Louis-Michel Aury

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Louis-Michel Aury was a French pirate operating in the Gulf of Mexico during the early 19th century.

Aury was born in Paris, France, in around 1788. He served in the French Navy, but from 1802 served in privateer ships. By 1810 he had accumulated enough prize money to become the master of his own vessel.

He then gave his support to the Spanish colonies in South America in their fight for independence from Spain. In April 1813 he sailed from North Carolina on his own privateer ship with Venezuelan letters-of-marque to attack Spanish ships. He was then commissioned as "Commodore of the Navy of New Grenada" (Colombia), and at great expense, evacuated hundreds of people from the besieged city of Cartagena, Colombia to Haiti. He then argued with Simón Bolívar, leader of the Latin American revolutionaries over payment for his services.

He then accepted a commission from the fledgling Republic of Mexico as Civil and Military Governor of Texas, and established a privateering base on Galveston Island, Texas, in September 1816.

However while Aury was away transporting Francisco Javier Mina and his men to Mexico, Jean Lafitte took control of the base at Galveston. On his return to Texas, Aury made an ill-fated attempt to establish another base at Matagorda Bay. He finally left Texas in 1817 to assist the Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor, self-styled "Brigadier-General of the United Provinces of the New Granada and Venezuela and General-in-Chief of the armies of the two Floridas", in attacking Spanish Florida from Amelia Island. MacGregor left in November but Aury remained, proclaiming the island an independent republic. However the US Army drove Aury out in December 1817.

On 4 July 1818 he captured Old Providence Island (Isla de Providencia) in the western Caribbean, and began a settlement with a thriving economy based on captured Spanish cargo, while unsuccessfully trying to rebuild good relations with Bolivar. He was thrown from a horse and killed in August 1821, though some sources claim he was living in Havana in 1845.

François l'Ollonais

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An illustration of François l'Ollonais from a 1684 edition of The History of the Bucaniers of America

Jean-David Nau (c. 1635 - c.1668), better known as François l'Ollonais, was a French pirate active in the Caribbean during the 1660s. In his 1684 account The History of the Buccaneers of America, Alexander Exquemelin notes l'Ollonais' place of birth as being Les Sables-d'Olonne.

Early life

L'Ollonais first arrived in the Caribbean as an indentured servant during the 1650s. By 1660, his indenture was complete and he began to wander the various islands, before finally arriving in Saint-Domingue and becoming a buccaneer, preying on Spanish shipping in the region.

A year or two (dates regarding l'Ollonais are at best sketchy) into his piratical career, l'Ollonais was shipwrecked near Campeche, in Mexico. A party of Spanish soldiers attacked l'Ollonais and his crew, killing almost the entire party. L'Ollonais himself survived by covering himself in the blood of others and hiding amongst the dead. After the Spaniards departed, l'Ollonais, with the assistance of some slaves, escaped and made his way to Tortuga. Shortly after this, he and his crew held a town hostage, demanding a ransom from its Spanish rulers. The governor of Havana sent a ship to kill l'Ollonais' party, but l'Ollonais captured and beheaded the entire crew save one, whom he spared so that a message could be delivered to Havana. In the message, l'Ollonais declared: I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever.

The sacking of Maracaibo

In 1667, l'Ollonais sailed from Tortuga with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of six hundred pirates to sack Maracaibo. En route, l'Ollonais crossed paths with a Spanish treasure ship, which he captured, along with its rich cargo of cacao, gemstones and more than 40,000 pieces of eight.

At the time, the entrance to Lake Maracaibo (and thus the city itself) was defended by a fort of sixteen guns that was thought to be impregnable. L'Ollonais approached it from its undefended landward side and took it. His pirates then proceeded to pillage the city, but found that most of the residents had fled and that their gold had been hidden. L'Ollonais' 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 defensive walls to ensure that a hasty retreat was possible.

L'Ollonais himself was an expert torturer, and his techniques included slicing portions of flesh off his victims with a sword, burning them alive, or "woolding", which involved tying knotted rope around the victim's head until their eyes were forced out.

Over the following two months, l'Ollonais and his men raped, pillaged and eventually burned much of Maracaibo before moving south to Gibraltar, on the southern shore of Lake Maracaibo. Despite being outnumbered, the pirates slaughtered Gibraltar's garrison of 500 soldiers and held the city for ransom. Despite the payment of the ransom (20,000 pieces of eight and five hundred cows), l'Ollonais continued to ransack the city, acquiring a total of 260,000 pieces of eight, gems, silverware, silks as well as a number of slaves. The damage l'Ollonais inflicted upon Gibraltar was so great that the city, formerly a major centre for the exportation of cacao, nearly ceased to exist by 1680.

Word of his attack on Maracaibo and Gibraltar reached Tortuga, and l'Ollonais earned a reputation for his ferocity and cruelty and he was given the nickname "Flail of the Spaniards" (French: Fléau des Espagnois). Seven hundred pirates enlisted with him when he mounted his next expedition, this time to the Central American mainland, later that year. After pillaging Puerto Cabello, l'Ollonais was ambushed by a large force of Spanish soldiers en route to San Pedro. Only narrowly escaping with his life, l'Ollonais captured two Spaniards. Exquemelin wrote:

"He drew his cutlass, and with it cut open the breast of one of those poor Spaniards, and pulling out his heart with his sacrilegious hands, began to bite and gnaw it with his teeth, like a ravenous wolf, saying to the rest: I will serve you all alike, if you show me not another way."

Horrified, the surviving Spaniard showed l'Ollonais a clear route. However, l'Ollonais and the few men still surviving were repelled, and retreated back to their ship. They ran aground on a sandbar in the Gulf of Honduras, and, unable to dislodge their craft, headed inland to find food, but were captured by Kuna's Tribe in Darién, and he was eaten by the Amerindians. Exquemelin wrote that the Amerindians:

"tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air."

Iron Jim Sallow

Iron Jim Sallow, one of the most enigmatic pirates of the North Pacific, is said to have buried a small treasure somewhere in the area that would someday become Seattle. According to legend, he created a map, which was stolen several years later by a member of his crew. Desperate to regain his map and exact revenge, he pursued the thief over land and sea for months before both of them disappeared, never to be seen again.

Accounts by members of his crew claim that he cultivated a friendly relationship with the native peoples of the Puget Sound area, trading with them and joining in their ceremonies and festivities.

Ching Shih

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An 1836 drawing of Ching Shih

Ching Shih, also know as Zheng Yi Sao (lit. "wife of Zheng Yi"), was a prominent female pirate in late Qing China. As Ching Shih engaged in illicit activities throughout her life and prospered in this way, little is known about her early life, including her date of birth. In 1801, she was working as a prostitute on one of Canton's floating brothels, and later that year she married Zheng Yi, the notorious Chinese pirate. Zheng Yi belonged to a family of successful pirates who traced their criminal origins all the way back to the mid-seventeenth century. Following his marriage to Cheng Shih, Zheng Yi used military assertion and his family's reputation to gather a coalition of competing Cantonese pirate fleets into an alliance. By 1804, this coalition was a formidable force, and one of the most powerful pirate fleets in all of China.

In 1807, Zheng Yi died, and the "Widow Ching" (as she has been referred to by some) maneuvered her way into his leadership position. At that point, the fleet under her command had established hegemony over many coastal villages, in some cases even imposing levies and taxes on settlements. In the words of Robert Antony, Ching Shih "robbed towns, markets, and villages, from Macao to Canton."