The Pirate Hunter

A gripping look at the life of the seventeenth-century sea captain and the never-before-told story of his hunt for the ruthless pirate Robert Culliford.
"A richly detailed nautical thriller . . . combines exciting escapism with thought-provoking history." —James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets
A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying treasure up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, from novelists to scholars, has the story all wrong. Captain Kidd was no career cutthroat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates in the 1690s. His three-year odyssey aboard the aptly named Adventure Galley would pit him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and above all, flesh-and-blood pirates. Captain Kidd himself facing a long-forgotten rogue by the name of Robert Culliford, who lured Kidd's crew to mutiny not once, but twice.


Through painstaking research, author Richard Zacks has pieced together the never-before-told story of Kidd versus Culliford, of pirate hunter versus pirate, as they fought each other in an unscripted duel across the oceans of the world. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter delivers something rare: an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.

"Zacks's detective work here is thoroughly convincing. In addition, he sets the suspenseful tale of Kidd's downfall within its larger historical context, in a manner reminiscent, at times, of Defoe, vividly illustrating the brutalities of life on a seagoing vessel and the chaos of urban society at the end of the seventeenth century." —The New Yorker
"Entertaining, richly detailed and authoritatively narrated, Zacks's account of the life of legendary seaman William Kidd delivers a first-rate story. . . . The book is cogent and replete with supporting evidence without the heavy-handed feel of some scholarly work. What really sets the book apart is Zacks's gift as researcher and storyteller. . . .  Zacks's book is a treasure, indeed." —Publishers Weekly