History: The Turtle in Question

Over at Homo Gastronomicus the knowledgeable India took on the subject of how turtle, and sea turtle in particular, went from the food of scurvy dogs to a delicacy in 18th century Great Britain. The piece is profoundly interesting, even if it does only skirt the issue of boucanier barbeques. I won't paraphrase the post as you really should read it yourself, but here are a few points I'd like to bring up.

The hero of the day as far as introducing sea turtle to the glitterati of England was George Anson, 1st Baron Anson. Pictured above, the Royal Navy man became famous and wealthy after raiding Spanish territories and ships in South and Central America. These endeavors were followed by a circumnavigation of the globe that earned Anson a comparison to Francis Drake.

Anson, who wrote a best seller about his adventures entitled A Voyage Round the World, hit some questionable bumps in the road on his much acclaimed journey. He wrecked ships; the loss of HMS Wager and subsequent stranding of several of his men created much speculation. More importantly, he lost men. His squadron of six men-of-war left Portsmouth with a complement of over 1,000 sailors in 1740; only 188 men returned to Spithead in 1744.

Despite these unfortunate circumstances, Anson managed to return to England a wealthy man after capturing a number of Spanish ships in the West Indies and negotiating lucrative trade deals in China. He seems to have talked a good game, too. Rather than reprimand or courts martial for his losses, Anson was made 1st Baron Anson in 1747 and elevated to the station of First Lord of the Admiralty.

He also brought back tales of the excellent taste and restorative effects of the meat and fat of sea turtles. Having experienced these things first hand, and then written about them in his book, he became more than just a gastronome suggesting a new delicacy. Anson, to one degree or another, became the "turtle king". He gifted huge turtles imported at his own expense to such high society organizations as White's Chocolate House and the Thursday's Club. Soon enough, sea turtle became all the rage and Anson was given credit for introducing Brits to a taste sensation that was once thought to be only fit for common seamen and down right pirates.

As an aside, or perhaps an addendum, you can find an excellent discussion of buccaneers and sea turtles here. Scroll down to the comments and find Benerson Little's thoughts on the points made. If anyone knows whereof they speak on the subject, it is certainly he.

Header: George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, contemporary portrait by an unknown artist via Wikipedia

People: Le Filibustier

Francois Grogniet is mentioned only in passing in most accounts of the buccaneering era, if at all.  His connection to more famous buccaneers Edward Davis and Captain Swan keeps his name in the history books, however.  The buccaneer navigator turned author, William Dampier, mentions Grogniet.  Two prolific pirate historians, Philip Gosse and David F. Marley both give Grogniet a separate entry in their seminal works, but the information is sketchy at best.

Grogniet (whose name is pronounce groan-ee-YAY and not like a Russian saying no to grog) was almost certainly born in France.  Where, exactly, is impossible to say but it is reasonable to imagine that he came from one of the many sea ports along the Channel or the Bay of Biscay.  He, like so many others, probably learned his trade on merchant ships.  When this no longer suited, he shipped out to Saint Domingue and the buccaneer havens of Tortuga and Petit Goave.

He first appears on the books, so to say, in 1683 when he is captaining his own ship and sailing in company with a Captain L'Escayer.  These two teamed up with Davis and Swan in an attempt to take the Armada del Mar del Sur, a Spanish treasure fleet, off the Central American coast.  This endeavor came to naught and, as Marley notes in Pirates of the Americas, the buccaneers scattered and took a few months to lick their wounds.

Meeting up with Davis and Swan once again, Grogniet joined them in an attempt to blockade the port of Panama for ransom.  This scheme failed as well and, though Davis and Swan headed out for Nicaragua and a raid of the town of Leon.  Instead, Grogniet kept his Sainte~Rose off the coast of Nicaragua and took his men ashore at Remedios to loot and pillage.

Finding a bit of success at Remedios, Grogniet and his crew lurked off the coast of Panama, hitting small hamlets for what ever they could carry away.  Apparently emblodened by success, Grogniet returned to Remedios evidently for water and provisions.  They were ambushed by three Spanish ships and the ensuing fight cost many of the buccaneers their lives.

According to Gosse in The Pirate's Who's Who, however, the city that was revisited by Grogniet was not Remedios but Quibo in the province of Quito.  Here, again according to Gosse, Grogniet's Sainte~Rose was burned to the waterline by the Spanish.  Half-starved and beat up, Grogniet and his now rather meager crew of slightly more that 100 men were reduced to three periaugers as they set out north for the cities of Granada and Guayaquil.

Both Marley and Gosse agree that Grogniet eventually entered the Great South Sea and, joining with English buccaneer Captain Townley, continued to raid towns along the coast of modern day Peru and Nicaragua.  A successful raid on Granada seems once again to have encouraged the ever-optimistic Grogniet, despite the fact that half of his crew had abandoned him preferring to take their chanced with one of their own, Le Picard, as captain.  Townley and Grogniet planned a raid on the wealthy city of Guayaquil.

In April of 1687, the raiders came to the Guayas River.  Finding the current unfavorable, they took refuge on Puna Island where they were spotted by Spanish lookouts.  Managing to overcome these guards, the buccaneers entered Guayaquil and trapped 700 of the townspeople in the city's Cathedral.  They plundered the homes but were, at some point, assaulted by another group of Spanish military.  In the hand-to-hand fighting, Grogniet was severely wounded.

The buccaneers periaugers were stuffed with booty and prisoners - perhaps up to 200.  Despite the favorable current of the Guayas, the heavy-laden boats had a slow go back to the ships.  Meanwhile, Grogniet bled out onto the deck of his periauger.  He was still alive when the buccaneers returned to their flotilla but he would die of his wounds on or about May 2nd.  As Marley notes, "never enjoying the silver and jewels won during his one great strike."

Header: Dead Men Tell no Tales by Howard Pyle via Wikimedia 

Tools of the Trade: Punch, Flip and Old Grog

Recently, I was asked by a friend who is a professional editor and screenwriter to look at a piece he was working on. The screenplay was about buccaneers in the latter part of the 17th century and there were a few points my friend was unfamiliar with as far as seafaring, timeframes, dialogue and particularly the little details of historical accuracy. Of course I was eager to get my hands on the thing; the idea of a well researched, high spirited buccaneer movie (featuring real life filibuster Michele de Grammont, no less) excited me immeasurably. Sadly, reality put a damper on that enthusiasm pretty quickly.


