Tools of the Trade: Punch, Flip and Old Grog

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Header: From Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates

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

People: The Pirate Corso

When we speak of pirates and privateers during the age of buccaneers we tend to gravitate to British, Dutch or French names. Henry Morgan, Laurens de Graff and Michel de Grammont come to mind readily. It is rare that a Spaniard – whose holdings in the New World were usually the targets of plundering buccaneer from England, France and Holland – comes to mind. So it was with surprise and delight that I sat down to read a chapter in Benerson Little’s most recent book about a freebooter who called himself Juan Corso.


Corso’s moniker in and of itself is something of a pun. Though, as Little notes, Corso was a common surname in Spain, it also translates literally as “privateer”. Corso’s name is the equivalent of a Frenchman calling himself Jean Corsaire or an Englishman going by Johnny Privateer. Since we know nothing about Corso’s childhood or early life, it is not a stretch to say that his name is an alias if not an out and out joke.

Much of the action that made up Corso’s career is educated guess, but he appears first on the historical record cruising under the command of Captain Felipe de la Barrera y Villegas. Barrera was at the head of a small flotilla of light, shallow draft “half-galleys” that were searching the inlets and lagoons off the Gulf Coast of Mexico for illegal logwood cutters. Men from the British island of Jamaica in particular made a living cutting down, chopping up and selling logwood surreptitiously in these areas. The Spanish, who considered the costly resource theirs alone, hunted these men without remorse. Even during peace with England, Spain marked the men criminals regardless of written passes they may hold from English lords.

This was the case in 1681 when Corso, along with his frequent partner Pedro de Costa, was among Barrera’s men as they cruised into Laguna de Terminos on the coast of Campeche. The logwood cutters were surprised and, though one of their number in the form of a British sloop named Laurel managed to escape, they were rounded up or slaughtered, their camp burned and their goods seized. Though Barrera initially promised the Englishmen safe passage, they were in fact packed into the holds of his ships and taken to Campeche where they were sold to the city as slaves. Most would be worked mercilessly in the sodden swamps around the city with little water and less food, their skin burned black by the sun, their feet riddled with parasitic worms and their bodies infested with fleas and lice.

Barrera made a tidy profit on this enterprise of human misery and Corso and de Costa may have decided they wanted to rake in the same kind of cash. The two men received a commission from the mayor of Campeche and, with a group of small ships or canoes probably amounting to no more than three or four, they headed south for the Gulf of Honduras. Here logwood smuggling was particularly heavy, and Corso and his mate planned to increase their odds of catching larger ships by the capable use of stealth.

Rather ironically they ran into Laurel, the British ship that had escaped Barrera, near Trujillo, Honduras. This time the Spaniards were victorious, boarding Laurel and seizing her small crew. Her captain, Robert Oxe, would later write that he fought two hours with the freebooters and that, when they did board, he offered them his legal commission from the Earl of Carlisle. Corso and de Costa, unimpressed, disposed of the papers. Oxe says:

They said that they would come to Jamaica, too, presently, and that they had taken five hundred English prisoners.

Though Oxe and his men would not fair as badly as the unfortunates who labored in Campeche, he was ordered tortured and beaten by Corso. He complained of being hung up “… at the fore braces several times, [and beaten] with cutlasses…” about the body and face. Little tells us that Oxe and eight of his men were finally set free in a single canoe.

Doubtless aboard their prize ship, now called Leon, Corso and de Costa managed to re-capture a Spanish treasure ship that had been taken off Honduras. They renamed Nuestra Senora del Honhon the Leon Coronado. With these two ships they went to work clearing the Gulf of Honduras of the logwood cutters, tallying up a fortune in prize goods. When they headed back to Campeche in triumph, they were sadly disappointed to find the mayor eager to accept their prizes after which he unilaterally sent them off to Veracruz. Despite Corso’s protests – for which he was briefly jailed – it would be months before the Governor of Mexico finally awarded him and his mates a share of their booty.

