People: Le Filibustier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People: The Pirate Governor

For those who study the histories of seafaring and piracy, the story of Henry Morgan quitting the buccaneering life and becoming the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica seems very novel indeed.  A wicked, cruel man by any account, Morgan turned his ferocity on the men with whom he had once sailed, and hanged old mates not long after shaking their hands.  Another, and lesser known pirate-turned-Governor went in the opposite direction, harboring pirates and protecting them from his own Danish government.  Or so it would seem.

Adolph Esmit was a real person.  We know from records on the island of St. Thomas, now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and from Waldemar Westergaard's exhaustive The Danish West Indies under Company Rule that Esmit was Governor of the island from 1683 to 1684 and then again from 1687 to 1688.  According to The Pirate's Who's Who by Philip Gosse, Esmit was also a freebooter in his own right, and something of a rebel to boot.

Other than his birth in Denmark and his travels to the Danish West Indies in the late 1670s, there is very little information about Esmit's early life.  He was married to a woman named Charity who some historians speculate may have been an English Puritan.  Regardless of her religious background, Charity was willing to separate from her husband and plead his case for inauguration as Governor of St. Thomas in Copenhagen.

Esmit probably started out as an able seaman aboard merchant ships sailing for the Danish West India Company.  Eventually, it seems, he was captaining his own slave ship.  It was not unusual for slavers to turn pirate and there are hints that is exactly what Esmit and his crew did.  In need of a home port, he put in at St. Thomas some time in 1682 where his brother Nicolai was Governor.

By land, Esmit seems to have become very popular with the largely English population of the island.  He was a big spender, making local merchant's happy.  Within a year of his arrival at St. Thomas, he began to foment an uprising against his brother's leadership and eventually managed a sort of bloodless rebellion.  Adolph ousted Nicolai and, with Charity's aforementioned help, managed to secure an official inauguration as Governor in 1683.

Henceforth, St. Thomas became a buccaneer haven.  Governor Esmit would welcome fugitives from other island governments, harboring them and claiming that he had libeled their ships and goods when other Governors complained.  A particular case in point was that of Point Goave buccaneer Jean Hamlin who took refuge from Jamaican Governor Lynch at St. Thomas.  When asked, Esmit refused to release either Hamlin or his ship to the English.

It appears that Esmit even built and fitted out ships specifically for piracy on the high seas.  Whether or not he distributed letters of marque is in question, but his actions soon drew not only local attention but that of the Danish government.

A replacement Governor, Gabriel Milan, arrived at St. Thomas in 1684.  Rather than packing Esmit off to Denmark as he had been ordered, he imprisoned the former pirate and tried to extort money from him.  How Esmit managed to wriggle out of this sticky situation is unclear, but by 1687 he was again the official Governor of St. Thomas.

At this point, Esmit's renown as a friend of local buccaneers began to erode his credibility with the Danish government and, probably through the auspices of the Danish West India Company, Esmit was again deposed.  This time he was returned to Copenhagen to give an account of his service and, most probably, to face a prison sentence or worse.

Though history does not say exactly how, Adolph Esmit managed to avoid this final reckoning.  According to Westergaard, who calls Esmit "shift, shrewd, vain and at times boastful," the old buccaneer managed to escape to Courland, a small Duchy near Lithuania.  Here he and his wife may have lived out their days under aliases.  What actually became of the, beyond that, can be left only to educated speculation and/or fictional fantasy.  I'll let you chose for yourselves, Brethren.

Header: Iron Men and Wooden Ships, woodblock print by E.A. Wilson

History: The Second Sack of Cartagena

The city known as Cartagena de Indias located in modern Venezuela was one of the most heavily fortified ports on the Spanish Main by the mid-17th century. It was from here that Spain sent her treasure fleets off to Europe crammed with gold, silver and jewels from mines in the interior of South America. Since the giant treasure ships only sailed two or three times a year, most other European nations drooled at the thought of the stockpiles of wealth that must have accumulated behind the city’s stone walls.


War has always afforded the strong the opportunity to amass wealth, and when the War of the League of Augsberg sailed from Europe into Caribbean waters, the French had wealth on their mind. The conflict, which lasted a comparatively short nine years, pitted France against England, the Netherlands and Spain in particular. The French holdings in the West Indies rallied against their most formidable foes in the area, with Saint Dominique’s governor Jean Du Casse relying heavily on the aid of Petit Goave’s boucaniers.

Of course, French as well as English buccaneers had been terrorizing the Spanish Main for over 30 years by the time the war began. They had a clear strategy of raid, pillage and retreat that succeeded to the point that Spain’s ability to defend herself was breaking down. Refusing the right to legal trade with anyone but the mother country to her colonies meant that Spain’s towns and cities in the New World were poorly armed and often poorly manned as well. As Juan Perez de Guzman, who witnessed Henry Morgan’s raids on Central America, noted “[the Spaniard’s] firearms are few and bad, in comparison of those the enemy brought, for ours are Carbins, Harquebusses and Fowling pieces, but few Muskets.” On the other hand the French were well armed, and exceedingly expert, with the most up-to-date muskets available to them.