There were a million little details that crushed my spirits thoroughly (the hero, just as an example, wore a tricorn hat and beaded braids a la Jack Sparrow) but one that stood out was the drinking that went on in the buccaneer port of Tortuga (sadly positioned off Puerto Rico, not Haiti where the buccaneer outpost actually was). Many was the time that the protagonists reached for a mug of grog; in fact de Grammont and our hero sealed a deal over pints and pints of the stuff.

In the 1680s, for better or for worse, grog was an unknown commodity. In fact grog was probably largely unknown in the New World well into the 18th century. Grog was initially a drink of the Royal Navy and was not officially adopted by them until 1740. The mix of water and rum was a replacement for beer, which had a habit of going off pretty quickly, particularly in warm climes like the West Indies and India. As an aside here, if you are familiar with India Pale Ale you know how the Royal Navy tried to fix that; the stronger, sturdier IPA was brewed specifically for ships headed east.

This is not to say that buccaneers were not familiar with rum, or that they would in fact not have added things – including water – to it. It simply would not have been called “grog”. What the gentlemen rovers called their drinks of choice, though, is one of the more curious tidbits about the early filibusters and those freebooters who came after. At least to me.

The type of rum that was most available to many of the Caribbean islands in the 17th century was affectionately known as “kill-devil”. This was a common man’s drink composed of rum that had not been properly aged to smooth over the bitter taste of fermented sugar cane. While wealthy land owners, Governors and visiting dignitaries in the first outposts of Britain would drink rum proper which was originally called rumbullion, the working poor and the slaves who made the rum drank a less refined form of same. It was probably an addiction for most and the death of many as well.

Another popular way to drink rum was in what was called a punch. Alcoholic punches were intensely popular in Europe in the 17th century so making one with the locally bottled alcohol was not much of a stretch. Rum punch usually contained water, some form of citrus juice – lime was the most popular – and molasses or sugar. Sometimes nutmeg was grated into the beverage. Henry Morgan and his captains were getting roaring drunk on rum punch when his flagship, Oxford, exploded underneath them killing every man directly across the table from Morgan but sparing the old dog and his mates on the other side.

Bombo or bumboo was also popular and was probably virtually the same thing as rum punch. A heated version of both drinks was called rumfustian. This contained rum, beer, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a raw egg and was then heated with a rod such as a red-hot poke from the fire. A cousin to rumfustian, flip was a popular drink in the American colonies before and during the Revolutionary War. It was made with rum, beer and molasses or sugar heated just as its relative had been. In his history of all things regarding the title …And a Bottle of Rum, Wayne Curtis states:

If grog was an emblem of the triumph of order over disorder on the open seas, rum – especially in the form of a popular drink called “flip” – was a symbol of the new order displacing the old in the colonies.

And doubtless very popular with the privateers of the era; in fact John Paul Jones was known to enjoy his flip when in port.

All that said, it is important to remember that our freebooting ancestors were not terribly picky about their alcohol, at least in general. An onion bottle full of wine or porter would have done just as well as a bowl of bumboo and the big head the next morning would have been just the same.

And so, in less wordy form, my recommendations went out to my friend and his client. I will continue to wonder about that ambitious buccaneer screenplay and hope for its great success. Especially if the tricorns and grog are ditched all together.

Header: From Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates

Update 11/22: Looking for more in depth information on rum for the pirate in all of us?  Check out Blue Lou Logan's well researched and delightful post at his freebooting blog.

Home Ports: Cradle of Buccaneers

The island of Hispaniola, which today holds the countries of Haiti and Santo Domingo on her shores, has for centuries been a base camp for all manner of freebooters. Stomping ground, home port and mother island, Hispaniola and in particular the French third of her land, has given us a myriad of colorful characters who are often spoken of here at Triple P. Tortuga, Petit Goave, Basse-Terre, Leogane and even Port-au-Prince were all used by high seas renegades as staging areas. So today, as a bit of a tribute, the history of forgotten Haiti and the contribution of her pirate progeny.


Centuries before Columbus, who “discovered” Hispaniola in 1492, the Taino people arrived. They most probably came in long canoes – similar to Polynesians in the South Pacific – from what is now Venezuela. They spoke an Arawakan language and are therefore sometimes mistakenly referred to as Arawaks themselves. These people named the island “Ayiti” which is where the modern name Haiti comes from.

The Taino had a complicated system of government that broke Ayiti into five kingdoms ruled by caciques. Twenty years after Columbus’ first landing the Spanish decided to wrest control of the island from the Taino. Not necessarily warlike by nature, the Taino were also not about to back down to the invaders and destroyed both the settlements of Saint Nicolas and La Navidad. All this was done under the leadership of Taino cacique Anacaona, the widow of Caonabo. Despite her valiant resistance, Anacaona was captured and hanged with all ceremony. The message was clear and the Taino people, for the most part, fell under the rule of their new overlords. The majority of the population was wiped out by smallpox, pneumonia, gonorrhea and other decidedly European diseases.

In 1517, with the indigenous population rung out as a source of free labor, Charles V of Spain authorized European indentured servitude and the importation of African slaves to Hispaniola. This decision would bring a fatal mix of disgruntled people, mostly male at first, to an under-protected backwater, leading to runaways and even small revolts. The men ran to the island of Tortuga where they became the original boucaniers, hunting black pigs and raiding small merchant craft.

Interestingly, a good many of the indentured servants in Hispaniola (and on surrounding Caribbean islands) were French. They set up shop on Tortuga, creating their own outlaw paradise that saw the inclusion of women – at this point, often runaway slaves – by the mid-16th century. By 1600, these people were heading out in ships and striking in particular against the Spanish. The most infamous of the era was Francois L’Olonnais. Born David Nau in the Olon region of France, indenture under a brutal Spanish master seems to have driven him insane. When he took up buccaneering he became a brutal monster, torturing Spanish captives without remorse and licking their blood from his sword.

By the 1660s the fame – and success – of these buccaneers had spread prompting French, Dutch and English adventurers to voluntarily travel to Tortuga and take up the black flag. When former buccaneer Bertrand d’Ogeron settled in the Massif de la Selle above Petit Goave and began successfully growing tobacco, France herself took note. Colonists immigrated to Hispaniola from France and French islands in the Caribbean. Spain naturally saw this as an invasion (as they had always imagined the buccaneers to be invaders, it was a natural progression) and hostilities on the island reached a fever pitch in the 1690s.

