Historical Perspective on Buccaneers
August 31, 1919
Bloodstained Booty
To mention St. Kitts is to get a vision of bloodstained pieces of eight, of big round Spanish doubloons, of rare jeisve gouged from the eyes of sacred images stolen from tome's richest churches in Panama and South America of wonderful garments of the finest silks and velvets with great collars of the rarest lace worn by tense eyed bearded men more used to the tunic and short drawers of the boucaniers and whose only collar had been a great cut of fresh meat through which their heads were thrust as they started to return from their hunt.
It was on St Christopher or St. Kitts that the later buccaneers had their origin. The name comes from the Indian won toucan, which means dried meat, or the place for drying meat. From this was derived the term boucaniers, later spelled "buccaneers." It meant. In its original sense the hunters; of wild cattle and hogs, who, to preserve the fruit of their chase, cut the meat into strips and dried it over a slow fire.
Some of the old chronicles of the buccaneering stories divide the settlers of Christopher into three classes, the boucaniers, or hunters; the habitants, or planters, and the filibustiers, or sea rovers, but this was a hair-splitting division because all classes engaged at one time or another in each of the "industries" of the Spanish Main and all came later to be called buccaneers.
CALLED PIERRE LE GRAND.
The first of these to make a name far himself was one Pierre, a Frenchman, whose surname was of so little Consequence that it was never known. When he won his fame as a bold robber on the high seas, Pierre added "le Grand" to his name and as Peter tie Great of the Buccaneers he Is known to this day. He was a doughty soul, and began h a career of free tin by attacking a great Spanish galleon, with eight companions armed only with pistols and swords. Her he boarded in the open sea, after sinking his own boat to make sure none of his company turned back.
He found the captain with some of his officers playing cards In the big cabin, overpowered them and demanded, that they give up the ship and all treasure. He got all be asked, made the captain do duty as a common sailor on what had once been his-own vessel, and sailed proudly back to France.
François L'Olonnois who gloried in the nom de Guerra of L'Olonnols the Cruel, and who, with his companion, Michel le Baskue, made an immense fortune as a buccaneer, had a habit of first torturing and then killing all his captives after he had made them prisoners. At one time be killed an entire ship's crew of ninety 'men, himself acting as executioner and lopping off their heads and this after he bad taken goods valued at 400,000 crowns.
This was Just off the coast of Trinidad.
One other of the old buccaneers owes the ill fame that is still associated with his name to his cruelty. He was Montbars the Exterminator who became a sea rover not so much for the booty he might get as for the Spaniards he might be able to kill. His anger had been so stirred through tales he had heard of Spanish cruelty to hands that lie burned to clear the Western Hemisphere of the Dons.
To that end, he became a buccaneer and ran down every Spanish sail he could find, killing all on board, men, women and, children, friars, priests and nuns alike. If there was loot worth taking, he took It. If not, he sailed on, satisfied that there was one shipful less of Spaniards in the Spanish Main because of Montbars the Exterminator.
SOME WERE PIOUS ALSO.
Very many of the men whose names glow somberly oft the pages of buccaneer memoirs were almost as widely known for their chivalry and piety as for their crimes. There was Alexandre Bras de Fer, who, because of his seamanship, mastery or the art of robbing without physical pain, his ability to torte captured islands to pay tribute to him periodically and his farsighted wisdom in planning his captures was called Alexander the Great.
He was never cruel. Even when his capture was a ship or war he treated his prisoners with the utmost and gentleness.
Admirers of Sir Henry Morgan are fond of telling of his justice and his belief in fair play citing as one illustration his handling of the survivor of a duel. This man, an English buccaneer in Morgan's crew, quarreled with a French shipmate over the possession of the marrowbone or an ox. a great delicacy with the old sea rovers. To settle the dispute as to which of them really owned the marrowbone the two men decided to fight a duel with swords.
While the Frenchman was taking his position the Englishman ran him through the back with his sword killing him Instantly. The incident was reported to Morgan. and he had the Englishman put into irons and sent to Jamaica, saying that an affair like that was not to be “looked upon with favor," even though the principal actor was one of his own countrymen!
After Charles II made Morgan Deputy Governor of Jamaica, he was very severe with the buccaneers, causing many of his old associates to be tried and hanged. Notwithstanding this fact he was suspected by Spain of being the directing head of the buccaneers and after the Duke of York became King of England as James II the Influence of the Spanish court was sufficient to have Morgan recalled from the West Indies and put Into prison in England.
John Esquermeling, himself a buccaneer and the author of a, Dutch history of the buccaneers has been translated into French, Spanish and English tells of the piety of the buccaneers. So, too, do other chroniclers, notably Dampierre, Oexrnelin, Buccaneer. Commander sharp and Father La Bat.
Many of the buccaneers, tiring of the sea, became planters In their later life and founded families that are still high, In honor among British West Indian political and social life. Some of them, however; carried their ferocity into their plantation life and were notably cruel to their slaves. Not all of these latter lived long enough to have big families.
