Home Ports: An End to the Wickedest City

On June 7, 1692, all Hell broke loose in what was at the time said to be the "very seat of Satan".  Virtually the entire island of Jamaica was rocked by an earthquake that today would be considered off the scale.  And the worst damage came to the town of Port Royal which, in almost Biblical fashion, quite literally sank into the sea.

According to those who lived through the disaster, the weather had been hot and literally without a breeze for several weeks.  When I lived in Southern California, we often referred to these kinds of conditions as "earthquake weather" and Port Royal's unfortunate experience seems to hold true to that superstition.  Even here in Alaska, our earthquakes tend to come as the weather warms; the devastation of Anchorage in 1964 occurred in an unusually warm spring.

If you click on the contemporary broadsheet above, it is easy to see how the earthquake mangled the city selectively.  Areas closer to the port were built on sandy ground which liquefied during the unbearably long six minute earthquake.  Houses collapsed, people were pulled down into the newly formed quicksand, and violent geysers of sand and water erupted hurling wreckage, animals and people up into the air only to send them crashing back to the rolling earth again.  Further back, on what could be called the high ground of the city - indeed High Street, the home of most of Port Royal's elite merchant class, was located there - a limestone bedrock prevented the liquefaction of the earth.  One can see that some homes, despite being built of brick in the English fashion, remained standing.  Three forts, including Morgan's Fort at the far right, also survived.

As the water receded from the sand, being pulled back toward the Caribbean to unleash the next round of terror, people were literally trapped in the now hardened sand.  Stephan Talty in his engrossing account of the life of Henry Morgan Empire of Blue Water quotes an eye witness:

That watery hiatus closed again the next moment, catching hold of some people by the Leg, of others by the middle of the Body, and of others some by the Arm, etc., detaining them in dismal torture, but immovably fixed in the ground, till they, with almost the whole Town besides, sunk under Water. 

And, as the anonymous writer noted, the "Water" was the next horror to hit Port Royal.  The tsunami that hurtled over those who were still alive was three stories high and traveling at an estimated sixty miles an hour.  Ships, becalmed in the harbor due to the recalcitrant weather, were forced up onto land.  In a happy accident Talty tells us that one, HMS Swan, fell upon the city but managed to remain upright.  Over two hundred citizens clamored aboard her and were saved from the following sea. 

Finally the lower part of the city simply collapsed into Port Royal Harbor.  Homes, storage warehouses, churches, people and livestock sank like stones.  Many were trapped in the structures with which they had sunk but many others floated up to the surface of the harbor. Over the course of the following week, corpses bobbed listlessly in the harbor, slowly rotting in the unrelenting heat.

Pestilence and anarchy fell over the city.  Port Royal, once labelled the "wickedest city in the world" for the number of pirates and whores who called it home, became even more wicked after the wrath of God apparently struck her down.  Once again it was the buccaneers, who had fallen out of favor now that Port Royal was full of "respectable" merchants trading in luxury goods, sugar cane, rum and human chattel, who gave the city a bad name.  Edward Ellyn, the receiver general of Jamaica, wrote home to England about the post-disaster environment that surrounded the survivors:

... Most of the seaman, English and Spaniards, contented themselves with what was floating in the water, tho' some instantly entered and riffled standing houses.  But the following nights and days those villains... robbed all houses, broke in pieces all scriptores, boxes, trunks, chests of drawers, cabinets and made spoil of all of value in the town, threatening to kill several inhabitants, if any durst be so hardy as to say, "This house is mine."  Our enemies could not have treated us worse than the seamen.

Even Cotton Mather, that scion of Puritan self-righteousness, saw fit to put his two cents in.  Calling the Jamaica earthquake an omen, he wrote "Behold an accident speaking to all our English America."  Get right with God, he said, or face the same fate.

Many of the British in Jamaica chose to head for home, or the North American mainland, rather than deal with the wreckage.  Others, in true colonial spirit, simply moved up and over.  They rowed across the bay and began to rebuild, eventually founding the city of Kingston.  Others clung stubbornly to Port Royal, but the great pirate capital would never be the same.  Today she is a tourist attraction more than anything else; a beloved sort of Mecca for those who crave the closeness of things touched and roads walked on by our buccaneer ancestors.

But what of Henry Morgan, arguably the most famous of Port Royal's citizens?  Dead and buried almost four years prior to the earthquake, Morgan's coffin spewed forth from the earth during the six minute tremor.  Carried out to sea, it was lost for ever in the blue waters.  And maybe that was the way it should have been all along.

Header: English broadsheet reporting the effects of the 1692 Jamaica earthquake via Wikimedia  

Home Ports: At the Lizard

The rocky coast of Cornwall in Britain is pitted with inlets and harbors tailor made for piratical activity. None, it seems, more so than the harbor known as Falmouth at whose entrance stands the rock called the Lizard.


The name “lizard” is most probably a corruption of the original Cornish name for the place Lys Ardh which may mean “high court” or “old court”. The rock now has a lighthouse upon it which is absolutely necessary given the surrounding coastline. The over a mile stretch known as the Manacles sits beyond the Lizard. Here hull-tearing rocks lurk just below the water, and horrible tidal shifts make it impossible for a ship, once caught in the jaws of the Manacles, to set itself free. Shipwrecks causing the loss of hundreds of lives have been documented in this area since before the 18th century.

Given these awkward conditions, one might imagine that the boom in smuggling that began during the reign of Henry VIII would have avoided Falmouth. Just the opposite was the case. In the last half of the 16th century the Killigrew family, led by Sir John who was hereditary governor of the county of Pendennis, began a lucrative smuggling business that included the taking of both foreign and domestic merchant ships. Sir John’s wife, Mary, got so deep into the less gentile aspects of piracy that she may have committed murder in an effort to take a prize. She spent over two years in prison on this charge before her son, the second Sir John, successfully petitioned Elizabeth I for his mother’s freedom.

The freebooting at Pendennis settled down for a while but, after Mary’s death in 1617, Sir John the Younger seems to have gotten back into the family business. In 1619, at the expense of lesser nobles in thrall to him, Sir John erected the first light at the Lizard. Ostensibly an altruistic offering to help ships avoid the rock itself and the Manacles beyond, local gossip said the governor had erected the light to lure ships into Falmouth where he could then plunder them at will. There is no documentation that such was the case, however. Unlike his mother, Sir John was never brought up on charges. Either he was on the up and up, or he was slyer than she.

The entire enterprise fell apart when King James I, always hungry for cash, informed Sir John that he would confiscate the light for Britain and begin charging vessels to pass it. Sir John, rather than turn his clearly profitable light over to the feds, demolished it instead. James reaction to this is open to speculation but another lighthouse was not erected until1751 by then governor of Pendennis Thomas Fonnereau.

This light still stands at the Lizard, virtually unchanged from the time of its erection. The Lizard’s brief brush with piracy came and went but the light initially put up by Sir John Killigrew continues to shepherd ships around and away from the heinous jaws of the Manacles off Britain’s Cornwall.