Any weakness should be exploited in war, and Louis XIV saw his chance to pounce on what could potentially be a windfall for not only France but for himself, personally. Accordingly, as Monsieur le Governeur Du Casse was handing out letters of marque to any buccaneer who cared to apply, the King sent a flotilla to Saint Domingue to ramp up for an all out siege of Cartagena.

The leader of this expedition was Baron Jean de Pointis, an Admiral who had seen action on the European front. He had ten men-of-war with him and, through the connections available to Du Casse, managed to enlist another seven ships captained and manned by freebooters. The Governor added his own squadron for a total of 30 ships and over 6,000 men.

Despite his initial hesitancy, the Admiral was convinced by Du Casse to enter into a written agreement with the buccaneers. This ensured them that any loot would be divided fairly, so that – as they suspected might occur – they would not do all the heavy lifting and be left with little or no reward. How satisfied the pirates were with the agreement remains unknown, but they sailed with de Pointis on April 13, 1689 bound for Cartagena.

The city stood on a head shore behind which were an exterior and an interior bay. The Boca Chica passage to the interior bay was heavily fortified but beyond that little if any artillery was available to guard the city’s back. Because of a lack of men and arms, the Spanish could not stop Admiral de Pointis’ entire fleet from breeching Boca Chica. Once he was behind the city, de Pointis began landing artillery and set up a bombardment that lasted six days. On May 6, Cartagena succumbed to the superior firepower of the invaders.

The Admiral and Governor du Casse met with city leaders and, unbeknownst to the buccaneers, agreed to a ransom that amounted to only about half of the wealth available in Cartagena at the time. De Pointis turned his marines on the buccaneers, keeping them in line as booty was loaded onto the French men-of-war. By May 29, de Pointis was ready to set sail after handing over what he felt was a “fair share” to the seven pirate captains.

There certainly must have been protests to both de Pointis and Du Casse, but neither seems to have responded with anything satisfactory. The Admiral and the Governor boarded their ships and departed for Saint Dominique. But the buccaneers, who felt cheated beyond reason, had other plans.

The pirates re-entered Cartagena who, in her weakened state, could hardly defend herself. The men went on a rampage, torturing, looting and killing with the kind of blood-lust that only occurs when people are truly angry. By mid-June the rage of the buccaneers had burned itself out. They took what booty they had managed to dig up and set sail for Petit Goave in Saint Dominique. They left Cartagena almost irreparably broken; it would be another ten years before her reputation as a cultural and financial hub would be restored.

Meanwhile, the Frenchmen got a bit of their own back at sea. Their ships were hit by a gale and, limping along the coast of Jamaica, they were overtaken by a small squadron of English vessels. Five of the buccaneer’s ships were taken as prizes and their Cartagenan wealth ended up lining the coffers of the Governor of Jamaica.

The only winners in the entire affair were Admiral de Pointis, who managed to wrest most of Governor Du Casses’ share of the wealth away from him on a technicality, and of course the Sun King, Louis XIV. Though Louis did return a portion of what he had accumulated to Du Casse and the buccaneers, it hardly made up for their losses.

The sack of Cartagena, which on every level was a miserable tragedy, sounded the death knell of the buccaneers. Within ten years the Golden Age of Piracy would dawn and a whole different breed of seafaring freebooters would emerge more interested in prizes on the water than booty on shore.

Header: The Sack of Cartagena by Howard Pyle

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

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: Basse-Terre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People: Almost The End Of An Era

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People: The Tale Of Half-Arse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Tools Of The Trade: Purchase And Pay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Pirates: The Creole And The Cinquantaine

I'm going to go way out on the crosstrees and say that freebooters of every era probably got a fair amount of tail. There were the usual doxies to be had at pirate ports, and there were probably sea rovers who worked out relationships with these women, tenuous though they may have been. Away from home, stories are told of middle class and wealthy women in captured cities giving up their charms either as a way of securing freedom for themselves and/or loved ones or because, like those famous Roman patricians who chased gladiators, they had the itch for a hot buccaneer. Of course there was always rape and that was probably far more common than many of the historians would like to have us believe. But I won't count that here. Rape, however satisfying it may be for the assailant, is an act of violence. Sure, it mimics the sex act; so does plunging a cutlass into an enemy's flesh. But I digress.

What you rarely hear of is the traditionally married sea rover, the stories of Blackbeard's twenty odd wives not withstanding. And this is just another reason why I am particularly fascinated with the buccaneer we spoke of yesterday. Laurens de Graff, it seems, had not one but two not only reasonably stable but legal relationships bound by recognized marriage. That doesn't mean that these marriages wouldn't have given most respectable Europeans at the time pause, however.

De Graff's first wife is a shadowy figure. Her name is even debated among historians. She is listed sometimes as Petronila de Guzman; clearly a Spanish name. More often, though, she is called Francoise Petuline de Gusman or Gusmaine. This name would indicate a French background. The historians who take the Spanish nativity side point out that de Graff sailed for Spain for many years and when the lady's name enters the historical record she is already de Graff's wife living on the French held island of Tenerife. I would say that the addition of "Francoise" makes that argument open for question. Why is "Francisca" not included in her Spanish name?

