By William B. Henry If one ventures out to the small New Haven village of Westville, there’s a calming effect that seemingly exists, separating the area from the rest of the hustle and bustle of the city. However, in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a well-known and terribly kept secret that Westville was also the residency of the notorious New England pirate known as Captain Thunderbolt. In his book Westville: Tales from a Connecticut Hamlet , local historian Colin Caplan writes that there was a man named Dr. John Wilson, born John Doherty in England, who was believed to have been the man behind the pirate (Caplan 25), with The New Haven Union noting that his pirate name was self-dubbed. There are few known details of the pirate’s background prior to his arrival in Vermont and later Westville, with many of the dates given in Caplan’s collection of sources contradicting one another, suggesting that Thunderbolt was as much a myth and mystery as he was a real historical fi...