Header: Lizard Point, Cornwall via Wikipedia

Home Ports: Brooklyn Navy Yard

The old Navy Yard on Wallabout Bay has a unique and colorful history dating back to the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. The story goes that Sarah Rapelje, perhaps the first European born in North America, came into the world here in a place the local Lenape natives called Rennegachonk. A few years later her relative, Walloon, bought a 300 acre parcel on the bay from the Lenape and called the area Waal Boght; Bay of Walloons. The name passed into English as Wallabout, and the area above it, even before then, became known as Brooklyn.


Ship building proper did not begin in the area until after the American Revolution. In 1781 John Jackson bought land from one of Rapelje’s descendants, Cornelius Remsen, and set up a shipyard on the marshy, narrow bay. Jackson’s first major commission came after the Irish rebellion in 1798, when the U.S. was again mounting a naval force to deal with the pirates of the Barbary Coast. USS Adams, a frigate of 28 guns, was built and launched that same year. She would remain in commission until her destruction during the War of 1812.

The government purchased the yard from the Jacksons in 1801 and the first Commandant, Jonathan Thorn, was appointed in 1806. Ship building was a major undertaking for the U.S. at the time as her navy was considerably short of vessels, particularly when compared to the might of sheer numbers mounted by the Royal Navy. The Navy Yard thrived although much of her work was piecemeal with parts sent to other ship builders for finishing ships. In fact, aside from the disappointment of the Fulton Steam Frigate that made only one short voyage in 1814, the yard did not turn out a fully constructed ship until 1820. USS Ohio was launched from the yard that year.

In 1830 Commodore Matthew C. Perry became attached to the Navy Yard; he would serve as Commandant from 1841 to 1843. The Commodore had a hand in encouraging both good health and education at the yard. He was instrumental in the building of the Naval Hospital in 1837 and he instituted the Naval Lyceum at the yard. This sort of evening extension college for sailors, officers and hands at the yard welcomed famous speakers of the day and turned out the Naval Magazine, first published in 1836. Frequent contributors included Perry and author James Fennimore Cooper.

Granite dry docks were added to the yard and by 1851 there were three such in service. The third was built using the first steam powered pile driver in the U.S. The yard was an active Union hub during the Civil War, turning out the ironclad USS Monitor. The Naval Laboratory at the yard also supplied the vast majority of medicines for the Union Navy.

The Naval Yard continued to thrive throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, turning out such famous ships as USS Maine (the “Remember the Maine!” of the Spanish-American War), USS Arizona, USS Missouri and the super carriers USS Saratoga and USS Constellation. It was not until 1966 that the yard officially closed. Her over 150 years of service made her one of the longest working Naval Yards in the country and the oldest continually running industrial operation in the State of New York.

The Brooklyn Naval Yard is now owned by New York City and operates as a thriving industrial park that hosts companies as varied as design firms, a medical lab and even a sugar manufacturer. But what of her long seafaring history; something like that should never be forgotten.

As noted in this article from the New York Times online, the City of New York agrees. On Friday – Veterans Day – the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92 will open to the public. The museum has been billed, according to the article, “… as a bridge between the once heavily fortified naval hub and the surrounding neighborhoods that have seen generations pass without a glimpse behind the gates.” More than that, the museum will stand as a link between America’s seafaring past and future.

On display are such diverse items as the 22,500 pound anchor from the amphibious assault ship Austin, a model of USS Maine and a pipe recovered from the ill-fated USS Arizona, sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. There are also exhibits focusing on the bay and Brooklyn itself. A copy of Walloon Rapelje’s 1637 purchase agreement with the Lenape is on display. The women who worked at the yard during World War II, who won the right to a man’s hourly wage of $1.14 have their own niche, too. There are also artifacts from the brothels and ale houses that serviced the yard in the early to mid-19th century, many of them located on Vinegar Hill. Though Daniella Romano, the center’s curator, notes in the article that the “entertainment area” of the Hill was “… the Barbary Coast of New York… Brothels, gambling houses and brawling” I think she may mean the “Port Royal of New York.” Barbary, though full of fierce corsairs, was not noted for its booze, brothels or gambling.

For a long and productive history, the Brooklyn Navy Yard is well remembered. So too are the ships she produced, the people who produced them and, certainly most of all, those who served aboard them.

Header: Circa 1851 engraving of the Brooklyn Naval Yard and Wallabout Bay from the Brooklyn Navy Yard website

Horror on the High Seas: The Pirates' House

I've been to Savannah, Georgia once in my life and I found it both charming and beautiful. The people were delightful, even if the weather wasn’t, and the history of the city is enthralling. Founded in 1733 by British General James Edward Oglethorpe as a buffer between His Majesty’s colonies and Spanish Florida and French Louisiana, she is full of wonderful sights and delicious restaurants. Her seafaring legacy is rich as well and, of course, that means a few piratical legends.


There is a place in Savannah known as The Pirate’s House which is now a restaurant but once, allegedly, housed a famous pirate. The freebooter in question is not actually known but locals call him Flint, after one of the many colorful characters in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. According to Jeff Belanger the opposite is true; Stevenson named his pirate Flint after a visit to Savannah and a stay at The Pirates’ House. Of course Belanger, in his book The World’s Most Haunted Places, throws out this off-handed “fact”:

With the exception of the pirate Jean Pierre Lafitte, who married a woman from the same neighborhood and came from a later era…

Given that Jean and Pierre Laffite were two separate men, probably never did more than glance over the rail of a ship at Savannah and were neither of them ever married, committing that snippet to paper does a deal of harm to any writer’s credibility.

That said, Belanger – who is “one of the world’s most visible and prolific paranormal researchers” according to the bio on the book jacket – tells us that he has spoken to people who have had unusual experiences at The Pirates’ House. As a number of these episodes seem to involve rum, it is no wonder that people are convinced the ghost haunting the restaurant is a pirate.

Belanger reports one particular night when Greg Profitt, who runs a walking tour of the city known as Savannah by Foot, was spending the night at The Pirates’ House on a dare. He was joined by Tony Cross, the darer if you will, and they turned the stunt into a fund raiser for leukemia research. Profitt reports that the two men “… heard a lot of noises…footsteps and banging on the walls and banging on the doors…” Perhaps to calm their jangled nerves, the men reached for a bottle of rum and Cross quoted Flint’s famous line from Treasure Island: “Darby, bring me more rum!”

The men poured out three shot glasses and, again according to Profitt, each took one and then the third glass “… just vanished with the rum in it. We watched it disappear.”

Other “spirit related” incidents at The Pirates’ House included glasses suddenly exploding or filling inexplicably with Spanish moss. Does, as Belanger asserts, the “… spirit of Flint in all his menacing glory still walk the Pirates’ House”? It’s hard to say. What I will say without question is that, given the handsome decor and mouthwatering fare available at the restaurant, as the pictures from Savannah for 91 Days attest, I would happily haunt the place were I an old, chain-rattling seadog.

With that, Happy Halloween Brethren. May your spirits be joyful and may you always have more rum.

