Pirate Lore, Myths & Legends #11
(sources: Wikipedia)
Hello Mates! Please enjoy some interesting facts from…..
The Golden Age of Piracy: Age of the Buccaneers: 1650–1690
Roche Braziliano was a notoriously cruel
buccaneer who operated out of
Port Royal,
Jamaica. He was a
privateer in
Bahia,
Brazil, before moving to Port Royal in 1654. He led a
mutiny and adopted the life of a buccaneer. On his first adventure he captured a ship of immense value and brought it back safely to Jamaica. He eventually was caught and sent to
Spain, but he escaped with threats of vengeance from his followers.
He soon resumed his criminal career, purchasing a new ship from fellow pirate
François l'Olonnais and later sailing in company with
Sir Henry Morgan and
Joseph Bradleyamong others. Braziliano's first mate
Yellows eventually became a captain in his own right, sailing with Braziliano, Morgan, and others in raids against the Spanish.
Drunken and debauched, Braziliano would threaten to shoot anyone who did not drink with him. He roasted alive two Spanish farmers on wooden spits after they refused to hand over their
pigs. He treated his Spanish prisoners barbarously, typically cutting off their limbs or roasting them alive over a fire.
After 1671, Braziliano was never seen or heard from again. To this day, nobody knows what became of the Dutch pirate. Whether he (and his vessel and men) were lost at sea in a brutal storm, was secretly captured, or possibly retired and lived the rest of his life in anonymity is a matter of debate.
François l'Ollonais was nicknamed "Flail of the Spaniards" and had a reputation for brutality – offering no quarter to Spanish prisoners. In 1666 l'Olonnais sailed from Tortuga with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of 440 pirates to sack
Maracaibo in what is modern day
Venezuela, joining forces with fellow buccaneer
Michel le Basque.[1] En route, l'Olonnais crossed paths with a Spanish treasure ship which he captured, along with its cargo of cocoa beans, gemstones and more than 260,000
Spanish dollars.
At the time the entrance to
Lake Maracaibo and thus the city itself was defended by the
San Carlos de la Barra Fortress with sixteen guns, which was thought to be impregnable. He approached it from its undefended landward side and took it in few hours. He then proceeded to pillage the city, and found that most of the residents had fled and that their gold had been hidden. L'Olonnais' men tracked down the residents and tortured them until they revealed the location of their possessions. They also seized the fort's cannon and demolished most of the town's defence walls to ensure that a hasty retreat was possible.
L'Olonnais himself was an expert torturer, and his techniques included slicing portions of flesh off the victim with a sword, burning them alive, or tying knotted "woolding" (rope bound around a ship's mast to strengthen it) around the victim's head until their eyes were forced out.
Over the following two months, l'Olonnais and his men tortured, pillaged and eventually burned much of Maracaibo before moving to
San Antonio de Gibraltar, on the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo. Despite being outnumbered the pirates slaughtered 500 soldiers of Gibraltar's garrison and held the city for ransom. Despite the payment of the ransom (20,000 pieces of eight and five hundred cattle), l'Olonnais continued to ransack the city acquiring a total of 260,000 pieces of eight, gems, silverware, silks as well as a number of slaves. Word of his attack on Maracaibo and Gibraltar reached Tortuga, and l'Olonnais earned a reputation for his ferocity and cruelty. He was given the nickname "The Bane of Spain" (
French: Fléau des Espagnols).
William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651;[1] died March 1715) was an
Englishexplorer,
pirate,
privateer, navigator, and
naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today
Australia, and the first person to
circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between
Francis Drake(16th century) and
James Cook (18th century), he "bridged those two eras" with a mix of piratical derring-do of the former and scientific inquiry of the later.
His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of plants, animals, foods, and cooking techniques for a European audience; being among the first English writers to use words such as
avocado,
barbecue, and
chopsticks. In describing the preparation of avocados, he was the first European to describe the making of
guacamole, named the
breadfruit plant, and made frequent documentation of the taste of numerous foods foreign to the European palate such as flamingo and manatee.
After impressing the
Admiralty with his book
A New Voyage Round the World, Dampier was given command of a
Royal Navy ship and made important discoveries in western Australia, before being court-martialled
for cruelty. On a later voyage he rescued
Alexander Selkirk, a former crewmate who may have inspired
Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe. Others influenced by Dampier include
James Cook,
Horatio Nelson,
Charles Darwin, and
Alfred Russel Wallace.
Although
Jean Bart was born the son of a fisherman, he was able to retire as an admiral in French service on the strength of his captures during his time as a privateer.
When he was young, Bart served in the Dutch navy under Admiral
Michiel de Ruyter. When war broke out between France and the
United Provinces in 1672, he entered the
French service. Since only persons of noble birth could then serve as officers in the navy, he instead became captain of one of the
Dunkirk privateers. In that capacity, he displayed such astonishing bravery that
Louis XIV sent him on a special mission to the
Mediterranean, where he gained great distinction.
Unable to receive a command in the navy because of his low birth, he held an irregular sort of commission, but he had such success that he became a lieutenant in 1679. He became a terror to the Dutch navy and a serious menace to the commerce of Holland. On one occasion, with six vessels, he broke through a blockading fleet, shattered a number of the enemy's ships and convoyed a transport of grain safely into Dunkirk harbor. He rose rapidly to the rank of
captain and then to that of
admiral.
Many anecdotes tell of the courage and bluntness of the uncultivated sailor, who became a popular hero of the
French Navy. He captured a total of 386 ships and also sank or burned a great number more. The town of Dunkirk has honoured his memory by erecting a statue and by naming a
public square after him. During the carnival of Dunkirk, held every year the Sunday before Holy Tuesday, local people kneel all together in front of his statue and sing the Cantate à Jean Bart [
circular reference]. Jean Bart is viewed by the inhabitants of Dunkirk as a local hero. During the interwar period, in 1928, following excavations carried out in the church, Dr. Louis Lemaire found the bones of Jean Bart, which makes it possible to estimate his size, 1.90 m.