In 1682, the Spanish government reclaimed their treasure ship and Leon Coronado was made part of the Armada de Barlovento, the official pirate hunting fleet of New Spain. Probably frustrated at being slighted not only by the loss of his ship but by failure to be asked to join the Armada, Corso gathered a new set of small ships and headed for Cuba. There he began a systematic round of attacks on British and French buccaneers who stopped at the island for water and provisions. Corso sailed under a red flag of no quarter, according to Little, and he made a habit of torturing and killing the crew of ships that dared resist him. His depredations were so successful that the Governor of St. Domingue (modern Haiti) began issuing commissions against Spain at Petit Goave and Britain threatened to declare war against Spain once again. The sack of Veracruz, usually considered to have been mounted after the fate of the unfortunate logwood cutters from Laguna de Terminos was discovered, may have been just as much the result of Corso’s unchecked success in the Caribbean.

Corso retaliated for the brutal raid at Veracruz which, though largely the work of Petit Goave corsairs, he seemed to blame on the British. He raided the island of New Providence in January of 1684, leaving only a handful of people alive and free. The island sat uninhabited for three years thereafter according to Little. Corso also managed to virtually shut down sea turtle harvesting in the Caribbean causing a shortage of meat particularly in Jamaica.

Pressure from the Royal Navy in particular drove Corso away from Cuba and, by early 1685, he was back in Mexico and once again with his old mate de Costa. The two were sent out by the Governor to try and find the Gulf Coast settlement of French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The Spanish were antsy about any encroachment on their vast holdings around the Gulf. Who better to send as a destroying force than two notorious privateers? Though Cosro and de Costa seem to have thoroughly searched the shores of the Gulf, they missed de La Salle’s sad tent city at Matagorda Bay.

Corso kept up the search and landed at several points in the Florida. At Cape San Blas his flotilla hit rough weather, possibly a hurricane, and was wrecked with the loss of all ships. Little says that approximately 35 men walked ashore alive but without supplies, firearms and little in the way of clothing on their backs. Most died of starvation, injuries and exposure including Corso and de Costa. The rest, Little tells us, set upon the bodies of the dead, carving them up and cooking them “without wasting even the heads.”

Though Corso’s success against just about every nation who colonized the West Indies at the time was matched by very few, he is largely forgotten today. He was, to my way of thinking, a Spanish version of the notorious corsaire Francois L’Olonnais whose hatred for the Spanish led him to torture and murder. Corso, a strident Spaniard if not by birth certainly by nationalization, vented his wrath in turn on the British and French.

Header: Dead Men Tell No Tales by Howard Pyle

History: La Bamba!

In May of 1683, infamous buccaneers Laurens de Graff, Michel de Grammont and Nicholas Van Horn raided the fortified Spanish city of Vera Cruz in what is now Mexico. They led a flotilla of ships and an army of sailors that rivaled Morgan’s forces at Porto Bello and did a substantial amount of damage, particularly to the unsuspecting citizenry who slumbered peacefully in their beds as the ladrones landed on their beach. An orgy of butchery, torture, pillage and death ensued in what may have been one of the bloodiest raids of the buccaneer era.


As history would have it, most people are unfamiliar with the sacking of Vera Cruz. Even natives of the modern Mexican state of Veracruz have very little memory of what was a major setback to the area’s economy and stability at the time. But music, as so often happens, does remember and a faint echo of the misery that befell Vera Cruz can be heard in a popular folk song which became an international hit in the early days of rock and roll.

Ritchie Valens’ 1958 adaptation of the traditional Veracruz song “La Bamba” is probably familiar to many. The infectious and memorable tune and lyrics came from a song originally played mariachi style to accompany a ballet folklorico performed by couples at weddings in Veracruz. The song’s lyrics address the dance for the most part, indicating that “…to dance La Bamba, you must have a little bit of grace…” One lyric which repeats over and over, however, is incongruous to the rest of the song’s reference to dancing: “Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan” which translates in modern Spanish to “I am not a sailor, I am a captain.”

