The Treasure of Captain Kidd

Set against the rough intellect of early sea lore, the film begins with a royal mission to purge piracy from the oceans. Lord Bellomont commissions William Kidd to quiet the swells through law and discipline. Yet the moment the orders are given, Kidd veers from service and sets a course toward piracy. What starts as targeted operations against French and Spanish vessels soon spirals into indiscriminate raiding of ships of many nations. The story tracks a young captain’s allure to treasure and fame, weaving encounters with modern lovers and wary sailors into a tense voyage across dangerous waters. Edwin Clarke plays the Modern Lover and Gladys Hulette is the Modern Sweetheart, with Laura Sawyer as Hannah crossing paths with the mutinous captain along the way.

Directed by Richard Ridgely, this silent era adventure draws on Bromwell Childe's original concept, presenting a brisk maritime tale that pairs frontier heroism with treasure hunting and naval rivalries.

Box office data for this 1913 release is not readily available, and many financial records from the era are incomplete. What survives is a note of its place in early pirate cinema and the preservation of its cast in archives.

Critics of the period tended to treat maritime escapades as sturdy entertainment and this title fits that mold while hinting at the era's moral talking points. The film implicitly probes the lure of wealth and status at sea, the tension between duty and ambition, and the mutability of a privateer’s identity as fortunes rise and fall. The visuals of roiling seas and gilded treasure set a sensory stage for these ideas, even as dialogue is kept to a minimum.

Today the film sits among early silent adventures with scant documented influence. Its value lies in illustrating how 1910s cinema portrayed piracy and treasure hunts, a precursor to later serialized nautical stories and swashbucklers, while preserving the visual language of the silent screen.