@Merry Andrew,
Teach and Kidd were both born in England, but that was not my point. Kidd operated from New York, and he was a privateer--he wasn't a pirate hunter. At the time he lived, the English Crown wasn't interested in rooting out piracy in the Caribbean, since it served their purposes, and they issued letters of marque to so many of those who would later be thought of as pirates. Kidd was executed in 1701, just before the War of the Spanish Succession began, during which time, if he had still been in business, he probably would have been issued yet another letter of marque.
Adventure Galley was built especially for his use. The accounts of what happened in the Indian Ocean are unreliable, because every witness had a stake in telling their own version of events. What probably is likely to have happened was that he did kill a mutinous petty officer (i don't remember who it was, the gunner, the quartermaster--i'd have to look it up), but it was involuntary manslaughter (he beaned him with an iron-bound bucket). The rest of his cruise has traditionally been called piracy, but he was operating with a letter or marque. His defenders in the past have said he was forced (not at all uncommon in cases of piracy), and modern historians are divided.
Teach operated in the waters of the Virginia and Carolina capes, although he sometimes ran down to the Islands when things got too hot for him. I have described Teach and Kidd as Americans because of where they operated, not who they were.