Older versions of the song seem not to have been meant for dancing, but as storytelling ballads. Spain still had a strong tradition of balladeering in the late 17th century, particularly in the Catalan and Basque regions which had been influenced by the Southern French tradition of the troubadours. The guitar was the instrument of choice for these men who were often attached to a nobleman. In the New World, however, they were more paid performer, leaving them free to comment on current events.

“La Bamba”, or what ever the ballad may have been known as in the 1680s, told the story of the sack of Vera Cruz and mocked the town’s lack of preparation for the onslaught of the French and Dutch buccaneers. There is even a hint that the surviving lyric about the singer not being a sailor (buccaneer) but a captain (Spanish soldier) was an indignant reference to Vera Cruz natives joining the rampaging enemy to save their skins. “I am not part of that marine rabble,” the singer says proudly. “I am a soldier of Spain.”

Click here to listen to Ritchie Valens’ rock and roll version of “La Bamba”. It’s like a puzzle made up of pieces of our collective past that you can dance to.

Header: Contemporary engraving of Vera Cruz c 1710

Booty: Tureen Of Turtle

On Wednesday we talked about moon jellies and the fact that they are a favorite food of sea turtles. Sea turtles, in turn, were a delicacy to pirates and privateers. But how, exactly, did our seafaring ancestors enjoy the meat of these massive and now thankfully protected critters?

The answer is really as many ways as you can imagine. As noted in Wednesday’s post, sea turtles often ended up on the boucans of early Tortuga buccaneers. Though the black pig that ran wild on Hispaniola was the usual BBQ, turtle meat was prized as not only healthier than pork but protective as well. The boucaniers believed that ingesting turtle would keep them from getting the pox. When men like Michele de Grammont and Laurens de Graff were out buccaneering, roasting a turtle whole in its shell was an easy and tasty way to enjoy fresh fare. Turtle meat was also enjoyed fried as a kind of fritter mixed with turtle eggs.

Later, in Henry Morgan’s era, sea turtles were cooked according to where on the animal the meat was originally found. Meat from the lower shell was cooked much like a roast with herbs and sauces. The meat from the upper shell, which was thought to be tougher, was slow cooked in a broth to which the turtle’s eggs were sometimes added.

This broth of turtle, which was also cooked in St. Domingue before and after it became Haiti, came to Louisiana shores and morphed into the Creole delicacy known today as turtle soup. Though sea turtle meat is no longer available, some land turtles are still raised for eating and this is what goes into turtle soup today. Like squid and octopus, turtle meat remains enervated even after being chopped up so it can be a little intimidating to deal with. According to Leon E. Soniat, Jr., the Creole tradition is that the meat will stop moving once the sun goes down. You better start working on his recipe for turtle soup before then, though, or it surely will not be ready by supper time. Here it is in all its glory from his definitive book on Creole cooking, La Bouche Creole:

¾ cups butter
8 tbsps flour
½ lb lean ham chopped into small pieces
1 cup chopped onion
3 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
¼ cup chopped celery tops
1 bell pepper, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 lbs turtle meat, cut into small pieces
2 tsps salt
2/3 tsp black pepper
2 pinches cayenne pepper
4 bay leaves
½ tsp powdered thyme
¼ tsp cloves
¼ tsp allspice
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
4 cups beef stock
1 ½ cups water
1 tsp Worcestershire
2 thin slices lemon
4 tbsps good sherry
1/8 cup finely chopped parsley
2 hard cooked eggs, sliced

Melt butter in a heavy soup pot/Dutch oven. Gradually add the flour, stirring constantly to make a roux. When the roux is medium-brown, add the ham, onion, tomatoes, celery tops, bell pepper and garlic. Mix thoroughly and cook over low heat until the vegetables are browned, about half an hour. Next add the turtle meat, salt, pepper, cayenne, bay leaves, thyme, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg and stir to combine. Add the beef stock and water, stirring again to combine. Bring mixture to a boil and then lower heat, cover, and simmer for about two and a half hours.