What is interesting to me is that Francoise is clearly a woman of some standing. Bar girls don't run around with two are three names that include the appended "de". She was most probably a plantation born Creole which means a person of European ancestry born in the New World. (A certain pop stars' recent co-opting of the word to mean a person of mixed race will be ignored for the purpose of historical accuracy.) Creolo is the word used by the Spanish. If that is the case de Graff would have been required to court her in a relatively traditional way before marriage could even be considered. Of course a shortage of suitors in some of the more remote areas might make any guy with a few pieces of eight in his pocket look attractive but appearance would need to be kept up. And who knows, maybe Francoise and Laurens were actually in love.

De Graff clearly felt some obligation to Francoise, despite the fact that it appears they did not live together for any length of time. In 1683, when he was considering an offer from the English to move his home port to Jamaica and accept a commission from that island, de Graff made sure to look out for his wife. Part of the written deal stipulated that Francoise be transported from Tenerife to Jamaica at British expense. A new, buccaneer friendly French Governor in Saint Domingue put the brakes on de Graff's deal with the English. Francoise, apparently, stayed at Tenerife. There is no documentation that the couple ever had children.

Then, ten years later, a new kind of woman in Saint Domingue put the brakes on any marital happiness Francoise might have known.
Between 1690 and 1695 Louis XIV got the notion to "seed" his predominantly male island of Saint Domingue with "ladies". It was time for the wild boucaniers to stop all this distasteful matelage, settle down with women and make some French citizens. And while we're at it, let's get rid of some of these prostitutes. Voila. The first shipment of fifty already experienced girls appears on the shores of Saint Domingue - probably at Petit Goave - around 1691.

These initial fifty pioneers were known as La Cinquantaine (the fifty ladies) and among them was a colorful girl with a colorful name: Marie-Anne Dieuleveult. Her name literally translates as "God's will" in a provincial form of French probably common to the Caribbean. This leads me to believe that it was not her real name but a professional moniker that said, essentially, it's God's will that you pay me to sleep with you. By the time she met de Graff in a Petit Goave punch house, she was allegedly married to another buccaneer.

We know with certainty, based on a brief note in Exquemelin's writings, that Marie-Anne and Laurens hooked up in 1693. At the time he was still married to Francoise but we know nothing factual about Marie-Anne's marital status. A fictional fog has taken hold of Marie-Anne and there is more than one website (Wikipedia included) that informs us she was a pirate along side de Graff, Captaining his ship when he was wounded and even killed at sea. In this not very original tale Laurens kills Marie-Anne's husband in a bar fight. Marie-Anne challenges Laurens then and there but he "succumbs", unwilling to fight with a woman. Guess what happens next? They fall madly in love. *swoon*

Your humble hostess enjoys romance as much as the next gal but it's like chocolate: moderation prevents puking. To me, these kind of stories diminish the real women who went to sea and sometimes fought alongside their men - or even alone. Marie-Anne may have sailed with de Graff at some point but it's a surety that she never took the helm and probably never participated in raids. Exquemelin, always ready to report a sensational story, would have made note of it if she had no doubt.

The truth doesn't take away from Marie-Anne's buccaneer nature. She came to Saint Domingue in a rough and tumble time when women were few and far between. She carved out a life for herself and managed, through luck or savvy or both, to snag a capable and handsome sea rover. Plunder is plunder whether it's Spanish silver or a good man.

By 1695 de Graff was divorced from Francoise and married to Marie-Anne. Of course the legality of the whole thing is questionable but in the New World things were done differently than they were in London, Paris or Madrid. Francoise fades from history all together. Marie-Anne bears Laurens at least one child. Church records in the Quartier Marin in Saint Domingue list the birth of a daughter, Marie-Catherine de Graff.

During France's war with the combined forces of England and Spain, Marie-Anne was again called to live by her wits. She was taken hostage by the Spanish, probably snatched from her husband's plantation in one of the raids that were such a common part of war in the area, and held for ransom in Veracruz. Of course the memory of her husband's sacking of that city was fresh and if the authorities knew who she was it must be assumed that she was treated to special attention. Her time in captivity is lost to history, but she was returned to Saint Domingue before her husband set off for Louisiana in 1699.

The tall tales of Laurens and Marie-Anne settling along the Mississippi and continuing their piratical lifestyle are just that: tall tales. De Graff's last will was executed in Saint Domingue, where he almost certainly died. Dated the year of his death, 1704, it leaves his entire and considerable estate to Marie-Anne and their daughter Marie-Catherine.

In the end both of de Graff's women, the Creole and the Cinquantaine, had it tough. Not, in all fairness, tougher than most of their sisters in the wild and lawless New World of the time, but tough nonetheless. I'm sure they both would have been fascinating to talk to. Francoise over a pot of heady coffee; Marie-Anne over a bottle of blood red Madeira. Salute.

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.

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.