Francois l’Olonnais was renowned for being particularly cruel and was especially feared by the Spanish colonists. Very little is know about his early life. It is known that his real name was Jean-David Nau and that he later became known as Francois l’Olonnais, meaning Frenchman from Sables-d’Olonne, referring the place he was born in sometime between 1630 and 1635. It is thought he received this name while on Tortuga. He was also sometimes simply known as Captain Francois. His family were so poor they sold him or he sold himself as an indentured servant to the French West India Company when he was fifteen. At first, he was sent to work on a sugar plantation in the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean in the 1650s, sometime later ending up on Tortuga, off the coast of Hispaniola. While serving his three-year indenture, he got to know many buccaneers. What we know of this infamous pirate captain comes mostly from Alexandre Exquemelin’s 1678 account in the Dutch version The History of the Buccaneers of America.…
Author: savage
The Pirate King
The Pirate King: The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery and the Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy by Sean Kingsley and Rex Cowan
Henry Avery of Devon pillaged a fortune from a Mughal ship off the coast of India and then vanished into thin air—and into legend. More ballads, plays, biographies and books were written about Avery’s adventures than any other pirate. His contemporaries crowned him “the pirate king” for pulling off the richest heist in pirate history and escaping with his head intact (unlike Blackbeard and his infamous Flying Gang). Avery was now the most wanted criminal on earth. To the authorities, Avery was the enemy of all mankind. To the people he was a hero. Rumors swirled about his disappearance. The only certainty is that Henry Avery became a ghost.
What happened to the notorious Avery has been pirate history’s most baffling cold case for centuries. Now, in a remote archive, a coded letter written by “Avery the Pirate” himself, years after he disappeared, reveals a stunning truth.…
Piracy Act 1744
Under this act British subjects serving as privateers for an enemy of Great Britain could be tried for a felony not treason. It was easier to convict someone of a felony than prove treason. It was passed during the War of Austrian Succession waged from 1740 to 1748, in which Britain fought against France and Spain. As with many wars before, privateers were an integral part of the armed forces of all powers, and it would seem that British citizens regulary found employment with foreign powers.
An example of using privateers to support navies, occurred in 1744, when a British force of 300 men accompanied by two privateers from Saint Kitts successfully captured the French half of neighbouring Saint Martin. In late May 1745, two French royal frigates of 36 and 30 guns respectively under Commodore La Touché, together with three privateers sailed from Martinique to invade and capture the British colony of Anguilla in retaliation, but were repelled with heavy loss in the Battle of Anguilla.…
The Pirate Menace
The Pirate Menace – Uncovering the Golden Age of Piracy by Angus Konstam
This account explores the most notorious pirates in history and how their rise and fall can be traced back to a single pirate haven, Nassau. Angus Konstam, one of the world’s leading pirate experts, has brought his 30 years of research to create the definitive book on the Golden Age of Piracy. Many of the privateers the British had used to prey on French and Spanish shipping during the War of the Spanish Succession turned to piracy. The pirates took over Nassau on the Bahamian island of New Providence and turned it into their own pirate haven, where shady merchants were happy to buy their plunder. It became the hub of a pirate network that included some of the most notorious pirates in history: Blackbeard, ‘Calico Jack’ Rackam, Charles Vane and Bartholomew Roberts.
The growth of piracy led to a major surge in attacks in the Caribbean and along North America’s Atlantic seaboard.…
Fiddler’s Green
Wrap me up in me oilskin and blankets,
No more on the docks I’ll be seen,
Just tell me old shipmates, I’m taking a trip mates,
And I’ll see you someday on Fiddlers Green.That was a pretty tune. I ain’t ever heard it before,” commented Benton once the song had come to an end and the small group of men had taken out their pipes and tobacco pouches.
The idea of Fiddler’s Green is based on the maritime myth of an after-life of a paradise for seamen, which was popular in the nineteenth century, where there is perpetual merriment, music, and dancing. The origins of this myth are not entirely clear, but some scholars suggest that it may have been inspired by the Greek myth of the Elysian Fields, a paradise for the dead. A mythical afterlife similar to Heaven, Fiddler’s Green was said to be a place of bliss and happiness in which fiddle music was played for all eternity.…