Come back to your soup and stir in the Worcestershire, lemon and sherry. Let cook uncovered for ten minutes and then add the parsley. If your soup is too thick, you can add water at this point. Let the soup simmer a few minutes more and then remove it from the heat, cover and let it rest for fifteen minutes. Now stir it up from the bottom, plate it in soup bowls, garnish with the hard cooked eggs and serve with French bread. This recipe serves four to eight, depending on serving size. Bon appetite!

Header: 18th century engraving of a freebooter catching a sea turtle

People: On The Island of Sacrifice

Nicholas (or Nicolas en Francais) Van Horn was one of a trio of buccaneers whose most infamous raid was on the Spanish treasure town of Veracruz in 1683. We've already discussed his partners in crime, the great Laurens de Graff and the warrior Michele de Grammont. Van Horn, whose death is possibly more celebrated than his life thanks to novels and movies, is a shadowy figure when compared to the other two ladrones. His background is almost lost entirely, but his character seems to live on as if it has a will of it's own.

Van Horn was certainly a Dutchman, like de Graff. Both of them came to buccaneering in different ways but it is obvious that Van Horn went to sea early in life and never looked back. Probably laboring in the Dutch merchant service through his youth, Van Horn was at some point confronted with the opportunity to turn rogue and he took it. By as early as 1681, when he was probably in his late twenties or early thirties, Van Horn was at Petit Goave in St. Domingue (now Haiti) offering his piratical services to the French Governor Pouancay.

By January of 1683, Van Horn captained his own ship, St. Nicolas, and she was cruising the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. It is telling that Van Horn's ship is eponymous for he is routinely described as vain and grandiloquent, never suffering even the slightest insult without retribution. This is not at all unusual for buccaneers in general and their leaders in particular but the fact that it is mentioned so frequently and in writing, by Alexander Exquemelin in three different accounts for instance, makes it unique. Van Horn must have been a particular hothead to draw so much attention.

In February, while working with de Graff and another buccaneer named Philippe Gomber de la Fleur, Van Horn attacked a Spanish treasure ship, Nuestra Senora de la Consolacion. The ship should have been full of bullion, gems, indigo and sugar on their way to mother Spain but Van Horn made a tactical error and struck too soon. All the buccaneers came away with was two thousand pounds of indigo. This error caused a rift between Van Horn and de Graff that would flare up later.

Following the debacle of la Consolacion, Van Horn had success in March when he took the Dutch merchant Aletta. He moved her cargo to St. Nicolas and sailed for West Africa where he bartered the goods for slaves. Returning to Jamaica on the trades, he sold the unfortunates to the English for a tidy profit and then returned to Petit Goave with a fist full of cash and a happy crew. Happening upon de Grammont and de Graff, he learned of their plan to raid Veracruz before the Spanish treasure fleet left the port in June. Van Horn wanted in and certainly some of his slaving profits went to fund the project.

It is a point of interest here, at least to me, that Van Horn was a married man with a family. This was not as unheard of among the buccaneers of the late 17th century as it would be in the Golden Age of piracy. De Graff himself managed not one marriage but two and at least one child during his raiding heyday. The woman that Van Horn was married to and the number of children they had are facts lost to the mist of history. One source, a chronicler named Gage, says Van Horn's wife was a lovely mixed race woman of St. Dominigue. I wonder what the two exchanged before Van Horn went off to Veracruz and probably the largest raid of his life. Certainly, though neither he nor she could know it at the time, it was the last.

The buccaneer flotilla led by de Graff and de Grammont came within sight of Veracruz on May 17, 1683. De Grammont took the lead in tactics and, using a strategy similar to the one Morgan would use on Portobello, he anchored his ships north of Veracruz and used canoes to move his men to the city. Veracruz, never the target of a large scale buccaneering attack, was not ready for the swift descent of the freebooters and she fell without much resistance. While de Graff secured the bastions around the city, de Grammont took most of the freebooters into the plaza and began systematically rounding up the inhabitants.