In 1697 the Treaty of Ryswick officially divided Hispaniola, with the western third going to France and becoming Saint Domingue. Immigration boomed and by the start of the French Revolution in 1789 there were upwards of 40,000 colonists of French descent on the island (by comparison, French Canada had a population of approximately 63,000 Europeans at relatively the same time).

With the Revolution, though, came the breakdown of the institutions that had made Saint Domingue a wealthy colony. When Robespierre announced the abolition of slavery at the end of 1793, the slave revolt led by Jean Jacques Dessalines in 1791 was confirmed as valid. By the end of 1794 Saint Domingue was at peace and under the capable governance of Toussaint Louverture, a former slave and brilliant military leader.

This taste of freedom was short lived, however. Bonaparte, in need of income for his war machine, reinstituted slavery and the plantation system in France’s Caribbean colonies. Louverture was hauled off to France in chains and died in a dungeon. The now free black Saint Domiguens, unwilling to return to slavery, revolted again and this time the consequences were brutal. Out of this unfortunate bloodbath, which saw an unprecedented exodus of white, mixed race and free black people from the island, came men who are surely familiar to the Brethren. The Laffite brothers, who were certainly not born in Port-au-Prince as many writers would have us believe, may very well have done business – possibly piratical business – out of the city prior to 1804. Dominique Youx, that old sea dog and “bravest of the Baratarians”, was almost certainly born in Saint Domingue. Other privateers of the era were probably the product of the upheaval on the island as well, though their names are lost to us.

When the dust settled, the newly christened Haiti became the first and only free nation born of a slave revolution. At the height of the privateering era, in 1817, Haitian President Alexandre Petion would first welcome the Liberator Simon Bolivar at Aux Cayes and then supply him with ships, men and arms. All in exchange for the promise that slavery would be abolished in Grand Columbia once Bolivar’s revolution was successful. The privateer that saw Bolivar safely to and from Haiti was none other than Renato Beluche in his sloop General Arismendi.

The story of modern Haiti is less glorious than her past, of course, but that is due in large part to foreign influence and not her generous people. Personally, I feel that historians – who tend to glorify New Providence and Port Royal as the crown jewels of pirate ports – should give a little more attention to the western third of Hispaniola, where buccaneers and privateers were born.

Header: Navigational map of Hispaniola c 1639

People: Monsieur le Filibustier

The stories surrounding today’s buccaneer are as colorful as any that might be told about, or by, a sea rover. He was a gentleman of Paris until creditors forced him into piracy for money. He had a winning way with the ladies and left the Spanish Senoras of towns he sacked in love with him. He retired to a chateau along the Seine a wealthy and much sought after adventurer. He wrote about his experiences and left his journal for the entire world to witness.

The list could fill a page or two but the truth of the matter is no one knows any of it for sure. Raveneau de Lussan surely could have done all those things for he handily documented all in the thrice-published tome The Filibusters of the South Sea which first appeared in 1689. But we’re not sure he wrote that book, or that his name was actually Raveneau de Lussan, or where he came from. The sparse information we do have, however, makes the entire story even more tantalizing.

Much like many of the great pirates and privateers, de Lussan appears in a hotbed of freebooters, seemingly out of nowhere. He turns up as an indentured servant in Sante Domingue in 1679. How old he was at the time is unknown but one can assume he was relatively young as his master was evidently a grower of sugar cane and a sadist to boot. Much like the real Francois L’Olonnais and the fictional Captain Blood, de Lussan and his fellows suffered mightily at the hands of their master. Some hints indicated that the man may have himself been a boucanier from the old days and therefore quite possibly a runaway indentured servant himself. Whatever the actual circumstance, de Lussan turned to that sure-fire occupation for indentures denied their promised piece of land: piracy.

It seems that de Lussan was a well educated and even refined man. His prose in Filibusters rivals that of Exquemelin, who was a trained doctor. Though there is no real “story arc” per ce the entire experience of being a buccaneer and attacking prey by land and at sea is documented, probably with a good deal of accuracy. Much like Exquemelin and Pere Labat, de Lussan leaves nothing out. He even goes so far as to quote letters left behind by the enemy he most distrusted: the Spanish. Here is part of one:

… advance within the shot of your arquebusses, let not your men fire but by twenties, to the end your firing may not be in vain. And when you find them weakened, raise a shout to frighten them, and fall in with your swords…

This snippet says a lot about Spanish fire power – or lack thereof – in the face of the buccaneers. Fearing rebellion, the Spanish governments would not allow even their soldiers in the New World the more technologically advanced muskets so favored by the French. The Spanish were forced in these cases to advance within twenty paces of the threatening ladrones while the French, expert shots, picked them off.

At sea de Lussan notes similar tactics. He indicates that captains would order those deadly muskets fired at will, killing officers and cutting rigging more capably than cannon. He notes in one case that “Using our fusils, we made so great a fire upon them that they were forced to close their port holes and bear up to the wind.”

De Lussan is also in no way shy about the buccaneers’ use of torture. He consistently refers to “persuasion” of any kind as le chevalet – the “little horse” – meaning the rack. There is very little discrimination as to who will be put on the little horse, with a few noted exceptions. De Lussan is clear that he would never allow a woman, child or member of the clergy to be tortured or even threatened if he could help it at all. He goes out of his way to note that at every city sacked from the Panama Coast to Guayaquil in Peru he, at the very least, would take the time to hear Mass in the local church before even thinking of plunder.

And really, it is the ladies upon whom de Lussan most dwells. While he repeats vehemently his distrust of all the Spanish time and again, he seems rather taken by their elite Donas. He is personally mortified when, while escorting a young and particularly lovely noblewoman to safe haven in a church, she begins to weep uncontrollably. He enquired more than once as to her obvious apprehension until she finally blurted: “Oh please Senor; do not you eat me!” To his dismay he would later learn that the Spanish told their children stories of monkey-like buccaneers descending from the dark forests to cannibalize the unsuspecting – and one assumes naughty – young person.

The finest story involving the fairer sex in de Lussan’s catalogue involves the young widow of the Spanish Treasurer at the city of Guayaquil. De Lussan took part in sacking the city in 1684 and does not seem ashamed to say he was involved in a good deal of the carnage there. He stops short of saying he himself killed the widow’s husband but tells us that he went to pay a call upon the Treasurer’s house all unaware that he had been a married man. He found the widow “… dissolved in tears and most disheveled” and excused himself immediately “… with all gallantry”. The widow evidently thought quite a bit of de Lussan, calling him back to her house the next day and virtually throwing herself at him. She promised her husband’s position and all his wealth if de Lussan would elope with her into the woods and hide there until his mates had gone. She even went so far as to remove her dainty shoes and silk stockings, baring her feet to the buccaneer as proof of her love.

