Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 26, 1999

First Frenchmen in Caribbean were probably up to no good

by Jim Bradshaw

As things began to deteriorate for the Protestants in France, many of these seamen decided to leave. Some left for economic reasons, some simply because they were tired of the continuing battles, and some because they saw Spanish ships filled with gold sailing into neighboring ports and wanted some of that treasure.

Put simply, a good many of the first Frenchmen in the Caribbean were pirates.

Jan Rogozinski notes in "A Brief History of the Caribbean," "During the 16th century, pirates sailed almost continuously from ports in western England and northern France, where entire cities became dependent upon their infamous trade. The number of voyages to the West Indies rose and fell. But French and British captains left virtually every year. ... All sought booty. But many also were strong, even fanatical Protestants ... who added hatred of the Catholic Spanish to their greed for loot.

"The French ... were the first to attack Spain's Caribbean ports. As early as 1522 ... naval squadrons belonging to Jean d'Ango of Dieppe in Normandy managed to seize four ships carrying back to Spain Montezuma's fabled treasure and other riches seized by (Hernando) Cortés in conquering Mexico. In 1537, another of d'Ango's fleets captured nine ships carrying silver from Peru.

"These hauls were taken near the Azores. But their extraordinary richness encouraged French captains to invade the Caribbean itself during the 1530s. By the mid-1550s, as many as 30 French ships raided the Indies each year, virtually controlling the seas and pillaging coastal towns on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. The climax of the campaign came, in 1555 when the French corsair Jacques de Sores captured Havana itself and burned it to the ground."

According to George Woodbury, who wrote about the history of piracy in the Caribbean, when the religious wars drove them away from France, "Great numbers of these embittered French sailors drifted to the island of Tortuga off the coast of Haiti. ... The motive behind the first French immigration to the West Indies was not so much attraction toward the islands as repulsion from their homeland."

On Tortuga, these French sailors joined with British and Dutch sailors who had been attracted to the Indies. They were able to live as hunters because years earlier the Spanish had adopted a policy of placing hogs, goats, and cattle on islands throughout the Caribbean, leaving them to run wild and multiply, so that Spanish sailors who might someday be shipwrecked would have something to eat.

The French, British, and Dutch sailors on Tortuga hunted the wild herds and cooked the meat over open fires. As a result they came to be known as buccaneers, from the French verb buccaneer, to smoke meat or fish. The title was anglicized to buccaneer. (Some linguists say that we get the modern word barbecue from these hunters, because they cooked the goats from beard to tail: de barbe à queue.)

According to Woodbury, "In the middle seventeenth century the West Indies and adjoining mainland developed the buccaneer - a distinctive West Indian product, often confused with pirates so that the terms have been used interchangeably. They shouldn't be, for buccaneers were different - a specialized kind of pirate belonging to a specific time and locality."

Woodbury says these men "were not representative of the better levels of French, Dutch, and English society and at that time the best was none too good."

He continues, "(These Protestants), who were not allowed to live in Spanish colonies could live out among the islands on steaks and hams, to be had for the shooting. It was a good, gypsy kind of life. The pleasant climate, fruits, freedom, and the opportunity for a bit of agriculture were attractive."

At first, he says, "They were just professional hunters, coureurs des bois ... a little on the uncouth side as are a lot of hunters, professional or otherwise, but a menace to no one." But when their numbers began to grow, Spanish officials got jittery and decided to run them off. The buccaneers were good hunters and knew the lay of the land, but there were more Spaniards and they were better organized. Eventually, the buccaneers were forced to take to the sea, and, in Woodbury's words "with little love for anything Spanish."

According to his history, "The first of the buccaneers, and the one who set the pattern for harebrained daring and enmity against Spain, was a Norman Frenchman by the name of Pierre le Grand. ... Pierre with 28 companion buccaneers set off to sea, expelled from their normal life of cow hunting on Tortuga by the Spaniards. They were out of provisions, out of water, and desperate when they sighted a full- rigged Spanish ship of war, a flagship of the line, lumbering back to Spain with the King's treasure. Under oars and sail they overtook it during the night, and so that no one could turn back (in dismay) at (their own) brashness, they scuttled their own boat under them just as they swarmed on board the galleon. Hand to hand with cutlass and pistol they overpowered and captured the treasure ship and its entire crew of several hundred sailors and marines in a furious melee. More prudent than most subsequent buccaneers, these wild-eyed Frenchmen turned the Spanish captives ashore and then sailed, galleon, treasure, and all, back to France where they lived happily on their investments from then on."

If Pierre le Grand and his crew did not go back to sea, they inspired others who would. "Leaders of real ability soon appeared among (the buccaneers)," Woodbury says. "They formed themselves into a crude kind of organization known as the Bretheren of the Coast and dedicated themselves to pillaging anything Spanish whether on land or sea. The predominating tone of these buccaneers was French at first, with (a) smattering of other nationalities include". Not all the French pirates were in the Caribbean. Alar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca tells of a run-in with French pirates during his trip home to Spain in 1537. His ship was 29 days out of Havana, near the Azores, when a French pirate ship came over the horizon.

"(The pirates) took up the chase at noon, bringing along a Portuguese caravel captured earlier," Cabeza de Vaca wrote. "That evening we made out nine more sails, but they were so far away we could not tell whether they were Portuguese or French.

"After nightfall the Frenchmen got within Lombard (a type of cannon) shot of us, and we stole from our course in the dark, hoping to evade him. Three or four times we did this. He got near enough to us once to see us, and fired. He could have taken us, either then or at his leisure, next morning. I will never forget my gratitude to the Almighty when, with the sunrise, we recognized the nine sails closing in to be of the fleet of Portugal. I gave thanks to Our Lord for His shielding hand against the perils of land and sea alike.

"As soon as the Frenchman identified the nine sails," Cabeza do Vaca continues, "he let go the caravel ... to make us think (it) was Portuguese so we might wait for her. On casting her off, the Frenchman told her pilot and skipper that we were French and under his convoy. Suddenly sixty oars sprouted from the Frenchman and he moved out with incredible speed. The caravel went to the galleon and informed the commander that both we and the racing ship were French. ... When we had converged close enough, we hailed them; and they discovered that we were friends ... (and also) that they had been duped into letting the pirate get away.