The following days were unfortunately gruesome for the unsuspecting residence of Veracruz. Fearing attack from a nearby Spanish fleet, de Grammont took the lead in rounding up the wealthiest citizens of the town and taking them, along with the plunder acquired, via ship to nearby Isla Sacrificios. The conditions on the island were only slightly better for the prisoners than they had been in the city. Now being held for ransom, several died on a daily basis.

The Spanish fleet appeared as feared and began firing on the buccaneers, apparently while they are trying to move provisions from their ships to the island. Both Van Horn and de Grammont went into a rage and de Grammont rounded up a few prisoners to decapitate in retaliation. De Graff stopped the slaughter and Van Horn, according to one account, called de Graff a coward. The gloves came off and the last few months of rancor between the two men bloomed immediately into open hatred. They agreed to a duel.

The usual French format was stated, or perhaps even implied. First blood was all that was required to satisfy the honor of the victor. Death was not a necessary outcome. The cutlasses were unsheathed and those gathered stood back. There is no written record of the actual duel, but the confrontation ended with Van Horn suffering a slice to his wrist. No one, not even the surgeons available, thought much of the wound. De Graff upheld his honor, Van Horn was bandaged and the boring, dirty business of ransoming captives was returned to.

Unfortunately for Nicholas Van Horn, nothing is ever simple. His wound festered and for some reason, very likely the hot and humid surroundings that were full of the sick and dying, Van Horn's body was quickly riddled with sepsis. He died within a few days. According to Exquemelin:

...Van Horn was buried on Cay Logrette, which is but three leagues from Cape Catouche in the province of Yucatan.

What little we still know of the buccaneer Van Horn is full of contradictions. On the one hand he is described as a mean drunk. On the other, men write of his fearlessness and capable leadership even in close battle. It's hard to accurately say who the man buried in the sand on the Island of Sacrifice might really have been. At the very least, we still remember his name.

People: "The Great Pirate Of Petit Goave"

Today's buccaneer is rather like the high school football star who is, to the surprise of many, eclipsed at the 10 year reunion by that nerd who made it big in rock and roll (who knew he could play the guitar and sing?). If you say Laurens de Graff to most people today they might ask you if you've had a recent medical procedure. The six foot something model of the 17th century sea rover now stands in the ominous if physically diminutive shadow of Morgan, which is too bad really. Even though Jamaica's eventual Lieutenant Governor did have some awesome riffs.

Lauens de Graff is thought by most historians to have been born in Dordrecht, The Netherlands, some time in the 1650s. There is some debate, however, as to his actually genetic heritage. Some authors claim de Graff was a mulatto, saying that his name may actually have been assumed by him as a play on the word griffe, someone with African or Native American blood. It's an ongoing debate that, along with a few other points, makes de Graff very similar to our old privateering ami Dominique Youx. No one is sure where he came from or who he was, but his deeds speak louder than words.

It is known that de Graff went to sea young and aboard Spanish ships. Here he learned seafaring and picked up the working of the great guns. According to that famous buccaneer biographer Alexander Exquemelin: "One has never seen a better artillerist". He also witnessed the unfortunately common art of Spanish torture and sometime in the 1670s decided he was fed up. Either captured by boucaniers or deserting his Spanish ship voluntarily, de Graff joined the Brethren of the Coast at Tortuga and was raiding Spanish shipping by 1676.

By 1679, de Graff was Captaining the 28 gun brig Tigre and carrying a French commission from Governor Pouancay of Saint Domingue (now Haiti). De Graff was large and in charge. Standing about 6' 3" he was handsome, swarthy and blond according to Exquemelin. He was also reputed to be an expert swordsman and touchy about his honor. His fellows gave him a wide berth when he was in a foul mood or drinking but his success meant he never lacked for men. Or ladies (more on that tomorrow).

