeniably the largest city on the American continent. Nevertheless, changes continued to take place here. New streets were laid out, and for the first time the city assumed responsibility for cleaning streets. The first bridge across the Harlem River linked Manhattan and the Bronx. The city's few paupers had to wear badges identifying them as indigents. Stinking tanning vats were driven even farther north. A second City Hall was built, and the first Trinity Church was erected.

Within the province of New York the Church of England was set up, at first in just the four counties of New York, Queens, Richmond, and Westchester. By royal charter the parish of Trinity Church was created, and New York property owners elected wardens and vestrymen to administer the parish's temporal affairs. They voted to tax all citizens, regardless of religion, to pay for an Anglican clergyman. Trinity's first rector was the Reverend William Vesey; a New York street is named for him.

Trinity is important in the city's history. The mother of other churches in the area, it became perhaps the wealthiest parish in the world because it was granted a large tract of valuable land. This property was the target of lawsuits, filed one after another for more than a century.

Now, however, a church building was needed. Because the Church of England was the established religion here, this structure was quasi-public. Everyone of means, including Jews, donated funds for its erection. The government also allowed Trinity to seize all unclaimed shipwrecks off the New York coast and permitted it to claim stranded whales for conversion into oil and whalebone.

This first Trinity Church went up on the west side of Broadway at the head of Wall Street, on the site now occupied by the third and present Trinity. It was first used for religious services on March 13,
1698. A squat barnlike structure, 148 feet long and 72 feet wide, the church faced the Hudson River rather than Broadway. It received a steeple many years later.

Time and weather had taken their toll of the building at 71-73 Pearl Street which, since 1653, had served as the first City Hall. The five-story structure became so dilapidated and dangerous that the council and courts moved into temporary quarters elsewhere. Obviously a new City Hall was needed. Nearly all of the north side of Wall Street was owned in alternate sections by Colonel Nicholas Bayard and Abraham De Peyster. To the city De Peyster gave a strip of his land as a site for a new public structure. The lot was on the northeast corner of Wall and Nassau streets, where the Subtreasury Building now stands. The cornerstone of the second City Hall was laid in 1699, and the building was completed the following year.

Wrangling continued between the common people and the aristocrats. Governor Bellomont, firmly behind the Leislerians, did all in his power to break up the huge estates of the landed aristocracy. This was fiercely resented by Colonel Bayard, who, besides being a property owner, had once served as mayor. Bayard allegedly tried to stir the local troops to rebellion, and he mailed stinging criticisms of the governor to the authorities in London. For this he was arrested, charged with high treason, found guilty, and condemned to death. Before he could be executed, however, Governor Bellomont died of natural causes. Bellomont was succeeded by Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who set Bayard free.