Raveneau de Lussan, for all his courtly gestures, could not be tempted and returned to his ship to sail back to Tortuga. Five years later his book was available in France but what had become of the dandy filibuster is still a mystery. The book was republished in 1690 and again in 1695 with revisions but whether or not those were done by Monsieur de Lussan is up for debate. Like so many other free booters, Raveneau de Lussan simply disappeared leaving more than most but very little to hold on to nonetheless. But a good story is always worth while, and a good pirate story is so much more.

Header: Engraving of a French musketeer c 1685

Tools Of The Trade: The Buccaneers Gun

They name the musket their gun and have used it with great ingenuity to make up for their lack of resources.

Thus wrote Triple P’s house physician Alexander Exquemelin of the famous boucaniers of Tortuga. They were, said the Doctor in his eye-witness accounts, reliably efficient marksman who could be compared to “… the finest of the French Musketeers”. This is a statement not to be taken lightly when one considers the facts surrounding it. First, the flintlock musket, with its long barrel, smooth bore and uneven shot, is ungainly and ill suited to accuracy in the eyes of modern marksmen. Second, the French Musketeers had a reputation in their day comparable in many ways to modern special ops snipers.

So what was the draw of the musket for men who roved the sea and land looking for plunder and rarely settling in to one place? The answer to that question is surprisingly complex and yet perfectly logical. But it does require a familiarity with the weapon and its uses.

The long musket was the son of the matchlock. Aside from line-up-and-fire-on-command military actions based on land there was really nothing the matchlock could do. With its slow loading and lit match waving dangerously off to the side of the gun itself, the matchlock was always a fire or even explosion waiting to happen. Particularly aboard a close-packed ship made of wood and smeared with combustibles like tar and tallow, the matchlock was beyond impractical. All that changed with the simple but profoundly brilliant mechanism of the striking flint.

A flintlock musket had the advantage of being easy to carry first and relatively inexpensive second. Though cannon can do tremendous damage on land and at sea they are hard to come by and even harder to steal. Then too not all buccaneering ships – some of which were no more than simple canoes – could carry cannon. But a pirogue manned with ten superior boucaniers marksmen could inflict a lot of damage on the men aboard a much larger prize. And that even before the prize knew what was upon them.

The musket Exquemelin and his mates dubbed the fusil boucanier, or buccaneer gun, was originally of French or Dutch origin. By the time of Exquemelin’s writings in the late 17th century, this specific type of musket was in use throughout the New World with the notable exception of Spanish territories. On average the gun was about four and a half feet long with a smooth bore and fittings made of brass or more infrequently iron. It resembled the hunting guns favored in Europe but not the blunderbusses so familiar to American children from Pilgrim themed cartoons. At first glance the musket would appear to modern eyes like an unusually long rifle with very fancy fittings.

The musket had a front sight but no rear sight and the best marksman would use a rest of some kind – a fence or tree crotch or the rail of their ship – when firing. The caliber of the gun was not set but based on the bores of guns still in existence ranged from .73 to .78. It is worth noting that there are no examples of the fusil boucanier proper available today, so all of this is well informed speculation. Loading was a complicated process that will need an entire post of its own but contemporary reports and modern research indicated that an accomplished buccaneer could potentially complete the task within twenty to thirty seconds. Effective deadly range in the hands of the same man would be approximately 200 yards but up to 300 yards the ball (or balls, frequently the muskets were double or triple loaded) could cause serious though not necessarily life-threatening injury.

With all this in mind the answer to the initial question seems a bit clearer. The musket was relatively easy to carry. In fact, on Morgan’s march across the Isthmus of Panama many of his men, particularly the French boucaniers from San Domingue, carried two or three at a time. Not surprisingly these were Morgan’s go-to marksmen who equalized battles and fed their fellows when game or cattle were available with their beloved muskets. This weapon was also easy to come by. They were relatively affordable and it goes without saying that taking them from a prize or off a fallen foe or comrade was easy work. The guns were surprisingly accurate in the hands of a seasoned marksman. Even aboard small vessels, as long as the musket was double loaded, a good shooter could hit a man somewhere in his torso three shots out of six at a reasonable distance.

Of course the muskets had their drawbacks. They had to be kept meticulously clean and oiled to avoid the ubiquitous rust that dogged all metal items in the tropics and particularly at sea. Interestingly, the buccaneers routinely allowed their muskets’ brass fittings to tarnish, presumably to cut down on any tell tale glint that might give them away in an ambush situation. Then, too, there was the issue of firing with a fouled barrel. Even dry black powder would build up in the barrel of a musket with each firing and eventually the marksman would have to take a moment to scour his barrel with linen or tow wrapped around the ramrod and soaked with any available fluid (yeah; any available fluid). Failure to do so could result in a jammed ball and the potential ruin of the weapon.

For a superior and detailed discussion of the particulars of buccaneer muskets, see Benerson Little’s book The Sea Rovers Practice, which your humble hostess consults quite frequently. Little, a former Navy SEAL, has done tests with guns comparable to these muskets both on land and afloat, and his findings are well worth the time of any researcher, novelist, enthusiast or re-enactor. Plus the book is a very enjoyable read; find it here.

The days of the flintlock mechanism, and the muskets it informed, continued into the pre-modern era. Infamous pirates like Roberts and Blackbeard were good with their muskets and, at least in the case of Edward Teach, died at the point of the same weapon. And of course it was the need for rifle flints that first drew Andrew Jackson into the confidence of that “hellish banditi”, Jean Laffite. Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, your average freebooter was probably better with a buccaneer gun than he ever was with a sword.

Header: The Buccaneer by Howard Pyle

Home Ports: Basse-Terre

One of the more shadowy figures in the already hard-to-dig-into world of the buccaneers is Frenchman Jean Le Vasseur. Aside from occasional mentions by our old friend Alexander Exquemelin, who claimed to know him personally, and the use of his name for Basil Rathbone’s villainous character in Captain Blood, no one seems very forthcoming about the man. His legacy, however is – or was – carved in stone. Quite literally built rock by rock, Le Vasseur’s masterwork on the Island of Tortuga was known as the Fort of the Rock and it stood impenetrable for ten years.

