Sailor Mouth Saturday: Card/Careen

The card was intimately familiar to our sailing ancestors, just as it was only a few short decades ago to anyone trying to find their way in unknown territory. The face of the magnetic compass is and was known as a card and poets have sung its praises for centuries. As Admiral Smyth quotes from Plato in The Sailor's Word Book: "Reason the card, but passion is the gale." Unfortunately, our appreciation for the compass and so the card has at least depreciated in recent years.

Relating to the card are the cardinal points - north, south, east and west - and the cardinal winds which originate from those points. The cardinal signs are those more familiarly known as the zodiac, through which the sun passes. The cardinal points of the ecliptic are those zodiac signs into which the sun enters at the equinoxes - Aries and Libra - and the solstices - Cancer and Capricorn.

Careening, as Admiral Smyth tells us, is:

the operation of heaving the ship down on one side, by arranging the ballast, or the application of a strong purchase to her masts, which require to be expressly supported by the occasion to prevent their springing; by these means one side of the bottom, elevated above the surface of the water, may be cleansed or repaired.

This operation was quite an undertaking and all ships without the benefit of copper sheathing by necessity needed to be cleaned off at intervals. Seamen, and pirates in particular, would covet secluded careening beaches that would allow for not only a thorough overhaul of their ship but also time ashore to bathe, collect fresh water and provisions and all the other simple things that time aboard ship might not allow. There were many such spots in particular around the Gulf of Mexico not the least of which included Matagorda, Isla Mujeres, Galveston, Barataria and various spots on the Florida coast.

The term careening actually comes from careen which is a corruption of the word carina: keel. A ship is said to careen at she when she inclines to one side to such a degree that her keel is seen above the waves.

And that's enough for now, I'd say. May you sit upon a warm careening beach this evening, Brethren, with all the best of everything to your hand.

Header: Harbor Scene by Andrew Andrews via American Gallery

Women at Sea: Laffite's Last Love

Reading the off-handed remark about “Jean Pierre Lafitte” and the woman from the Savannah, Georgia “neighborhood” that he “married” while researching Monday’s post made me think. Where did the idea that either of the Laffite brothers married a woman from the southern part of the East Coast come from? With this question in my head, I went back to my copious notes and that bible of all things about the brothers The Pirates Laffite by William C. Davis to dig up the tantalizingly unfinished story of Pierre Laffite’s last love.


The now legendary stories of Jean Laffite’s success with the ladies are probably – like so many other things about the man – blown way out of proportion. Most legends, however, have a grain of truth at their beginning and this is probably the case when it comes to Laffite’s love life. Because the two brothers have virtually melded into one entity in the popular mind, most people don’t even know about Pierre Laffite. The entire timeline of the brother’s exploits is now simply ascribed to Jean, with Pierre fading to the point of becoming simply a “middle name”. Pierre’s love for the ladies seems to have been grafted onto Jean, whose personal life is something of a mystery, and then increased exponentially until we now have a picture of a dashing if insatiable satyr who also enjoyed long walks on the beach.

It is Pierre, however, that seems to fit that bill if it is toned down to a dull roar. He had at least three relationships that we know of. One he may have carried on in San Domingue/Haiti before the revolution, but that part is to this day speculation. Who the woman was is unclear as well, although Lyle Saxon states that her name was Adelaide Maseleri, but Pierre had a son most probably named Eugene in tow when he met the woman with whom he would have his longest relationship. Marie Louise Villard or Villars, a free quadroon from New Orleans, was Pierre’s partner for close to fifteen years. The two had seven children together the last of whom, Joseph, probably never even saw his father.

The third woman to cohabit with Pierre, for lack of a better turn of phrase, seems to have been named Lucia or Lucille Allen. All the sources agree that she was an American from the East Coast and she turns up in Pierre’s life around the time that he began making trips to Charleston, South Carolina in 1819. These forays, where he sometimes went by the almost comical alias of “Mr. Francisco”, were for the purchase of ships and the hiring of men. Galveston was falling apart and the brothers had their eyes on a new horizon.

When, at the end of 1820, Pierre had all he needed he prepared to see the last of Charleston. This is when Lucia may have joined him aboard the Nancy Eleanor which landed at Isla Mujeres in March of 1821. Here the Laffites planned to build a new Barataria/Galveston but the barren island provided little in the way of homey comforts. Aside, it seems, from Lucia.

She must have been a hearty sort as she would doubtless have been saddled with more than just keeping Pierre happy. One has to imagine that, in a camp full of men, the one woman would be looked to for laundry and cooking services as well as nursing and motherly comfort. Lucia seems to have been up to it; eye-witnesses from the time say that, even when ill herself, she took care of the sick and injured.

There was a fair amount of travel on the water as well. Davis tells us that Pierre and Lucia where staying at a farm on the island of Cancun. Pierre had recently sold a lot of prize goods in Camara and neither he nor Lucia was in the best of health. As it would later turn out, Lucia’s malaise was due not just to infection but to pregnancy. The Spanish authorities, having been tipped off to the pirate’s whereabouts, raided the farm on October 30, 1821. Pierre and Lucia were taken into custody but only briefly.