Header: The Pirates’ House via Savannah for 91 Days

Horror on the High Seas: Nix's Mate

Out in Boston Harbor there sits a tiny speck of an island that, at first glance, almost appears to be man made. Known from about 1636 as Nix’s or Nixes Mate, the island is the site of a pyramid beacon run by the Coast Guard and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.


In the 17th century, the island was large enough to mine for ship’s ballast, graze sheep and unload smuggled goods for reloading onto less suspicious vessels. Probably because of its continued use by smugglers and pirates, the place became notorious; from the time the island was granted to John Gallop in 1636, the good folk of Boston used it as a place of execution for those who committed crimes on the high seas.

Many legends have grown up around the fascination with piratical doings and the demise of scurvy seadogs on the island. One of the most popular stories explains the name of the island as well as why it is now just a speck of earth in Nubble Channel.

It seems that one Captain Nix put out to sea and was killed mysteriously one night in a violent storm. The next morning, the crew found their First Lieutenant – Nix’s mate – soundly sleeping with blood on his shirt. Assuming the worst, they clapped the man in irons despite his protests of innocence, and turned back toward Boston. The First Lieutenant was tried and found guilty, although he continued to tell anyone that would listen that he had not done the bloody deed. He was rowed out to the island and led to the gallows. There he made a promise to the people of Boston about the place where his corpse would hang as a warning. The island, he said, would be washed away to nearly nothing by the sea as proof of his innocence. With that warning on his lips, he died. Within a decade, the Lieutenant’s prophecy had come true and the people of Boston named the little island Nix’s Mate in his honor.

In fact, this story first appeared in 1883 in a purported historical entitled King’s Handbook of Boston Harbor by M.F. Sweetser. It is a charming tale, of course, but probably pure fiction. No one seems quite sure why the island is called Nix’s Mate and the continued use of its rock for ship’s ballast throughout the 17th century insured that it would errode with wind and tide to its present size.

The most famous pirate to swing in the sea breeze on Nix’s Mate was William Fly, whose story is curious enough to deserve a post of its own. Hanged in July of 1726, Fly went to his death with such steadfast obduration that he impressed that bitter witch hunter Cotton Mather himself.

Local legend has it that Fly’s spirit continues to cling to the place where he proclaimed not his innocence but his conviction that piracy was born of the harsh treatments allotted men in the merchant service. Treatments Fly referred to as “bad usage”. It is said that blue lights are seen hovering over the little pyramid beacon at Nix’s Mate on warm summer nights. They dance about in the dark air but disappear when a vessel pulls in for a closer look, flying up like embers out of a fire.

True or no, all sailors love a good ghost story and they are always so much more believable when the mate in question was put to “bad usage”.

Header: Nix’s Mate by Joe McGurl

Home Ports: The Best Bay

Pensacola, Florida, is now a booming community with a split personality. Hard working port on the one hand, it is also the playground of the idle who have time for golfing, yachting, and spring breaks on the beach. It may even be the haunt of a phantom or two. The long history of Pensacola, not surprisingly, is more about the port than the playground. And both pirates and privateers figure prominently in that mix.


The area surrounding what is now known as Pensacola Bay was populated for thousands of years by Native American groups who subsisted largely off the water, building dug out canoes and fishing in the bay. By the time the first European explorers arrived, the dominant group called themselves the Panzacola and eventually gave their name to the area.

The first explorers to poke around Pensacola were all Spanish. Visits from Ponce de Leon in 1513 and Hernando de Soto about thirty years later established that the area had potential for colonization. It wasn’t until 1559 that Tristan de Luna brought a group of close to 1,500 settlers to the bay from Vera Cruz in Mexico. The pilgrims arrived in August and barely had time to set up a makeshift camp before a hurricane blew through on September 19. It is estimated that a good half of the potential colonists were killed. Some people immediately left for the Carolinas while others tried to make a go of it on the island they called Santa Elena. Lack of fresh water and simmering tropical heat took their toll. Fifty remaining colonists returned to Vera Cruz two years later to the utter dismay of Mexico’s Viceroy.

The French exploration of what would become Louisiana brought Spanish attention back to western Florida. On the hunt for La Salle’s French explorers in the Gulf of Mexico, Juan Enriquez Barroto and Antonio Romero visited Pensacola in 1686. On the expedition was Juan Jordan de Reina, an amateur naturalist and all-pro exaggerator, who described the area as a lush tropical paradise where fruit dripped from trees, game was plentiful and the bay was “… the best I have ever seen in my life.” De Reina’s assessment highly influenced the Mexican Viceroy, Don Silva y Mendoza, to fund another colonial undertaking to Pensacola.

By 1700, a new colony had been established under the governorship of Andres de Arriola. This time the bay was christened Bahia Santa Maria de Galve (after the Viceroy, who was also the Count of Galve) and the land around it began to be known as Panzacola. Much to everyone’s dismay, the soil turned out to be almost useless for growing food stuffs, the area wildlife was hostile, yellow fever and malaria hung over the place every summer and hurricanes continued to wreak havoc. The settlement persevered, however, mostly in response to the growing numbers of French colonists in Mobile, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The area slowly urbanized with the Spanish building forts on the mainland. Money became available and with it came smuggling. British and American colonial pirate ships began to appear in the bay, exchanging prize goods for hard Spanish gold or silver. Famous names like Edward Teach and Edward England were known on the waterfront, much to the dismay of Governor Arriola. Raiding by the British and the Creeks during Queen Anne’s War, which took up a little more than the first decade of the 18th century, broke the settlement’s infrastructure down and soon Pensacola was hanging on for dear life.

The French took the settlement from the Spanish some time in 1719, but they could not hold it capably and it returned to Spanish hands. During the French period, the incidents of pirate interaction with local smugglers increased. Only a lack of organization kept early 18th century Pensacola from mirroring the future operation of the Laffite brothers in Barataria.

The French and Indian War brought British rule in 1763 and the area began to prosper. Cotton planting was stepped up, more building took place and Britain hoped to make Pensacola a new Jamaica. Those hopes were dashed with the Revolutionary War. After losing the Battle of Pensacola in 1781, Britain returned the area to the Spanish.

Despite controlling all of Florida and the vast Louisiana territory, Spain’s colonial grip loosened as her troubles mounted in Europe.

Napoleon sold Louisiana to Jefferson; by 1812 much of what had been Spain was the U.S. Andrew Jackson harassed the Spanish with raids on Pensacola and the chaos created opportunities for a new breed of free booters: the privateers. Pierre Laffite probably began the slave trading that would serve him and his brother so well in Pensacola during the first decade of the 19th century. Louis Aury briefly used the bay as a base. Dominique Youx may have considered settling there later in life. According to William C. Davis, Renato Beluche stopped in to the bay just as Britain was amassing warships in preparation for their invasion of New Orleans in late 1814. Beluche may very well have written a letter to the Laffite brothers warning them of the coming storm.

By the 1820s, Florida was U.S. soil. Andrew Jackson briefly took up residence at Pensacola as the area’s first Territorial Governor. By the mid-20s, a Navy Yard was established. Pensacola was used as a supply port for David Porter’s pirate hunting Mosquito Fleet based on Thompson’s Island (now Key West). The worm had turned completely; the frontier town that once welcomed pirates became the urban center that supplied the machinery for their downfall. Hard work at the docks and on the plantations funded gracious living for the wealthy.