Le Vasseur was a military engineer in his native land. He most probably came from Bordeaux or Gascony and is last documented in France in that hotbed of Huguenot rebellion La Rochelle. When that fortress fell to the Catholics many displaced Protestants set their sights on the New World and the potentially lucrative profession of piracy. Le Vasseur appears to have been among them as he turns up in Jamaica in 1640.

It seems Le Vasseur was better at organizing and leading men that he was as a sailor and by 1642 he was on the island of Tortuga off Hispanola. Here he managed to round up the somewhat savage boucaniers that ran wild in the forests hunting local pigs and generally doing manly things among men (women didn’t show up in force for another decade or so). Somehow Le Vasseur got this group of free thinkers to start thinking ahead, organize for the good of all, and build a fortress from which to head out on their piratical expeditions.

Le Vasseur chose the sheltered harbor of Basse-Terre, where the rocks that would be used to build the fort were plentiful and the high ground was almost impossible to get to, especially while being fired upon from a fortress. The 30 foot cliff up from the harbor had a rock outcropping perfect for defense and sighting prey. There was a natural spring (above) and behind that the island turned into a dense jungle that made an ideal retreat if the fortress was breached. Basse-Terre literally translates as low-ground and may have been named by Le Vasseur himself, although it is probable that the boucaniers were using that name for the harbor when he showed up.

By 1644 Le Fort de Rocher loomed over Basse-Terre Bay. According to Exquemelin it boasted 24 heavy cannon (probably 30 pounders) and could hold and support a force of 800 men. Over the course of the next 9 years the fort stood firm despite attempts to raid it made by both England and Spain. It was not until 1653 when Le Vasseur assigned a successor to his leadership and began to think about retirement, that the fort fell.

In January of 1654, Spanish ships invaded the harbor and began a siege on the fort. While the ships kept the boucaniers occupied, a spy abetted by Le Vasseur’s successor, who would be paid in Spanish gold, helped slaves open up a road to the back of the fortress. Cannon were dragged up the road and turned to smashing the weakest point of the fort. The boucaniers who could fled. Le Vasseur was assassinated in the melee and the Spanish overran the Fort of the Rock.

This signaled the slow decline of Tortuga as a buccaneering stronghold. By the 1690s, after much political shuffling, France would have a firm grasp on San Domingue (the future Haiti) including Tortuga. By then, though, the buccaneer port of choice would be Petit Goave where men like Nicholas Van Horn and Laurens de Graff would see their hey days as the true successors of the mysterious Jean Le Vasseur.

People: Almost The End Of An Era

Today marks the 322nd anniversary of the death of one of the great names in pirate history: Henry Morgan. After a life full of enough swashbuckling to fill ten Errol Flynn movies, a near-prison experience in Restoration London followed by the gratitude of Charles II and a stint as a pirate hunter and Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, the old buccaneer finally succumbed. And, in large part, he succumbed to his buccaneer lifestyle.

Once he was unceremoniously kicked off the colonial council by old enemies, Henry Morgan retired ostensibly to tend to his four sugar plantations in Elizabeth County. In fact he returned to the life he had always led – late nights at cards and hard drinking with some of his old cronies from the days of Portobello and Panama. The only thing missing was command of an army of freebooters aboard a flotilla of ships and the promise of yet more booty.

When, in 1687, the new Governor of Jamaica arrived on her shores, he brought with him a physician who would soon be looking after the former Lieutenant Governor. Hans Sloane, a young doctor and naturalist along the order of Patrick O’Brian’s Stephen Maturin, had already successfully treated members of the Royal Family when he signed up with the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle. The Duke, a notorious Restoration rake who had shown Morgan around the seedier delights of London a few years before, was quite literally dying of sexual excess. His wife, the former Lady Cavendish, needed a physician as well. Though not necessarily insane – as yet – she was certainly a giddy shopaholic who could not help but catch her husband’s syphilis and eventually languish in the backwoods of Jamaica.

Though Sloane certainly had his work cut out for him with the Albemarles, he took Henry Morgan on as a patient as well. Not long after his arrival, the doctor began keeping notes on his new charge. He wrote of Morgan as:

… sallow-coloured, his eyes a little yellowish and belly jutting out… He had a… roaching to vomit every morning and generally a small looseness attending him and withal is much given to drinking…

Sloane noted that, though Morgan had constant diarrhea, he could not urinate and that he had enormous trouble sleeping. Purging was prescribed along with Madeira wine (rather than the almost perpetual flow of rum that went down the patient’s throat), “tops of centaury” and bleeding.

Morgan was in a bad way. He was uncomfortable all the time except, of course, when drunk. He was also a terrible patient. He refused to listen to Sloane’s advice and after a few months he abandoned the young doctor all together for a local quack. The new “doctor” called Morgan’s problem, rather colorfully, “timpani” meaning an over-abundance of “wind in the belly”. How Morgan must have delighted in returning to his friends and his rum without having to listen to that peevish puppy Sloane yapping after him all the time.

But things only got worse. Morgan’s belly distended to the point that his tailor could not make him a waistcoat or coat that would button over it. He could not walk without a cane, and then only very short distances – usually from his hammock to the rum bottle and back again. Things looked bleak but the stubborn leader of hundreds of buccaneers would not give up the very thing that we know today was killing him.

Finally, perhaps on the insistence of his cousin/wife Mary Elizabeth Morgan, Henry was examined by an African doctor who looked after many of Morgan’s own slaves. This physician prescribed clay plasters to draw out the festering waters in his master’s body. Morgan was also treated with urine enemas (the historical record doesn’t tell us what species of animal provided the contents of this treatment but it is safe to say that it wasn’t Henry’s own). In the end, these treatments failed as well. In fact, Morgan complained that the enemas gave him a bad cough.

With no other medicine to turn to, and no intention of giving up his rum, Henry Morgan finally died. The cause of his death was most probably cirrhosis of the liver. He passed away at 11:00 in the morning, August 25, 1688. He was 53 years old. Morgan lay in state in a lead lined coffin at the Governor’s house until his funeral the following day. Interestingly, Albemare issued an amnesty to any pirate who wished to attend Morgan’s funeral. Men that Morgan as Lieutenant Governor would have gleefully hanged shuffled past his coffin and paid their respects. Or muttered their lingering hatred depending on the man.