They managed to escape under cover of darkness, round up the scattered members of Pierre’s group and leave Cancun in a fishing boat. The little group of refugees debarked at Dzilam de Bravo on the 31st and staggered to a little village called Telyas. They were taken in by a local family but Pierre was very sick and possibly injured. Davis writes: “Then, on or about November 9, within sight and sound of thousands of pink flamingos feeding in the lagoon, Pierre Laffite breathed his last.” There can be no question that Lucia was at his side.

What became of Lucia and the child she was carrying is in fact unknown. The most likely outcome was opined by John Burton Thompson in a 1953 article for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate: Lucia died giving birth to Pierre Laffite’s daughter at Dzilam de Bravo and was buried there. No one seems to even hazard a guess as to what became of the little female child.

What facts we can garner from this are probably of little use in the uphill battle to sort out reality from legend, particularly where les frères Laffite are concerned. That does not degrade the poignancy of the story, however. Lucia Allen, probably of Charleston, South Carolina, literally gave everything she had for the love of a famous – if now partially forgotten – pirate.

Header: Beach at Dzilam de Bravo on the Yucatan Peninsula via ramsar.org

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

People: Beyond Barataria

Pierre Laffite is most often referred to, at least in general, as “stout”. The wanted poster issued after his escape from the Calobozo describes him as “5 foot 10 inches tall, strongly constituted [usually translated as stout], light complexion and eyes a little crossed”. The last is probably in reference to the residual effects of his stroke. It is interesting to note that, though “crossed” is the common translation of the original French the literal translation is “through”. Generally, Pierre was considered handsome but less refined and more rough-hewn than his younger brother. Jean was referred to as “the Gentleman Laffite” around the French Quarter to distinguish the siblings.

Regardless of appearance or health, when the year 1814 was coming to a close in New Orleans war was at the doorstep and the Laffite brothers were once again refugees. Despite the loss of their Baratarian stronghold to the U.S. Army and Navy, and the arrest warrants at the Cabildo with their names on them, Pierre and his kid brother Jean remained optimistic.

Probably via their association with Edward Livingston, the Laffites managed to get the ear of Andrew Jackson. Livingston, a lawyer from a prominent eastern family who had represented Laffite captains in the city’s maritime courts, was acting as a local aid to the General. There are many fanciful stories of how Jackson met the Laffites – including the absurd but continually retold tale of Jean approaching the General on the street and challenging him to a duel – but the Livingston connection is the most plausible. No one knows where they met or what was said but on or about December 22nd a deal was struck between Old Hickory and the heads of the Hellish Banditti.

Jackson gave the word, for by now the city was under martial law, and the Baratarians were released from jail with a promise of pardon on the condition that they serve their country against the British. Pierre offered his services to the General as a guide, bringing up him and his brother’s legendary knowledge of local bayous and backwaters. Jean was dispatched to Rigolets for gun flints and then to Donaldsonville to retrieve cannon. Over 400 of the Laffites’ men – largely sailors and artillerists, both in short supply – signed up with Jackson. 7,500 flints were retrieved and between seven and fifteen cannon were supplied, predominantly for use on Patterson’s ships Louisiana and Carolina.

Most historians discount the contribution of Pierre and Jean Laffite during the Battle of New Orleans. While in the early 20th century it was common for writers to laud the brothers for fighting against the enemy, it has become fashionable to dismiss them as absent all together. Where that idea came from is still a mystery to me. Pierre was certainly with General John Coffee and Lieutenant Pierre Jugeat in the swamp at the far end of the line while Jean was across the river exhorting raw recruits from Kentucky and elsewhere. Though it is true that Beluche and Youx captained the devastating guns of Battery Number 3, implying the Laffite brothers couldn’t be troubled to dirty their hands when the fighting started is a pitiful travesty of history.

The battle, though virtually ended with the deaths of Generals Packenham and Gibbs, wasn’t over until Jackson said it was over. Men were kept at the line on Rodriguez Canal for nearly the entire month of January, watching as the British evacuated their positions under cover of night. Jackson finally relented in February but it was only through sheer force of will – a trait anyone who has lived in New Orleans will surely recognize – that the populace of the city got him to lift martial law, allowing life to return to normal. Fetes were mounted and Pierre and his brother were popular, exotic guests at some of these gatherings. The social elite got a kick out of rubbing elbows with notorious corsairs. It was on one such evening that Pierre, offended that General Coffee did not recognize him, growled: “I am Laffite, Monsieur; Laffite the pirate.” Coffee, Lieutenant Jugeat’s memoire tells us, suddenly remembered Pierre.