As an aside, another seafaring point of interest is the Pensacola Lighthouse. Originally built in 1826 it was first kept by Jeremiah and Micheala Ingraham. Jeremiah died under mysterious circumstances (rumor has it Micheala killed him) and his wife was appointed keeper, a job she did faithfully for fifteen years. When the lighthouse was rebuilt in 1859, a violent haunting began to manifest including objects flying across rooms and unexplained stains on floors. The lighthouse, which is still kept by the Coast Guard, is said to be inhabited by Micheala Ingraham who is angered and offended by the disturbance to her former home. The Coasties say it’s all bologna, but the tourists flock to the sunset tours nonetheless.

Doubtless Pensacola is haunted by more that just the lighthouse keeper’s wife considering all that has happened there. But the locals, and the tourists, probably don’t pay much more attention than the occasional ghost story will rouse. The best bay continues to work and play hard, just as it always has.

Header: Map of Pensacola Bay c 1763 via Wikimedia

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

Home Ports: The Island Of Women

Isla Mujeres, off the Caribbean coast of Mexico, may seem inconsequential when one is looking at a map. It’s relatively small, particularly when compared to its southern neighbor, Cancun. It is long and thin, shaped something like a finger, and it is almost entirely at sea level. The location it occupies, however, jutting out from the Yucatan peninsula at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, made it the perfect place for keeping an eye on shipping in the waters near by. The perfect place, in other words, for pirates and privateers.

The incredibly lush, topical island was originally part of the Mayan principality of Ekab. Isla Mujeres was sacred to their goddess of fertility, healing and death, Ix Chel. The Mayans built temples to her on the island, which they did not populate but only visited for rituals dedicated to the goddess whose totem was the rabbit. When the Spanish arrived and explored the island they found the many shrines to Ix Chel with numerous statues of the various forms of the goddess, from maiden to crone. They called the place the Island of Women because of this and the name stuck.

Like the Mayans before them, the Spanish did not populate the island but did exploit its resources including an abundance of fish and the ponds known as “salinas” that produced salt. For centuries the island was a fishing spot for natives of the Yucatan and as European trading vessels began to ply the waters in the straight between Mujeres and Cuba now known as the Yucatan Channel, they began to sell their catches to ships that had put in to the island to refresh their water. With the dawn of the buccaneers, and the raids undertaken at Vera Cruz and Panama by Captains like Laurens de Graff and Henry Morgan, Mujeres became a favorite stop. Ships would drop anchor and men would go ashore not just for food and water but to clean up, rest and divvy up booty from the last raid.

The Golden Age of Piracy saw the same kind of traffic on Mujeres. Some household names probably called at the island, including Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy and Calico Jack Rackham to name just a few. Both Woodes Rogers and William Dampier mentioned the place in their journals. It was also a destination for the runaway slaves known locally as maroons whose word-of-mouth network had it on good authority that they could find help at Mujeres from friendly natives.

The privateers of the early 19th century used Mujeres extensively. Many of them travelled almost constantly from Louisiana, Texas and/or Florida to South American destinations like Cartagena and Caracas, making Mujeres a handy stop. The only known freebooters to take up residence on the island were the Laffite brothers. After they abandoned their Galveston operation in 1820 they moved to Mujeres hoping to establish another privateering stronghold. Their accommodations would have been meager since they apparently never built any proper structures. Jean returned to the sea as a legal privateer for Bolivar and Pierre remained on the island. Native fishermen would later recall him as a friendly gentleman who told good stories. He would die of fever on the mainland in 1821.

Today Mujeres is a tourist destination. Less crowded and built up than Cancun, Mujeres boasts only a few luxury hotels, the remnants of a temple to Ix Chel and beautiful beaches. Day trippers come from the mainland but at night things settle down and a visitor can still walk the broad, Caribbean beach where Pierre Laffite told stories and kept an eye out for his brother’s return from the sea.

Header: Isla Mujeres today

Home Ports: Saint Mary's Island

Just north and east of the island of Madagascar is a small group of islets that are perfectly situated. Perfectly, that is, for a pirate looking to score some of the fattest prices in the 18th century world. The islets sit on the edge of the Indian Ocean and just south of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia. Using any of them as a port, a clever pirate could take a fat East Indiaman returning to England or Holland one evening and then cruise north the following day to snatch the treasure galley of some Ottoman pasha. All this and home in time for supper. Or so the rumors that circulated in places like the West Indies and the Guinea coast said.

Ile Sainte-Marie is the largest islet of the group in question. As piracy became a target of aggressive persecution by the various European powers in the early 18th century, the men who plied the sweet trade turned their eyes to the wealth of the East and set sail for Africa. They found Sainte-Mary quite to their liking. Not only was it abundant in fruits and game, its native people were friendly – particularly when they found that most of the pirates had not come to enslave them – and the island was surrounded by shallow cays and inlets. These were perfect for hiding from aggressors, evaluating a prize or simply pulling a ship up on her keel and giving her a good careening. It seems, at least on the face of it, a veritable pirate paradise.

This idea caught the imagination of European writers and one in particular, the man who fancied himself Captain Charles Johnson, devoted a good deal of paper to writings on the piratical community he call Libertalia. Johnson, the author of A General History of Pyrates, has come down to us as either an eye witness authority on piracy or a complete crank. It just depends on who is commenting on his work. The idea of Libertalia, which is often reputed to have been based on Ile Sainte-Marie, has caught the imagination of many moderns because of its very modern take on community. Whether or not it actually existed is the point that must be questioned.

Libertalia according to Johnson’s book was the brainchild of a merchant seaman turned pirate named James Misson. In his vision, which was spurred on by his association with a “lewd Priest” from Rome named Giacomo Caraccioli, the Frenchman saw all men as brothers, no organized religion as valid, and slavery as the cruelest of human ills. His pirate utopia was established under a white flag and Libertalia’s motto was “For God and Liberty”. The pirates cruising out of Ile Saint-Marie called themselves Liberi and shared all goods and prizes in common. They routinely set any slaves they came upon free and so their numbers were increased rapidly by the grateful Africans joining up right away. According to Johnson’s description, Libertalia lasted 25 years and welcomed such famous and infamous captains as Thomas Tew, Christopher Condent, Henry Avery and William Kidd. The end of Libertalia is as egalitarian as its founding was revolutionary. Eventually the pirates grew weary of their lives at sea and settled down with the local girls to farm land where “… no hedge bounded any particular man’s property…” and the fruits of their labors were “… carried into the Common Treasury”.

No one would deny that the idea of Libertalia is delightful. Of course, we would all like to imagine the lion lying down with the lamb and beating swords into plowshares. The reality, however, is that Johnson chose unwisely in his fantasy populace. Pirates, though in many ways more democratic than the societies they preyed upon, were also ruthless brigands who were far from altruistic. Slaves were more often than not prizes to be sold, other pirate crews could be a threat to the amount of loot each individual might get, and the last thing these sailors were cut out for was farming. In many cases, getting away from the drudgery of agriculture was why they went to sea in the first place. Then, too, there’s the harsh fact that to take a prize or prizes, some killing will probably have to be done and that seems a poor way to treat a brother.