Henry Morgan’s passing marked the beginning of the end for the great days of the buccaneers. With the ports of Tortuga and Petit Goave now closed to them, men would continue to use Port Royal and its surrounding area as a pirating port for only four more years. In June of 1692, cataclysmic natural disaster would do what even the death of Morgan could not. But that is another story for another time.

People: The Tale Of Half-Arse

The story of Louis le Golif, buccaneer extraordinaire, comes down to us from his own autobiography. Reading Memoirs of a Buccaneer is a little like watching an Errol Flynn movie. Monsieur le Golif was kicking ass and taking names pretty much up until the time he retired to France and wrote his book. Or was he?

According to the memoir, which I will say now is the only definitive documentation of any boucanier named Louis le Golif or going by the moniker Half-Arse (more on that in a bit), le Golif was born in France and sent off to the West Indies as an indentured servant in his 20s. The questions arise early and often. Le Golif tells us he was indentured to a planter named Monsieur Piedouille. A cruel, unyielding sort of fellow, Piedouille eventually drives le Golif to run away. In this he is joined by his "... good brother and matelot" Pulverin. The two men set out in a skiff at night looking for freebooting adventure. The issue here is that Piedouille's plantation is on the island of Tortuga, or so it seems. At no point during the period the story is supposed to have taken place, circa 1665, were there plantations on the buccaneer stronghold of Tortuga.

Le Golif and his pal are taken aboard the freebooting ship Salagrun, captained by a Frenchmen named Bigourdin. Things go relatively well in the prize taking business until a skirmish with the Spanish Navy gives le Golif his nickname. In a firefight, part of one buttock is shot away by grape from a cannon. Though the wound is decidedly painful, le Golif recovers quickly and it's back to a pirate's life for him.

The real set piece in the memoir is the taking of the Spanish man-of-war Santa Clara. Le Golif is forced to step up as commander of Salagrun when Bigourdin is killed by cannon fire from the Spaniard. The prose here is particularly compelling and le Golif gives us a clear-eyed picture of just how horrifying such a close battle at sea could be:

Bigourdin was stretched out in his own blood, without any legs, his belly burst open and his guts exposed, while all around me the deck was strewn with my friends, some without arms, others without heads, not counting those who had been crushed by yards, blocks, the debris of tops and other heavy objects which had fallen from above in great disorder.

A nasty and no doubt accurate picture. Le Golif rallies the men still of able body and cleverly sends a Spanish speaking crewman to the fore to chastise the Spanish over the rails about firing on one of their own merchants. The ruse works and the navy ship sends men and officers out in boats to assist the injured. Here the narrative again falters when le Golif notes that, to his delight, the Spanish "... had to come alongside our port". As you well know Brethren, port was not in common usage when referring to one side of a ship at the time. Though port was occasionally used in writing as early as the late 16th century, larboard would have been the standard language of a common seaman. The Spanish point of entry conceals their activity from the navy ship and allows the buccaneers to kill the enemy one by one as they climb up the ship's ladder. There's even an instance of expert knife throwing that kills the first officer on deck.

Le Golif and his men dawn the Spaniard's clothing and raid Santa Clara with harrowing if successful results. Le Golif himself is a whirlwind, dodging bullets, slicing up four and five men at once and jumping over pikes while lopping off heads. He even cuts down a Spanish boy who mistakes Half-Arse for his father. It's the best part of a Sabotini novel written as autobiography.

In the end, the buccaneers are victorious. They lock the still living Spaniards in Santa Clara's hold, move their wounded from Salagrun and scuttle her before setting a course back to Tortuga. Once there, le Golif and his crew are feted by one and all:

Having learned that a vessel captured from Spain had just dropped anchor below the fort of La Roche, Monsieur d'Ogeron, who was then Governor... did not hesitate to come aboard.

It is important to note here that d'Ogeron in fact governed from the San Domingue (now Haiti) capitol of Petit Guave, not Tortuga. All the same punch and wine are shared, d'Ogeron commissions le Golif as Captain of the ship and imparts the happy news that Monsieur Piedouille "... had passed away, having been quite neatly dispatched by one of his men." Le Golif is cheered by all the Brethren of the Coast on shore, he makes his matelot Pulverin second in command and reminisces about the night he escaped the island and how far he has come.

Le Golif goes on to more swashbuckling adventures with such memorable buccaneers as Rock Brasilliano and that Triple P favorite Laurens de Graff. While the writing is exciting and well informed, it's little details - port not larboard, sabre not hanger, the continued reference to flags (not colors or ancients) as identifying regalia aboard ship - that put it slightly off its time period. The most telling issue about the memoir, of course, is that it was not discovered until the end of the World War II when it came miraculously to light out of a bombed building.

Despite the colorful detail and engaging action, it's probably safe to say that Memoirs of a Buccaneer is a modern invention. Like Charlotte de Berry and Red Legs Greaves, it is a good bet that Louis le Golif, for all his adventures, never actually lived.

Tools Of The Trade: Purchase And Pay

MSNBC offered this article last week regarding the confusion over a recent declaration by President Obama that may (or may not) make paying modern pirates ransoms for ships and people illegal. Feel free to peruse the article at your leisure. I'm not going to discuss it in detail because a wise man once advised that talking about politics gets one in trouble. No doubt, Mr. Burleson is right. That said, ransoms have a long history in piracy and privateering and they were certainly one of the main money makers for many a freebooter all over the world.

Phoenicians, those infamous Sea Peoples, drove the Egyptians nuts by ransoming villages in the Nile Delta. Failure to pay meant Pharaoh lost the village to plunder, fire and murder. Julius Caesar was famously captured by Cilician pirates as a young man. He was held on the island of Pharmacusa for about six weeks in 78 BCE until his family ponied up and the pirates released him. Caesar vowed revenge and got it in a big way. As First Consul he saw to it that the Roman Navy choked the life out of Cilician trade and piracy for good.

Barbary pirates made an institution of ransoming slaves. Wealthy Christians were always taken as hostages and their families forced to pay if they did not want their loved ones to live in chains or die in the galleys. Poorer folk were quite literally enslaved unless a Christian relief group, such as the one written about by Father Pierre Dan, intervened. In his 1637 book Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires, Father Dan told, in rather purple prose, of rescuing near martyred Christians from fates worse than death.