President Madison pardoned the Baratarians, erasing even Pierre and Jean’s murder accusations, and the brothers turned to a brief stint of honest dealing. Jean went east to try and meet with the President himself, hoping to recoup losses from the raid on Barataria. Pierre stayed in New Orleans, working the same angle there. Almost simultaneously while they were apart, the brothers made deals with separate envoys to spy for Spain. The money was good and, for two men who had no qualms about lying and did it extremely well, the work was easy. They would play both ends against the middle and continue privateering for Spain’s rebellious South American colonies while feeding Spain as little actual information as possible. What could go wrong?

While Jean went on a scouting trip in the disputed Arkansas territory, ostensibly to count American settlers and report back to the Spanish Governor in Havana, Pierre began researching ports around the Gulf hoping to quickly establish a new Barataria. He hit on Galveztown, now Galveston in Texas, which was then an unclaimed, virtually unsettled port well out of the reach of both Spain and the U.S. The added bonus was that the Laffites’ old associate Louis Aury was already in the process of setting up a privateering operation there.

Jean was dispatched upon his return from Washington D.C. and he immediately began recruiting Aury’s captains away from him. Aury, never much of a leader especially in comparison to Laffite, was not at all popular in port. Before long Jean was in charge but when a fever overtook him he had to return to New Orleans. Pierre arrived in Galveztown and took charge, recruiting yet more men with the supplies – especially liquor – he brought with him. Unfortunately Pierre was not at all used to roughing it; he wrote his brother complaining of renewed fits of trembling and a nasty rash that sounds suspiciously like scabies. Pierre clearly wanted to go home.

By 1819 Aury was gone and the Laffites were back to the old grind: Jean held sway in Galveztown in a handsome house with all the amenities, including an unnamed but remarkably beautiful quadroon with whom he may or may not have shared a placage. Pierre was back in New Orleans with Louison and their brood, now up to seven children, running the sales end with slaves a particularly hot commodity. Spain was by now fairly certain that the Laffites’ were full of it and the U.S., who was close to a final treaty with Spain that would cede Florida to them, wanted Galveztown shut down to appease their new ally. All this came to head in September of 1819 when a brutal hurricane destroyed the port all together.

Once again the end was in sight, but the drama of the raid on Barataria was side-stepped. Jean managed to put off a U.S. Navy force led by Lieutenant Lawrence Kearney in the frigate Enterprise and bought some time to pack up and save his ships. Pierre, back in New Orleans, quickly booked passage east to begin recruiting more men and with luck purchase a ship. He was in Charleston, South Carolina under the alias of “Mr. Francisco” by October of 1820. The plan was for the brothers to meet at tiny Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan peninsula and start an entirely new operation.

Pierre arrived at Mujeres in March of 1821 and Jean prepared to return to sea. He would take up the role of privateer – and at least for a time pirate – once again. Pierre, meanwhile, stayed on Mujeres with a group of compatriots who began building what shelter they could. Pierre would probably have liked a more civilized arrangement; he brought a companion named Lucia Allen with him from Charleston. While Marie Louise was in New Orleans giving birth to her and Pierre’s eighth child – a daughter named Marie Joseph – Pierre was impregnating Lucia Allen at Mujeres.

Jean, though he had promised to keep to short runs, did not return. Pierre had no way of knowing that his brother had been wounded, captured and was being held in a Spanish dungeon at Porto Principe, Cuba. Income, or at least supplies, were needed regardless and Pierre began leading quick raids on local farms. In October of 1821, despite a fever, chills and a wracking cough, Pierre was out on one such raid off Cancun when he and his men were surprised by Spanish authorities. They managed to escape, but Pierre may have been wounded. Making it back to Mujeres but fearing he was being followed, Pierre hurried Lucia – also ill and pregnant – into a fishing boat at night. They landed at the mainland village of Zilam de Bravo the following evening.

Pierre never recovered from his illness and possible wound. Lucia nursed him at the home of a local fisherman until on or about November 9, 1821 when he succumbed to his fever. He was aged somewhere between 46 and 51. The locals buried him at the village cemetery, which is now underwater. Lucia most probably died in childbirth that December, leaving behind a daughter that someone in the village allegedly adopted. Jean Laffite managed to track down his brother’s grave in March or April of 1822 after escaping from prison in February. Losing the brother who was closer to him than any other soul must certainly have been devastating, overwhelming. Jean returned to sea and was buried there in February of 1823, dead of wounds suffered in a firefight aboard his privateer General Santander.

Though it appears that all Pierre’s male children died before having children of their own, we know his daughters Rose, Catherine Coralie and Adele at least married and had a number of children. The memory of father and grandfather was gone, though, by the time he became great-grandfather. As Davis quotes toward the end of his book, when Alexandrine Farr was asked what her mother Rose Laffite told her of her grandfather Pierre, she answered: “… my mother often spoke to me of Bayou Barataria.”

But even then a legend was growing, taking form, reshaping who Pierre Laffite and his brother Jean really were. Some of the stories are ludicrous, some intense, some funny, some passionate and some are even inspiring. Regardless of what you believe, don’t forget. Once, a long time ago, there were men like Laffite the pirate.

Header: Isla Mujeres today