Ile Sainte-Marie was certainly a pirate base during the heyday of the “pirate round” from approximately 1690 to 1725. There can be no doubt that men like Tew, Edward England, Avery and Kidd at least touched at the island and several shipwrecks dating from the era have been found in the waters around Sainte-Marie. One in particular, sunk in Baie des Forbans not far from the island’s capital, is thought by the explorer Barry Clifford (of Whydah fame) to be Christopher Condent’s Flying Dragon. There is also the old cemetery that overlooks the bay (pictured above) known as le Cimitere des Pirates where modern residents continue to leave offerings for their freebooting ancestors. That seems to me a far more factual legacy than any pirate utopia could ever be.

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.

Home Ports: Going Down To Pompey

The ancient and inimitable port of Portsmouth, England was at one time the largest ship building and repairing harbor in the Western world. Teaming with people and outfitted with numerous wet and dry docks for ships of all shapes and sizes Portsmouth – or Pompey as she was known colloquially – was the prize of the Royal Navy. In other times, though, she was raided by Vikings, used by smugglers and merchants and a target for more than one enemy of Britannia.

Located on the English Channel southwest of London, Portsmouth by its very nature is a perfect natural harbor. Passing Spithead, one must go through a narrowing channel to arrive and the large, deep Portsmouth Harbor proper. Easily fortified both by land and sea, only the advent of airplanes made breeching Portsmouth’s defenses anything but laborious at the very least.

There have been people living in the area since Celtic times but the actual city of Portsmouth was granted its Royal Charter in 1194. By the second decade of the 13th century, the harbor and town had become an important mercantile port with goods going out including wool, grain and cheese and goods coming in almost too numerous to delineate. Portsmouth was a jumping off point for the rats that carried the Black Death and plague and other diseases, well, plagued the community for centuries.

During the same period, from 1335 to 1380, Portsmouth suffered heavily from the continuous wars between England and France. The city, built largely of wood, was burned down four times over the course of 40 plus years. Finally, as the 100 years war drew out to its anticlimactic end, Portsmouth was fortified. By 1420 the Round Tower with its cannons had been erected. Following this, an enormous chain was stretched across the mouth of the harbor. Through the use of a capstan the chain could be raised to keep out unwelcome ships.

With the defeat of the House of York in the War of the Roses, Henry VII turned his warrior attention to outside threats. In 1494 he ordered expansion of Portsmouth’s fortifications and had a dockyard built. Within a year, Portsmouth had official become a naval port. Henry VIII took up where his father left off, enlarging the dockyard, turning local monasteries into armories and naval barracks and opening four breweries to supply his privateer navy with good English beer.

Elizabeth I launched ships built at Portsmouth to defeat the Spanish Armada and the port was a favorite hangout for sea dogs like John Hawkins and Francis Drake. The Elizabethan peace and the internal turning of politics under King James saw a decline in the port. Ships were not as important as witches and Bibles to the Scottish king and Portsmouth languished. King Charles I began to reenergize ship building but the city, which was largely Parliamentarian in sympathy but held under a Royalist Governor, suffered again during the Commonwealth.

1650 saw the launch of the locally build ship HMS Portsmouth and the city came into its own. The vast wharfs, dockyards, storehouses and mast ponds that still exist today began to crop up. The population boomed with men and women who worked in and around seafaring hurrying to the city to take advantage of the jobs available (and the sailors’ money that sailed into the harbor almost daily). The Naval Academy was opened in 1733, establishing Portsmouth as second only to London in the eyes of the Admiralty. By this time to say one was “going down to Pompey” was synonymous with joining the Royal Navy.

Portsmouth in the early 19th century was amazing even to old salts who had seen their share of harbors. The grandfather of nautical fiction, Frederick Marryat, wrote in 1834 in his book Peter Simple:

When we arrived there, I was quite astonished at the piles of timber, the ranges of storehouses and the immense anchors which lay on the wharf. There was such a bustle, every body appeared to be so busy, that I wanted to look every way at once.

In 1814 the dockyard employed more than 4,200 individuals. There was also the Naval Academy, the Weevil Victualling Yard, the Gunwharf for ordinance and the Haslar Naval Hospital, not to mention countless inns, taverns and small businesses that catered to all this press of humanity. No wonder young Simple was overwhelmed.

Throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries, Portsmouth continued to grow. She was important for ship repair in both World Wars and a target of Nazi bombing during the Blitz. The area was rebuilt but the dockyard as an employer began to wane in the 1960s with other industries taking its place.

Portsmouth Dockyard is still in use today and it is also a much loved historical site that preserves not only the history of the people and places that supported the seafaring industry but the ships themselves. Here you will find the Tudor man-of-war Mary Rose, a museum dedicated to the memory of D-Day, HMS Warrior, Britain’s first iron warship and, of course, HMS Victory, which left Portsmouth bearing Nelson to glory and death at Trafalgar.

And why, you may ask, is Portsmouth called Pompey? Unfortunately, no one knows for certain. This short article gives a few theories for you to consider. (Many thanks to Pompey Dockyard’s #askacurator feature for the link. Follow them on Twitter here.) Personally, I like the Roman connection of theory number three. It just feels right, somehow.

Header picture “Nelson Hoists His Flag Aboard Victory” by Bernard Finnegan Gribble.

Home Ports: The City Of Brotherly Love

When we are asked to think of freebooting ports, most imagine tropical breezes, palm trees, green water and white sand. It's doubtful that anyone in a general mix of ten people would have William Penn's charter city pop first and foremost into their minds. Too bad, really. There's a reason Philadelphia has been called by some historians "the New Orleans of the north", and it wasn't just her many drinking establishments (more, during the late 18th and early 19th century, than any city in New England) that spawned that moniker.

The land that now occupies the sprawling city of Philly was once occupied by the great Delaware Nation. In the 1620s Cornelius May arrived from Holland and built a fort on the bay of Swanendale. This place became a magnet for Nordic European settlers and by 1640 the area was burgeoning with Dutch, German and Swedish immigrants.

The English, who firmly believed that New England was no New Holland, started making inroads into the area as early as 1642 but it wasn't until 1682, when William Penn arrived with his charter, that the place became a holding of Britain. Given his charter to settle the New World as payment of a debt owed to Charles II of England, Penn was a devout Quaker with a vision. He imagined a Utopian city with broad streets, public parks, and neat housing with gardens and orchards on the private lands. He originally referred to it as a "City of Neighborhoods" but eventually settled on the hybrid Greek name Philadelphia.

From the beginning, Philadelphia's large port was a magnet for trade. People and goods came in on ships and the same cargo went out. In the early days from around 1700 until the 1720s, trade with the West Indies boomed. Rum, indigo, sugar and, slaves sailed in on tall ships from every friendly nation. Queen Anne's war in the 1710s halted much of this trade and the economic depression that followed made the city realize that independent action was needed. Small docks and boatyards sprang up. Freebooting, at first disguised as fishing or even whaling, began in earnest and the pirates in question smuggled rum first of all.