The Christians weren't any kinder to their Muslim captives, however. If a prisoner managed to stay out of the Maltese galleys, his family could pay a ransom to those pirates for Jesus, the Knights of Malta, for his release. If not, he would be sold as a less-than-human slave. Either way, the pirates got their cash.

The Chinese pirate Confederations that sprang up in the late 15th century and continued to rule the South Pacific for hundreds of years kept careful records of ransoms. They sent extortion notes, some of which are still in existence, to ship owners and families of captives demanding ransom. Once the fee - considered by Chinese merchants a cost of doing business - was paid, the pirates would issue protection documents for the ship or individual. With this in hand, they would never be ransomed by that Confederation again.

The Sea Dogs of Elizabeth I's era were big on ransoms. Hawkins tried to ransom Cartagena and, though he failed, his nephew Drake succeeded rather stunningly. The buccaneers of Tortuga, Petit Goave and Jamaica became rather systematic about ransoms as well. Francois L'Olonnais received a ransom for the city of Maracaibo, as did Henry Morgan only a few months later. Morgan also ransomed Portobello and Panama. Part of the breakdown of the Spanish empire in the New World was directly linked to expensive ransoms for cities and towns along the Main.

Edward "Blackbeard" Teach held the city of Charleston, North Carolina for ransom and was paid in gold dust and a kit of medicines. This was an unusual and notable situation in the Golden Age of piracy. Most of the famous pirates of the era were looking to plunder, not ransom.

The privateers of Barataria were not above requesting ransoms, particularly for ships but sometimes for wealthier captives as well. The complaints of a Spanish merchant held by Vincente Gambi at Barataria around 1811 have come down to us in tact. The Spaniard in question writes that he and his fellows were kept four weeks in "the most cruel situation" before payment was received and they were sent on their way in a felluca. Not all the men on Grande Terre were gentlemen rovers.

And so it continues to the present day. Pay the ransom, put it down as a loss in your books and you'll get your ship and her people back. Or that is the way it seems.

History: Surprise And Denial

Alexander Exquemelin, who first published his Buccaneers of America in 1678, is a ton of fun to read. His prose is delightfully fresh and some of his vignettes have become legendary. Whether or not all of them are true and accurate is a point still debated among scholars who study piracy but, to my way of thinking, that's not the point. I'm fairly certain in my own mind that at some point some freebooter did something at least very similar to what Exquemelin describes.

A good instance is today's slice of history from the good Doctor's prose. According to Exquemelin our story occurred around 1602 and was the first instance of a Tortugan flibuste raid on a Spanish ship. Most sources say the date is in error and the incident probably took place in the mid-1600s if at all. What is not open to debate is that Pierre le Grand probably was one of the first successful rovers based on the Island of Tortuga.

Pierre le Grand - another shadowy figure in the annals of buccaneers, pirates and privateers - was a merchant in Dieppe, France at some point in the 1600s. Rather romantically, he is said to have lost everything to freebooters and speculation whereupon he pulled up stakes and made his way to Tortuga. He assembled a crew of 30 and headed out into the Caribbean in what was then referred to as a chaloupe - the precursor of the 18th century sloop.

Time dragged on in the small, close packed boat and provisions and water went from low to nonexistent. Desperately, the men scanned the horizon for a ship to raid. As the old sea chanty tells us: "...no purchase no pay" and the men aboard le Grand's chaloupe were quite literally starving for a prize. When things seemed at their most dire, the buccaneers spotted a large Spanish merchant and decided unanimously to take her or die.

They immediately packed on sail and went after the merchant with no pretense as to their intent. The people aboard the Spanish ship could certainly ascertain why the little chaloupe was giving chase but when the situation was reported to the Captain he refused to take it seriously. What cannon the merchant had were stored in her hold and, despite advice to the contrary, the Captain would not have them brought on deck. He acquiesced somewhat by ordering tackle rigged to pull the guns up if necessary, and then retired to his great cabin to play cards with some of his passengers.

Le Grand and his men were not letting up and they eventually came alongside the merchantman. Le Grand, in order to avoid any last minute attempts by his crew to second guess the plan, had his surgeon drill a hole in the hull of the chaloupe. Now it truly was an all or nothing game for the flibustes. Their ship was sinking. Taking the merchant was their only option.

Grabbing every portable armament they had at hand, le Grand and his men boarded the Spaniard. A bloodbath ensued, with everyone who showed any resistance slaughtered. Without much trouble, le Grand made it down to the great cabin where the merchant Captain was still at cards. Leveling a pistol at the Captain, le Grand demanded unconditional surrender. As the sun set and the merchant Captain no doubt contemplated his own foolish hubris, the buccaneers stowed their prisoners in the merchant's hold. Exquemelin notes that the Spaniards grumbled to one another as they went below: "Jesus! They are demons."

The point of the story, as I see it, is that a large ship could be overcome by a much smaller and more poorly armed vessel if the attitudes of both crews were in line. Le Grand and his men needed a prize at any cost and were willing to sacrifice all for it. The Spanish merchant imagined herself impenetrable to such a small force, and took no heed of them until it was way too late. Hollywood broadsides and rope-swinging boarding not withstanding, I've a feeling that the incident Exquemelin described occurred over and over on more than one coast.

So stay a little hungry, Brethren, and keep your eye on the horizon. You never know when that rich merchant that imagines you pose them no threat might appear.

People: "With The Look Of A Warrior"

Second only to the corsairs of the Gulf in Pauline's piratical heart are the precursors of the Golden Age of piracy: the buccaneers. These guys were flamboyant, cruel, loyal to one another and probably a whole lot of fun to hang out with (provided you didn't piss them off, of course). Most people who have even a passing knowledge of pirates know of Henry Morgan and many imagine him as the rightful king of the buccaneers. Today, Brethren, allow me to challenge that thought with this brief biography of the man I consider to be Le Roi des Boucaniers: Chevalier Michel de Grammont.

De Grammont was probably not born into nobility, although he liked to let people think so. He obtained the title of Chevalier from his mates on Tortuga and was known as Le Sieur - the Lord - when he made his base the port of Petit Goave (check out Monday's post for more on that).

Aside from France, there is no definitive documentation as to where Michel de Grammont came from. He claimed to have been born in Paris and to have served in the French navy. Some sources, including that buccaneer doctor turned biographer Alexander Exquemelin, state that de Grammont had been a privateer for France who went rogue by taking ships outside the reach of his letter of marque. The point is moot, really. By 1678 de Grammont was raising hell on the Spanish Main and, to Spain in particular, that was really all that mattered.

