Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd by Barry Clifford with Paul Perry

Captain Kidd was a famous and well-known Pirate, but he didn't start out that way. He was once a wealthy merchant of New York during the colonial period. But his decision to become a privateer and prey on French shipping for the glory of England led to his downfall: slipping down a morally slippery slope into actual piracy against the ships of England, the country he was ostensibly working for as a privateer, and becoming a petty tyrant who incited two rebellions against his captaincy, in both cases, losing the ships he was captaining. And then, killing a man with a thrown bucket, the crime that eventually led him to the gallows and the gibbet.

But this is not strictly Captain Kidd's story, it is also the story of diver and expedition leader Barry Clifford and his attempt to find the remains of Kidd's first ship, the Adventure Galley, sunk near the island nation of Madegascar. Even that isn't certain, with the ship in a graveyard of plundered and sunken vessels towed offshore of a small island called Ile St. Marie and allowed to sink- both as hazards to any ships coming to take care of the pirates, and as a means to dispose of ships that had been burnt or were no longer seaworthy.

Ile St. Marie also has its story to tell, as it was once known as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island", and a small neighboring island better known to the locals as "Pirate's Island" is the supposed repository of Pirate Treasure through sealed-up tunnels that supposedly lead to a vast storehouse of gold, gems and other treasure that await in the depths of the island, now forever sealed off by the concrete laid by a greedy man whose greed lead to his death. The inhabitants of Ile St. Marie think the island is cursed and aren't easily persuaded to go there.

Despite the dives being made on the boat, the permit the team holds is only to take pictures, not to excavate, and so they must go home and return to the island after they have recieved the proper permits. With Discovery Channel coming back to film the discovery of the ship, the team find themselves blocked by a jealous rival of author Clifford, one who takes as much pleasure in denying Clifford the right to dive as in bad-mouthing him to the officials and government of Madgascar and Ile St. Marie. Despite repeated attempts to appease the other man, he refuses to give up, believing himself to be wronged by Barry Clifford in the past. Even though he is also denied permission to dive on the wreck that he wants to excavate, the other man doesn't care. He who stays last, wins, he tells the author.

As the negotiations and diplomacy slowly drag out, author Clifford stays long past the time when he was supposed to leave, only to have an unexpected ending to his tale that frees him to confirm his suspicions about the presence of the Adventure Galley. But in between, the Deeds and trial of Captain Kidd are contrasted with the efforts of Barry Clifford to confirm that the Galley he found is the Adventure Galley.

This was a fascinating book, both for the historical story of the real Captain Kidd (who was quite a failure as a Pirate Captain, not to mention as a Privateer. The causes of his problems and downfall show that being a pirate at that time wasn't an easy task, and shows that the truth about pirates is not what is so often depicted in the stories of fiction. To give just one example, a pirate captain was democratically elected by his crew, and woe betide the captain who failed to catch booty-laden ships, or who tried to lord it over his men, as most of them earned a one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean at the many hands of their enraged crew.

The modern day story is equally fascinating, with its depiction of how hard it is to be an archaeologist when dealing with the government or rivals blocking you out of misplaced revenge or aggression, and the sad end to the tale of bad-mouthing and backstabbing is a depiction that archaeology is nowhere near as fun or dangerous as the Indiana Jones films would have you believe. It's just as exciting and full of finds, but in a different way. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people looking for a real true-life adventure story.