The Pirate’s Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd

Ever since Errol Flynn swashbuckled across the screen in Captain Blood and Sea Hawk, we have been fascinated by pirates. The recent resurrection of the genre by Johnny Depp has intensified our interest in mariners who were outside the law. This book provides ample reasons for such a course. Among them, the politics of adversary nations who wished to fill their own coffers at the expense of enemy nations.

The book makes a case that Captain Kidd was an able seaman who trusted the wrong people. His end was gruesome as he was twice hanged and placed on a gibbet. The main character of the book, however, is Sarah Bradley Cox Oort Kidd Rousby. After marrying the wealthy Cox at fifteen, Sarah went on to marry three more times since her husbands died in short order and she had a long life.

She was born in 1660 and travelled to the new world after the death of her mother, specifically New York so that her family could escape poverty. The beautiful Sarah went from wealth to bankruptcy to infamy in her long life. She had four children and died of diphtheria in 1744. This book is interesting in the detailed descriptions of life at that time and place.