The beauty of Philadelphia as a smuggling port was it's complete lack of organization. The town fathers, too busy with civic duties to trouble with what went on over the water, did not create a central governing body for ships and goods going in and out of the port. Docks and warehouses were privately owned, an ideal situation for piracy. Well to do citizens formed "guilds" which would issue patently illegal "commissions" for freebooters who would then share profits with the investors. It was great good times until that pesky Revolution got in the way.

But Philadelphia and her people were resourceful and when the Continental Congress began handing out letters of marque in their own back yard, many of the former freebooters jumped at the chance. Because of the blockades imposed by the British, and the physical situation of her port, Philadelphia never became the privateering magnet that places like Boston and Baltimore developed into. Her port continued to grow, however, and it was from Philadelphia that Commodore David Porter sailed in 1821 to meet his Mosquito Fleet in the Florida Keys and stamp out Caribbean and Gulf piracy once and for all.

During the Civil War, Philadelphia's industrial complex and shipping capabilities contributed a great deal to the Union cause. Her now regulated dockyards shipped out men, ammunition, provision and in particular uniforms. Her newly established U.S. Naval Yard turned out sturdy ships. She was home to privateers with legal Union commissions as well as Naval heroes such as David Farragut and his brother David Dixon Porter.

Into the 20th century, Philadelphia continued to be a port of trade and a supplier of ships. The U.S. Naval Yard on Hog Island built warships for both World Wars, as did some of the privately owned yards close by. Unfortunately, her old docks and warehouses were gone by this time, but she is still an active and capable port city to this day.

Philadelphia's sailing history is often lost in a tourist's hurry to take in Independence Hall, Betsy Ross' House, Ben Franklin and George Washington memorabilia and cemeteries chock full of founding fathers. But believe me, it's worth a look at the port, the docks and yes, the cemeteries. Much of America's seafaring history still resides in Philadelphia. And some of her heroes do too. Stop by Woodland Cemetery while you're there and give my best to Stephen Decatur and David Porter. Separately though; they didn't like each other very much. So much for brotherly love.

Home Ports: In The Land Of Sallee

The notorious Barbary Corsairs ranged the coast of North Africa from Roman times to the early 19th century. They were notorious for their tenacity and feared as ruthless slave catchers. Being chained to a Barbary galley was basically a death sentence and no European or American sailor wanted any part of it.

The corsairs used many ports along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Africa: Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli and today's city, Sale in northern Morocco. This port town was probably originally colonized by Phoenician sea raiders - the Sea Peoples who harried Egyptian shipping. It is situated across the Sale harbor from the Ancient Roman port of Cella, now known as Chellah (near modern Rabat). Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of a thriving seafaring culture there, both local and Roman, that dates back to about 200 BCE. As the old city fell into disrepair, Sale (pronounce "Sah-lay") came into her own once again. By Medieval times, the descendants of local Berbers were sailing out to raid European shipping from her snug harbor.

During the heyday of Barbary piracy, from the Crusades until the final denouement in the 1810s, many famous corsairs used Sale as a base. The Barbarossa brothers, Aruj and Hizir, the great Murat Rais and of course the enemy of Islamic piracy, the Knights of Malta, all claimed Sale as a home port at one time. The fiercely independent local population rallied around the pirates and some writers - Peter Lamborn Wilson in particular - make Sale out to be a kind of pirate utopia where all were equals and no one went hungry.

Like Captain Johnson's kingdom of Libertaria on Madagascar, this is probably nothing more than wishful thinking. It does point up the fact, however, that the people of the port's livelihood was very much intertwined with freebooting. To a large degree the booty brought in by the pirates was humans. Sale was a slave port, and the people sold there could come from as far afield as Ireland and Newfoundland.

Caribbean pirates took to calling any Muslim corsair a Sallee or Salley Rover or simply Salley men. Their galleys were known by the same monikers. They were generally avoided not for any unusual bloodthirstiness but because of their propensity to kidnap sturdy men for sale back home.

Sale has become an essentially unappealing industrial town over the course of the last 100 years. Her history can still be seen, however, in the Phoenician and Roman touches, the Medieval stone moles near the water and the ancient port that will probably always be very close to what she was in the Golden Age of Barbary Corsairs.

Home Ports: The Key To The West Indies

History is full of stories about people and places who, unlike the proverbial leopard, have changed their spots without blinking. Today's privateering hub, Cartagena, Columbia, is just such a one.

Known as The Heroic City, The Key to the West Indies and The Fort of the Kingdom, Cartagena was first claimed by Spanish explorer Pedro de Heredia in 1533. Set on a sheltered bay facing the Caribbean and surrounded by fertile land, the place was ideal for both seafaring and settling. In fact, various Caribbean natives had called it home for over 6,000 years. Heredia named his new outpost after the port city in Spain, allegedly because so many of the mariners on his ships hailed from there.

Almost immediately, Cartagena became a hub for transportation of Spanish wealth to and from the New World. Ores from the mines of Grand Granada and Peru made their way to Cartagena and from there went on to Havana and then Spain. By the 1700s, an enormous stipend or subsidy known as the Situado was being paid to Cartagena by Madrid for fortifications in particular. This amounted to millions of modern dollars in any given year. Where there is an abundance of gold and silver, and a handy port to sail into, there are sea raiders. Again almost immediately, Cartagena became a target for the enemies of Spain.

John Hawkins unsuccessfully attempted a sacking of the city in 1568. Twenty years later his nephew, Francis Drake, captured the city and sailed away with 110,000 in Spanish reales. French buccaneers Jean-Francois Roberval and Martin Cote had similar if less lucrative success. Both Francois L'Olonnais and Henry Morgan thought about raiding Cartagena, but chose Maricaibo instead.

By the late 1600s the now burgeoning city of close to 15,000 people was well fortified with thick walls (as shown in the picture above) and heavy guns. She saw her golden age under Spain in the 1700s when she became the capitol of the province of Grand Granada, the seat of the Spanish Inquisition and a center of Spanish art and culture.

As a curious aside, one of the last foreign raids on Cartagena occurred in 1741 and was lead by a British Colonial admiral, Edward Vernon. Along with Vernon was a young army officer named Lawrence Washington. If the names sound familiar here's why: Larry was George's older half-brother. Yes, that George Washington. And, despite the failure of the attempted conquest, he was so impressed by Admiral Edward that he named the Washington homestead in Virginia Mount Vernon.

But the hey day of Cartagena as a Spanish hub was brought to an abrupt end with the appearance of the Great Liberator:

Simon Bolivar in Plaza de Bolivar, Cartagena

As Simon Bolivar took the reigns of South American revolution from Miranda, Cartagena revolted and kicked Spanish troops, government and the Inquisition out. She was one of the first cities in Grand Granada to proclaim herself an independent state at war with Spain. To that end President and Governor Manuel Rodrigues Torices began handing out letters of marque to the privateers of the Gulf. Let the good times roll.

