Captain Kidd and the Flamboyant

From the first day that the first Marco Beach Boys and Girls stepped foot upon the white sandy shore of Marco Island and looked out to sea, the open Gulf has always been an inspiration for stories. The creatures below the surface have always been mysterious, but the domino effect of destiny that has traveled over the waves is an endless enigma with fewer trails to follow.

Every spring, however, a lasting legacy blooms with roots that reach deep into piracy and a distant part of the world where many of the best mysteries begin.

When Captain William Kidd quit the gray winters of Scotland and the vast Highlands covered in clouds and rain, he set out to seek his fortune. The open sea beckoned and soon the young sailor was off on adventures that would lead him deep into the tropics. Privateers were not pirates, as anyone knew, and when William Kidd became an honorable and noble sea captain, the first ship under his command was Adventure Galley.

As a privateer for the British Empire, the newly appointed Captain Kidd was on a mission to scour the open sea-lanes in search of any ship that was at war with England. A ship flying a flag that was warring with Great Britain could be captured lawfully and taken as a prize, but as Captain Kidd soon learned, enemy ships were tricky, devious, and hard to find. With his crew, and particularly his chief gunner, growing openly critical of his leadership, a frustrated Captain Kidd decided to visit the exotic ports of the spice trade and send out spies to learn of enemy shipping.

After sailing down the west coast of Africa, the good captain and his somewhat surly crew rounded the Cape of Good Hope and set sail into the Indian Ocean. Upon learning from another British ship that the island of Madagascar was an open port famous for exporting vanilla beans, nutmeg, and cinnamon to the kingdom of France, Captain Kidd made landfall in a riverside port and sent his spies and sailors ashore.

The beautiful port with the open river was lush with the tropics of East Africa, but a bright-orange flowering tree dominated everything flourishing on Madagascar. After a fortnight of foraging, the crew of Adventure Galley returned to their ship laden with vanilla rum, kegs of cinnamon and nutmeg, and hundreds of seed pods from the bright orange flowering tree the English-speaking people of the port called the “Flamboyant.”

One of the surly gunners, however, came back with information that many of the Arab coffee ships sailing from Mocha in Yemen were secretly sailing under the French flag and were officially at war with England.

Captain Kidd believed the jaded spy and soon attacked the first of several ships. After gaining many silver bars and cargo, he landed upon the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. After sending his crew ashore for supplies and spying, he learned he was now an outlaw and a pirate because the Arab ships were not under French law and protection.

Before the tainted crew returned to the pirate ship, however, some of the sailors had traded many of the seed pods from the “Flamboyant” boasting they were seeds for nutmeg.

Captain Kidd then ordered Adventure Galley out of the Indian Ocean and back into the Atlantic where he was unknown as a pirate captain with a pirate ship. The course of the newfound pirates then cruised into the Caribbean and the French West Indies where many more of the “Flamboyant,” seed pods were again peddled as nutmeg seeds.

Eventually Captain Kidd and his chief gunner were embroiled in a swashbuckling fight and the gunner died from a gunshot wound. Captain Kidd was later captured and hung in London for his crimes of murder and piracy, but not before he acquired several new pirate ships and returned to Madagascar on several occasions. Upon every visit to the flamboyant island off the East African coast, they gathered the unique seed pods for trade and the French Caribbean was soon a-fire, a-blaze, and a-blooming, with the bright orange flowers brought to the islands by pirates.

Of course, the legend of Captain Kidd and the flamboyant is only a story as all pirate legends are stories, but recently, a large, engraved silver bar was discovered underwater near a port in Madagascar. The antiquated silver bearing the markings of a large letter “S” and upside down “T” are reputed to be from the shipwreck of Captain Kidd’s Adventure Galley. Captain Kidd’s treasure is the stuff of legends and adventure seekers have been looking for his hidden treasure for 300 hundred years.

The 50-kg silver bar believed to be from Captain Kidd’s pirate ship was presented to the President of Madagascar at a special ceremony. Undersea metal detectors indicate much more metal remains nearby and treasure divers are optimistic that the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and Adventure Galley will soon surface.

What remains undeniable are the flamboyant and bright orange blooms that arrive every spring on Marco Island and throughout the Caribbean and the tropical world. Today, we know the “Flamboyant,” as the Royal Poinciana tree named by Wenceslas Bojer in honor of Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, Governor of the French West Indies in the 17th century.

The Royal Poinciana has always been popular in Florida because the bright orange blooms and the green foliage provide shade for cooling homes in summer, while the deciduous and fern-like leaves fall in winter to allow the heat from the sun to warm our houses. After hurricanes - like the raging storms of the Indian Ocean - the Royal Poinciana are some of the few trees left standing with little damage.

Captain Kidd might have been a reluctant pirate with a surly crew but somewhere, somehow, sailors that were perhaps pirates were inspired to spread across the oceans the tropical and flamboyant bright orange beauty we all have today.