Le Sieur seems to have been a natural leader. Exquemelin tells us that he "was beloved of the buccaneers at San Domingue" and that these men "gladly followed his every command." He is described as handsome with dark hair and complexion and "with the look of a warrior". He made such an impression on his men that even when he teamed up with other famous buccaneers - the Ducthman Laurens de Graff in particular - his were the only orders obeyed.

In 1678, with France at war with the Dutch, de Grammont led buccaneers on a sanctioned raid on the Dutch held island of Curacao. A storm blew in, sending the French navy ships along on the expedition hurrying for safe ports and nearly wrecking de Grammont's flotilla off the Aves Islands. Dutch ships did sink in the storm and, with the navy gone, de Grammont and his men began a wracking operation to salvage the goods and munitions from the enemy fleet. The operation paid off well, and de Grammont returned to Petit Goave a hero.

Upon his return to port, de Grammont and de Graff got together and planned a raid on the rich Venezuelan coast. They hit the city of Maracaibo first, which had only recently been plundered by their brutal compatriot Francois L'Olonnais. The Spanish in the fort at the mouth of Lake Maracaibo watched the buccaneers begin building a trench around them in preparation for siege and decided to give up without a fight. To de Grammont's consternation there was little or no booty left after the previous raid. He and de Graff decided to turn inland.

After securing Gibraltar on the other side of the lake, the buccaneer commanders hit La Guayra further south. Here they found the treasures they were looking for, following the hapless locals into the jungle and wringing their money and jewels out of them. A Spanish force, sent from Caracas, intercepted de Grammont outside of the city and he was forced to retreat. Unable to load most of their booty on their ships, they took prominent citizens as hostages. One ship - of course the one most richly laden with goods - was sunk and de Grammont was wounded by an arrow to the neck. Legend has it that he simply snapped the thing in half and went back to the fight.

After recovering at Petit Goave, de Grammont took to the sea again with his sights on the port town of Campeche in Mexico. He teamed with de Graff once again and they captured the town in the summer of 1685. The municipality was not as rich as they had hoped and they decided to hold the city for ransom. Though they managed to repulse the Spanish army, the Viceroy of the territory refused to concede to their demands. In a rage, de Grammont had several prominent citizens beheaded in the town square. Though some sources claim it was only de Graff's intercession that stopped the bloodshed, Exquemelin is clear that de Grammont chose only those involved in the governance of the town - and only men - to be executed. Eventually the buccaneers burned Campeche and sailed away.

In 1686 de Grammont was offered a pardon and land by the French government in an attempt to get him to quit enraging Spain. He would have nothing to do with the offer and returned to sea with another flotilla. This time he hit the Yucatan peninsula and then sailed for Spanish Florida. It was hurricane season and the ships were caught off guard in the Gulf. De Grammont's ship was separated from the others and disappeared, presumed sunk. Never captured by the enemy to hang as a pirate, never left to grow old on some hunk of land, Michel de Grammont died the way great warriors want to die - right in the thick of what they love the most.

A master tactician, a man who literally led his men into battle rather than just exhorting them from the rear, an able seaman and a relatively humane enemy, the Sieur de Grammont seems to me the very model of the old school buccaneer. And that pretty much kicks ass.

Home Ports: On The Turtle's Back

There are a lot of islands named Tortuga in the Caribbean and beyond. Most notable, I think, is the touristy/resorty Tortuga Island off the coast of Costa Rica. That one claims a piratical heritage and doubtless some freebooters stopped there to freshen their water now and again. That claim, though, is largely for the tourist trade and I'd bet money you'll see wannabes swaggering around wearing eye makeup and speaking with fake British accents. Don't get me started. The real Turtle Island, as far as our pals the boucaniers were concerned, is located off the coast of what used to be known as Hispanola and what is now Haiti/Dominican Republic.

How the buccaneers came to the little island that is quite literally shaped like a turtle is a convoluted story of Spanish hatred for anyone that wasn't Spanish. When an English adventurer named Warner and a French privateer named Belain agreed to establish a settlement on St. Christopher Island (now St. Kitts), the Spanish took note. When the island became a haven for buccaneers, the Spanish sent men and arms to route out the hated foreigners. In 1629 a huge contingent descended on the island, killing or taking prisoner most of the population. Those who escaped went to Hispanola where they were again attacked. Now the buccaneers were pissed.

The boys moved to Tortuga del Mar, the island they called Ile de la Tortue, just off the coast and they settled in to take their revenge. They booted or killed any Spanish they found, got chummy with the local Arawak natives and started a campaign of striking out against Spanish ships in small, easily maneuverable canoes and pinnaces. In 1635, when French pirate Pierre le Grand appeared on the scene, things really heated up. He began attacking Spanish treasure galleons from a light sloop and the other buccaneers soon followed his lead.

Of course, the Spanish would have none of that. A raid on the island in 1638 nearly wiped out the largely French as well as Dutch and English population. The remaining citizens appealed to the re-established and now fortified French settlement on St. Christopher for help. Jean le Vasseur was sent as Governor of Tortuga and he built a stone fortress overlooking the main harbor. He armed his outpost with 40 guns and provided letters of marque to the buccaneers, encouraging them to raid Spanish shipping and towns along the Main in the name of France. The heyday of the boucaniers was on the horizon.

The Spanish, who were nothing if not tenacious, laid siege to the fort and effectively starved out the population, sending those they captured back to France in 1654. Some of the buccaneers escaped, however, and they waited on St. Christopher and Jamaica waiting for the opportunity to return to what they considered their home.

That opportunity arose when England attacked Jamaica in 1655. The Spanish ships and troops on Tortuga were called to action and the buccaneers returned to their old port from which they plied their trade for another ten years. The island was a base for respectable privateers like Michel de Grammont and infamous pirates such as Francois L'Olonnais.

In 1665 the island of Hispanola officially became the French holding St. Domingue and Ile de la Tortue came under French control. The buccaneers slowly morphed into the pirates of the Golden Age and Tortuga was replaced by first Port Royal, Jamaica and then New Providence (now Nassau) in the Bahamas as a major base. It remained in use by pirates and privateers into the early 19th century, however. My privateer hero Dominique Youx told stories of spending time on the lovely Turtle Island.

Isle de la Tortue is one of the blue pins on my travel map. Someday, I'll got there. I'll speak French, though. No British accents allowed.