De Graff was also a busy buccaneer. Like Francois L'Olonnais he rarely took much time off and was all over the Spanish Main most of any given year. Unlike L'Olonnais or Morgan for that matter, de Graff was a sailor first and foremost and a sea raider because of it. He famously raided the 30 gun Spanish warship carrying the annual pay for the garrison of Havana in 1682, for instance. The following year he captured three Spanish warships that attacked him off Cartagena, and then sent the Governor of the town a note thanking him for the Christmas gifts. De Graff's rare raids on land were almost always in concert with other captains, Michele de Grammont and Nicolas Van Horn in particular.

The most famous of these was staged against the city of Veracruz on the Gulf Coast of what is now Mexico in May of 1683. De Grammont took the lead, with de Graff and Van Horn as his lieutenants, and the plunder and carnage were probably equal to Morgan's much more famous raid of Panama. Not satisfied with the take in gold and silver from the town, the three buccaneers decided to move wealthy prisoners to Sacrificios Island in the Gulf and demand ransom from the Spanish.

Things turned ugly when Spanish warships fire on the Island while the buccaneers were bringing food from their ships to feed their prisoners. Van Horn in particular was outraged and lined up a few likely hostages to decapitate in retaliation. De Graff steped in and said he wouls not allow the carnage. Van Horn questioned his courage and then it became a point of honor. De Graff and Van Horn already disliked each other over a previous botched raid on a Spanish treasure ship for which de Graff blamed Van Horn. What actually happened to set off the duel is still debated (I'm giving you Exquemelin's story) but the outcome remains the same.

"Voila," Laurens cried out, drawing his cutlass. Van Horn did the same and the fight on the beach commenced. It was not, in fact, a fight to the death but a typical French match to settle honor: a duelo. Laurens struck Van Horn on the wrist. Van Horn was then said to port en coupe or carry a blow and the duel was over. De Graff upheld his honor. Unfortunately for Van Horn the wound, which no one appeared particularly concerned about following the duel, festered. Nicolas Van Horn died and was buried, according to Exquemelin, at Cay Logrette on Sacrifice Island.

None of it seemed of much interest to de Graff. Once the Spanish finally ransomed the prisoners at Sacraficios he returned to raiding. He traded up to the 40 gun ship Neptune the same year. In April of 1685 he and de Grammont tried a raid on Campeche that ended in disaster as the Spanish were warned ahead of time. De Graff was met by an armada of five Spanish warships in the Gulf. Exquemelin calls Laurens the bravest of his crew as they faced down the impossible enemy before them. De Graff takes advantage of every opportunity and famously splits the armada in two, firing both his broadsides as his ship sails into the very center of the maelstrom. De Graff is wounded but will not leave the deck. Night falls at last and, to the buccaneers' surprise, the Spanish turn tail and run.

After another land raid at Tihosuco, de Graff seems to have decided to settle down. He briefly considered defecting to the English but finally settled on Saint Domingue where he purchased a plantation and became a French citizen. He was appointed to the local military by Governor de Cussy and defended Saint Domingue from 1691 to 1695 during the war against Britain. In 1699, after years as a settled planter, he joined Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville's expedition to the Mississippi river as a pilot. Some historians claim he settled there, but it is almost certain that he returned to Saint Domingue, his plantation and his second wife.

De Graff died in 1704, leaving an estate worth approximately 200,000 livres to his wife and daughter in Saint Domingue's Quartier Morin. Pretty good for a pirate.

Though author Rafael Sabatini claimed to have used Morgan as his inspiration for the character of Peter Blood in the book (and later movie) Captain Blood, one has to wonder. The exploits of the pirate Blood mirror de Graff's at so many points right down to the famous sailing between two men-of-war, broadsides blazing. And then, of course, there is the duel on the beach between Blood and LeVasseur which mimics de Graff and Van Horn but with the fictional Arabella Bishop present to add titillation.

Exquemelin called Laurens de Graff "the great pirate of Petit Goave" and went on to say of him: "To resolve, to attempt and to accomplish, these are all the same thing to him." A freebooter like that is surely worth remembering.

But wait, there's more. Tomorrow the history and legend of the women in Laurens' life. Talk about titillation...

People: "With The Look Of A Warrior"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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