Though related to his subject, Samuel Marquis considers this biography “a scholarly work”

Samuel Marquis was born and raised in Colorado. He is the ninth-great-grandson of legendary privateer Captain William Kidd, and the author of “Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal” and “Blackbeard: The Birth of America.” He has written a total of 12 American histories, historical novels, and works of suspense, covering primarily the period from colonial America through World War II. Marquis works by day as a professional hydrogeologist with an environmental consulting firm. He and his wife live in Louisville, Colorado, where they raised their three children. 

SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?

Samuel Marquis: I was inspired to write a book on Captain Kidd because he is my ninth-great-grandfather on my father’s side and I wanted to tell his true story. The family tales and Kidd biographies I grew up with as a Colorado hellion were for the most part wildly inaccurate “Treasure Island”-like yarns for the simple reason that Captain Kidd the man and myth have become inseparable. 

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Since the late 1690s, he has been miscast as a lawful New York private naval commander, or privateer, who had everything—a beautiful wife and daughters, tons of money, several expensive homes overlooking the East River—yet was lured by the temptation of treasure chests filled with silver and gold into “turning arch-pirate” in Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde fashion. But that is a false narrative, as he was never actually an outlaw pirate and grappled mightily against his mutinous crew not to break the law.

When I wrote “Blackbeard: The Birth of America” in 2018, I gathered a huge amount of research material on Golden Age privateers and pirates, including Captain Kidd, and I eventually decided to write about my iconic ancestor. But in digging deep into the archives, I discovered a far different historical figure than the one I encountered in handed-down family tales and Kidd mythology. 

With “Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal,” I have written a nonfiction biography of my ancestor that tells the more historically accurate, nuanced, and complicated tale of the real Captain Kidd. The man was a gray-shaded and complex American hero, New York gentleman, and family man who fought valiantly against the French and was railroaded by the English Crown—and not the villainous, treasure-burying scoundrel of popular culture and legend.

SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?

Marquis: The book excerpt is from Chapter 1, pages 3-11, when Captain Kidd takes the French privateer gunship Sainte Rose as a prize and becomes “Captain Kidd.” I chose this excerpt because it is not only the exciting opening scene of the book, but also the sea battle where our noble hero (or is he more appropriately an antihero?) enters the history books for the very first time as the legendary “Captain Kidd.” As I write in the opening scene, he “was, in essence, a seventeenth-century U.S. Navy Seal,” and he has been an American cultural icon for over 320 years.

SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Marquis: My family connection to Captain Kidd and the fact that he has been badly miscast by history were the two principal reasons I had to write this book. In preparing it, I had to dig deep into the historical archives and get my hands on all the relevant primary source materials from 1689-1701, the specific period covered by my book, and it is these dusty old documents that drove the subsequent narrative. 

“Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal ”

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My primary goal in all my American nonfiction history and historical fiction books is to be meticulous and historically accurate, while simultaneously telling a gripping, fast-paced story. It is for this reason “Captain Kidd” contains 94 pages of endnotes and bibliography. As I say in the acknowledgements at the end, the book “is first and foremost a scholarly work based upon primary sources.”

SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?

Marquis: Captain Kidd is my 12th book so my craft has been honed from having written some 1,500,000 words over 300 chapters. At some point during this journey, I became a true professional writer. But having written first “Blackbeard” and now “Captain Kidd” about the two most famous “pirates” of all time and having devoured hundreds of primary and secondary sources on the two legendary figures, I can honestly say that I have become at least a mini-expert on the Golden Age of Piracy and also late 17th-century New York history.

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Marquis: Juggling my day job as a VP-principal hydrogeologist and groundwater expert with the equally important role of being a good husband and father and my night and weekend job as an American history author. I just wish there were three of me to get everything done. 

SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?

Marquis: The biggest misconception and the most egregious lie in the Captain Kidd saga are that he “turned pirate” and acted deliberately and maliciously outside his privateering commission from King William III of England to fight the French and hunt down pirates. The reality is that he has been badly mischaracterized and maligned as a vicious cutthroat and arch-pirate for over 300 years due to the original anti-piracy propaganda campaign in the late 1690s by the English Crown and East India Company. 

That is why my foremost goal is to depict Captain Kidd as he truly was, as a gray-shaded colonial American hero, and not as the villainous, heartless, dastardly, and fiendish arch-pirate falsely created by Mother England. The challenge with Captain Kidd has always been in stripping away the hundreds of years of myth; exposing the lies of the various unreliable narrators in the Kidd story, especially two of his seamen who perjured themselves at his trial; and not succumbing to falling into the traditional rigid “villain” or “martyr” camps, by ignoring facts that do not fit neatly into one of these two competing conceptual models. 

In reality, Captain Kidd was neither a villain nor a martyr, but it is fair to summarize him as a patriotic, loving, honorable, and indefatigable sea captain, community leader, warrior, husband, and father—but with more than a few internal inconsistencies and character defects.

SunLit: Who was Captain Kidd really?

Marquis: Perhaps my dedication at the beginning of the book sums up the Captain Kidd legacy best:

“For my ninth-great-grandfather Captain William Kidd—democratic Caribbean buccaneer; patriotic colonial American privateer and merchant sea captain; New York gentleman and founding father of Trinity Church; loving husband, father, and son; defender of a fledgling nation in the New World; and challenger to the imperial English Empire.”

SunLit: Tell us about your next project.

Marquis: My newest book, which I just finished, is “New York: The Making of America’s Greatest City in the Epic Age of Empire, Piracy, and Rebellion (1689–1701).” Like “Captain Kidd,” it is a narrative nonfiction American history book. It tells the story of New York in the Roaring 1690s, as seen through the eyes of several of its most fascinating historical figures who were minor characters in “Captain Kidd.” 

New York at this time is utterly fascinating to me: it was a place of myriad contradictions, of admirable humanity, prosperity, personal freedom, and fulfillment of the American Dream against a backdrop of cruel dispossession and enslavement, violent warfare during King William’s War (1689-1697), empire-building, seafaring piracy, political turbulence, and rebellion. 

Ultimately, it was every bit as historically dramatic, contentious, and consequential as the far more written-about years of the American Revolution, Civil War, or WWII, which is why I am writing about it.

A few more quick items:

Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: “The Fate of the Day” by Rick Atkinson

First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “The Light in the Forest” by Conrad Richter 

Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Limit the number of major point-of-view characters in your books and make sure they are all very different in terms of character, age, ethnicity, sex, and skill set.

Favorite fictional literary character: I have two co-favorites: Hawkeye of “The Last of the Mohicans” and Jay Gatsby of “The Great Gatsby.”

Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Ken Follett’s “The Eye of the Needle.”

Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Hardcover book. 

One book you’ve read multiple times: Haven’t done that; once is enough for me apparently.

Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: iPhone to take photos of key documents as I write so that I can quote when I can’t quickly cut and paste.

Best antidote for writer’s block: I don’t get writer’s block – what I need is more time in a day.

Most valuable beta reader: My literary agent.