Adventure Galley
| History | |
|---|---|
 England
|
|
| Name: | Adventure Galley |
| Builder: | William Castle, Deptford? |
| Launched: | 4 December 1657 |
| Fate: | Sunk, April 1698 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | oared frigate |
| Tons burthen: | 287 |
| Length: | 124 ft (38 m) (keel) |
| Beam: | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
| Draught: | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails, one bank of oars |
| Sail plan: | Ship rig |
| Speed: |
|
| Complement: | 160 men |
| Armament: | 34 light cannon |
Adventure Galley, also known as Adventure, was an English sailing ship captained by William Kidd, the notorious privateer. She was a type of hybrid ship that combined square rigged sails with oars to give her manoeuvrability in both windy and calm conditions. The vessel was launched at the end of 1695 and was acquired by Kidd the following year to serve in his privateering venture. Between April 1696 and April 1698, she travelled thousands of miles across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in search of pirates but failed to find any until nearly the end of her travels. Instead, Kidd himself turned pirate in desperation at not having obtained any prizes. Adventure Galley succeeded in capturing two vessels off India and brought them back to Madagascar, but by the spring of 1698 the ship's hull had become so rotten and leaky that she was no longer seaworthy. She was stripped of anything movable and sunk off the north-eastern coast of Madagascar. Her remains have not yet been located.
The vessel was acquired for Kidd by a consortium of investors who backed a scheme to hunt down pirates, recover their booty and redistribute it among the investors. He had enlisted the support of Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont and governor-general of the British Province of New York and the ambitious Robert Livingston the Younger, who later became the mayor of Albany, New York. With Coote's backing, Kidd obtained a commission from King William III to operate as a privateer. The other investors who came aboard the scheme after it met with the king's approval were the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Romney, the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Edmund Harrison and John Somers. The king himself was not an investor but was nonetheless entitled to one tenth of the proceeds.
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Wikipedia