A couple of Captains who got in line for such commissions are no strangers here at Triple P. One was Dominique Youx and the other was my own Uncle Renato Beluche. Both sailed with Bolivarian commissions from 1810 on, but it was Beluche who became enamoured with not only the cause of South American freedom but Bolivar himself. Later in life Beluche would move from his native New Orleans to Venezuela and rise to the rank of Commodore in Bolivar's navy. During the days of the Laffites' Baratarian operations, however, he supplied the brothers with Cartagenan commissions.

The party ended when Spain came calling in October of 1815. A deplorable 106 day siege that starved out the inhabitants of the city followed. People were reduced to eating horse hides and even hooves. It was the so often maligned privateers led by Louis Aury and again including Youx and Beluche who came to the rescue, ferrying survivors to safety in Haiti under the guns of Spain.

With Spain's grip on South America severely challenged by Bolivar, Cartagena was ignored. She became a haven for run away and liberated African and Native slaves and she fell into disrepair. In 1821 Spain at last surrendered to Bolivar and the work of reconstructing not only cities like Cartagena but half the continent began.

Cartagena again became a welcoming port for privateers as Bolivar continued to issue commissions until the mid-1820s. It was from this port that Jean Laffite sailed as a legitimate privateer for Grand Columbia in the brig General Santander in 1823. He died aboard her and was buried at sea the same year.

Declared a place of significance to the heritage of the world by UNESCO in 1984, Cartagena is indeed impressive. So much history in one place is hard to argue with. It holds a blue pin on my travel map. One day, Cartagena, we will meet in person.

Home Ports: Erin's Pirate Haven

Clare Island viewed across Clew Bay (via the Museums of Mayo website)

Last week we talked about Grania ni Maille, the famous Pirate Queen of Ireland, and her long running operation out of Clew Bay in what is now County Mayo. Of course with St. Patrick's Day upon us, it seems only fitting to talk of Ireland once more. For La Padraig, let us revisit the bay and the stronghold at her mouth known as Clare Island.

The Bay has been in use by the people of Ireland for fishing and commerce probably since before any documentation of ships coming and going was kept. It stands in the shadow of Croagh Padraig, the famous mountain named for the island's patron saint that may have been the holy place known as Tara, home of the Celtic gods.

The Maille or O'Malley clan probably laid claim to the bay and it's islands as early as the 1200s. The fortress on Clare Island from which Grania commanded the bay and the Western ocean is a thick walled, square medieval building in the style of the early or mid-14th century. Certainly by the 1400s, the O'Malleys were large and in charge in the area with seafaring for fish and booty as their main source of income.
Clew Bay is known in Ireland as the bay with an island for every day of the year. Technically there are not 365 islands out there in the bay, but there are over 100. The rest are what is known as drumlins. This is a corrupted Gaelic word meaning "mound". They are essentially little hills of silt and sand left behind when glaciers retreated. Though not islands proper, they can be treacherous to ships that are not familiar with the area. Even locals in shallow draft vessels have been known to go hull up on a drumlin. This also made the bay attractive to those in the covert businesses of piracy and smuggling. Any place difficult to navigate will almost ensure privacy for the people that know it well.

Even after Grania's death and the O'Malleys' conversion to English gentry, Clew Bay continued to be used by smugglers. It was a notorious hideout for rebels during the troubles. So much so that troops were landed there in July of 1922 to ferret out the Anti-Treaty groups. Later in the 20th century Clew Bay turned from notorious to luxurious. Fish farms were established, the Glenans Irish Sailing Club set up a base on Collanmore Island and John Lennon purchased Dorinish Island for his private use in 1967.

Of course the legends of the roguish O'Malleys still remain as does the clan, but the wild days are unfortunately over. All the same, shlante! to Erin's pirate haven, the great Bay of Clew. Remember her tonight as you enjoy your beer and corned beef. Your humble hostess (a bit Murphy from my mother's side) most assuredly will.

Home Ports: The Big Island

In our modern age, Madagascar is the place where those awesome lemurs come from (your humble hostess is particularly fond of the Nosferatu-like Aye-Ayes). It's touristy, kick back, and the name of an unfortunate series of children's movies. But once upon a time it was a legendary pirate haven where the gold fairly fell off the palm trees, the spirits flowed from bottomless barrels and the women forsook their men to be with freebooters. Or so the stories went.

By the 1690s the days of the great buccaneers on the Spanish Main were drawing to a swift close. The denouement was upon that story of glorious riches and outright terror. The Spanish had lost their grip on the Main - as much due to their own ridiculous greed as the rapaciousness of the sea raiders - and the gold and silver no longer flowed like water from Potosi and Peru. The great boucaniers - L'Olonnais, Le Grand, de Grammont - were all gone. The king of the English buccaneers, Henry Morgan, died in his bed in August, 1688. Piracy in the Caribbean was on the decline.

Of course, a drop in resources doesn't mean a drop in piracy. It just means men who are willing to pursue a short life and merry need to find a new hunting ground and so more than one old school buccaneer looked east.

The slave trade off the coast of West Africa was booming, with ships and human cargo to be had aplenty. On the other side of the continent, the rich merchant trade sailed back and forth from Europe to the East. English and Dutch East Indiamen were frequently so laden with cargo (as were the slavers) that they could not carry cannon. If they did, the guns were more likely to be used as ballast than as weapons. Can't you just imagine our gentlemen of fortune rubbing their hands together with glee?

Smack dab in the middle of this incredible bounty was the big island of Madagascar. She was surrounded by tranquil anchorages that kept a ship safe from storms and navy men-of-war whose drafts were far too deep to follow a pirate sloop beyond the bar. Her weather was fine and her population sparse and friendly (none of those pesky Carib or Darien types who would actually crack a freebooter's head open for disturbing their villages or molesting their women... the nerve!) Finally, fresh water, fruit and meat was readily available. It was the perfect situation that brought a perfect storm of piratical activity.

For twenty years, from approximately 1690 to 1710, Madagascar attracted some of the most famous pirates of the transitional age along with hundreds of their men. Thomas Tew, Edward England, Howell Davis, Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Avery and William Kidd, to name just a few, all used Madagascar as a base. St. Mary's Island, off the east coast of Madagascar, was said to be home to over 1,000 pirates by 1700. Business was booming and none of the European governments seemed capable of putting a stop to the looting of merchants and slavers.

Finally, England took matters in hand and began allotting some of her warships to convoy with East Indiamen returning to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. Pirate ships were destroyed and pirates killed; the pickings over the course of the first decade of the new century became decidedly less easy. Men slowly turned away from the trade or sailed off to new ports. Some even chose to settle down and farm the rich soil of their new island home. By 1711, British broadsheets reported no more than 100 pirates still active off the coast of Madagascar.

The boom was over, but the legend lived on. Charles Johnson in his A General History of Pirates devoted an entire chapter to French pirate Captain Misson and his pirate utopia on Madagascar, Libertaria. But that's another post all together as Johnson's motives in telling what was really a fairy story were probably - and quite interestingly - political. They eerily foreshadow the Revolutionary age that lay only a few decades ahead, and that's more than we've time for today.

But then pirates have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to liberty, fraternity and equality. Or at least up until very recently indeed.

Home Ports: Galvez Town

The place now known as Galveston was originally put on European maps for navigation by a Spanish sea captain named Galvez. For years the bay, its outer islands and the point to the northeast would simply be referred to by his name. It was not technically inhabited. The natives who fished the outer banks and the bay lived inland but Europeans and Americans knew the port and used it to careen and refit their ships or sit out storms. They may even have traded with the native population for food but they certainly did not refresh their water. There were no natural streams and, when wells were dug, the metallic water was next to undrinkable.

In 1816 a rather mercurial privateer named Louis Aury (see more on him over here) claimed the outer islands and the bay for the Congress of Mexico. His goal is to set up a privateering port, hand out commissions in the name of the fledgling state of Mexico and sell the goods brought in to local settlers and in the city of New Orleans. Aury - being Aury - has a hard time of it. He is wounded when his men mutiny and within the year he is casting about for a new location.

Enter Pierre and Jean Laffite. As we know from the post on Grande Terre, the brothers had their bustling Baratarian stronghold shut down by the U.S. Navy. Even though the Laffite boys have a presidential pardon in their hands for all their hard work at the Battle of New Orleans, they're not about to quit what they do best. Neither of the brothers is the type to settle down. First Jean, then Pierre, and then Jean again show up at what is now Galvez Town, sow descent among Aury's men and eventually wrest control from him in a quiet take over that Aury barely acknowledged.

Jean Laffite, a natural leader who wanted nothing so much in life as power, financed his new operation by spying for Spain. Both he and Pierre signed up with Spain ostensibly to help the Spanish crush the privateers of South and Central America. Instead, the Laffites took the money Spain gave them and built a new empire at Galvez Town, somehow managing to keep their contacts in New Orleans and Havana at arms' length. The brothers' giant balls are legendary for a reason.

Jean saw to the building of a small town on Galveston Island and began printing Mexican letters of marque. Who really needs to know that the Congress of Mexico has disbanded, after all? Supply lines to wealthy New Orleans opened up directly; word got out that the Laffites were back in business.

Before long all the usual suspects - Jannet, Lameson, Mitchell, Beluche, Youx and many more - were bringing their prizes into the snug bay at Galvez Town. The outer islands protected the bay from all but the most severe storms as well as the hostility of any navy. Only one ship at a time could cross the bar into the bay, and then only at high tide and with an experienced local pilot. Finally Galvez Town was a true frontier. The U.S. and Spain were in a kind of Cold War over the territory of Texas with neither of them wanting to blink first for fear of losing bordering grounds already gained (Mexico in the case of Spain; Louisiana in the case of the U.S.). The Laffites were free to do what they did best. Business boomed.

A veneer of the cosmopolitan fell over the frontier town that was Galveston. Jean Laffite lived in his Maison Rouge, a mansion of sorts painted red and on the highest ground. Here he sat down at table with linen, china, silver and crystal. He had - if Lieutenant Larry Kearny of the U.S. Navy is to be believed - a dazzling quadroon mistress in attendance. She spoke only French and, according to Kearney, was "...the most perfect model of the brunette" imaginable. Things were settled, even civilized, and for a time the money simply rolled in. Pretty good for a 40-something pirate, eh?

But nothing lasts and disaster seemed to stalk the Laffites even as success went before them. A major hurricane - said to have been a category 5 by modern reckoning - hit the island head on. Buildings and ships were destroyed. The roof of the Maison Rouge collapsed, killing a number of people who had taken refuge there. Laffite moved aboard his frigate at anchor in the bay and surveyed the damage with grave concern.

Before rebuilding could begin in earnest, Kearny showed up in command of USS Enterprise. He bore a message from the U.S. government: leave Galvez Town or be burned out and arrested. Jean Laffite, ever the cagey negotiator, wined and dined Kearney and his men while he mulled over his options. By now Pierre was in Galvez Town, too, and the brothers decided they did not want to butt heads with the U.S. Jean managed to get an extension from Kearny, but he agreed to give up a second empire without resistance.

In 1820, under cover of darkness, Jean, Pierre and two of their captains sailed out of Galveston Bay in three ships and never looked back. There would be one last home port for the brothers Laffite, but unfortunately their time was almost up.

Privateering continued in Galveston and a renaissance of such activity occurred when Texas declared itself an independent state and began issuing its own letters of marque later in the 1830s. The Laffites left a little patch of quasi-civilization in the middle of the frontier and to this day their "Little Big Easy" is a demi-NOLA of sorts. They proved that settlement and commerce were possible way out west, and the U.S. took that hook and ran with it.

Home Ports: Beautiful And Dangerous

Petit Goave is located in what is now Haiti. Back when it was the largest pirate port in the Caribbean, it was on the French held island of San Domingue or Hispanola.

Named for the guava fruit, Petit Goave was established as an actual town some time in 1662 but the boucaniers had been using it as a port/hunting camp for several years prior to that. The population was initially comprised of an overwhelming majority of men. Some were men setting up shop as planters in the fertile hills above the large port. Others were Huguenots escaping religious persecution who had turned to freebooting as a way to avenge themselves on the Spanish (remembering the horrors of Fort Caroline). The largest portion were pirates or privateers, mostly Frenchmen, who had outgrown the small island port of Tortuga. The Governor of San Domingue, d'Orgeron, was free with commissions and many a pirate sailed out of Petit Goave as a legal privateer. By the 1670s, the planters were established, some of the freebooters owned land and an entire army of indentured servants and slaves did the hard labor that was necessary.

The town itself - unlike other tent city ports - actually had buildings. There was even a Catholic Church by 1670. Most of the businesses in town, though, were taverns and brothels. The Petit Goave "stews" were famous throughout the Caribbean for their beautiful women. Most of these were mulattoes or quadroons and - much like their sisters in New Orleans the following century - the working girls went out into the streets in little more than filmy shifts. No wonder the sailors on shore leave found them so fascinating and readily handed over their prize money for the ladies' charms.
The place was also gorgeous, as this modern picture from Conrad Louis-Charles' website shows. Despite the climate, which was hot and humid, and the mangrove swamps nearby that produced mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and malaria, Petit Goave became the hub of the buccaneer trade. It was considered the ideal spot for freebooters to retire. Many of the plantation owners were former buccaneers who lived rather luxuriously on their hillside estates.

Petit Goave was not fortified and the Spanish and others raided San Domingue in general and the pirate port in particular more than once. Famously a group of Dutch ships entered the harbor in 1676, setting fire to several buccaneer vessels and blowing one up. The Dutchmen did not, however, venture ashore. The reputations of the men who called Petit Goave home kept them from trying that mode of attack.

Petit Goave maintained her status as piracy's primary commission port in the Caribbean for several decades. Though largely forgotten now, in her time she was more populace and one could even say scandalous than that oh so familiar pirate haven, Port Royal. Beautiful and dangerous and very French, there would not be a place like Petit Goave again until the Laffite brothers opened up shop in Barataria 150 years later.