It was more than just another routine capture for the two U.S. Revenue cutters 75 nautical miles northwest of the Dry Tortugas. The schooner they had bested after a short, sharp engagement on that afternoon of 30 August 1819 was none other than the Brave—newest addition to the fleet of the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte and his brother in maritime larceny, Pierre. But though the rapacious vessel was caught red-handed with prisoners and plunder from the nearby schooner Filomena, the Brave’s crew and her owners would argue that this was not mere piracy—but a blow struck for the cause of freedom.
Pirates? Au contraire, they would contend—privateers, legitimately operating out of Galveston, Texas Province, for revolutionary Mexico, preying on Spanish shipping in the name of the Mexican struggle for independence. And while the U.S. public had great sympathy for such activities by those sailing under the flags of revolutionary Spanish American nations, the U.S. government was exasperated, both with the widespread acts of piracy against its own ships and with the large-scale smuggling of cargoes from captured Spanish prizes into ports such as New Orleans.
The “Crescent City” was geographically well situated for such trafficking, and its inhabitants were temperamentally disposed to support the activities of pirates, privateers, and smugglers. And along the waterfront there, when talk ran to such activities, two names stood out: Jean and Pierre Lafitte.
Often imagined as swashbuckling pirates, the brothers were more akin to the directors of an integrated criminal enterprise. They had begun in 1804 by moving goods taken by other privateers and pirates into New Orleans through the Barataria Bay region south of the city. As their business grew, they expanded to become shipowners. Although they hired captains to command their vessels, their status as owners enabled them to keep a larger share of the plunder than they would have been entitled to as middle men.
Eventually their activities resulted in indictments for violation of U.S. revenue and neutrality laws—but never for actual piracy. This difficulty disappeared when President James Madison pardoned the brothers for all crimes after they and their men fought on the U.S. side against Great Britain in the War of 1812. General Andrew Jackson had lauded their performance in providing artillery support to his forces during the Battle of New Orleans in 1814–15.
Despite being given a clean slate, the Lafittes had chosen to continue their illegal activities after the war. When the U.S. Navy forced them from their base at Barataria in 1817, they quickly began to search for a replacement location. Even today, successful pirate bases require three attributes: a location secure from government interference, ready access to vulnerable shipping, and proximity to a market for the plunder. In some respects, Galveston Island turned out to meet these criteria better than had Barataria.
Convenient Location for Criminality
The 20-mile-long barrier island was mostly mud flats and salt marshes, but the markets of New Orleans lay only a few days’ sail eastward along the coast. Access to Spanish shipping in the Gulf of Mexico from Galveston was likewise convenient—all of it needed to pass through the Straits of Florida or the Yucatan Channel. Perhaps most important, the island was under the nominal administration of the government of revolutionary Mexico, which kept a very hands-off approach to operations there. The Mexican Congress had named “Commodore” Louis-Michel Aury, a former French privateer who had served in several Spanish American navies, as governor in September 1816. A customs collector, court system, and a notary public were added to the administration of the island.1
The Galveston operation was an improvement on the original practice of the Lafittes. Most cargoes processed there could be condemned, repackaged, and redocumented for direct export to New Orleans without need of smuggling past customs inspectors. As a result, privateers and pirates flocked to the location to “launder” their goods.
Amazingly, the Lafittes had been able to play all three sides—Spain, Mexico, and the United States—to undermine Governor Aury and seize control of Galveston by July 1817, only a few months after having been forced from Barataria. The Spanish financed the coup in the belief that the Lafittes would shut down attacks against their shipping; the Mexicans paid them in the hope that they would continue to import arms and munitions to support their independence efforts; and the United States treated their vessels “upon the same footing as vessels belonging to old Spain” under the illusion of legitimacy attached to their operation.
But the U.S. government eventually realized that the operation at Galveston was just a sham. No real trade took place there—the only goods exported had been plundered from merchant shipping. The depredations by the Lafittes’ vessels also compromised U.S.-Spanish relations. The Spanish government regularly protested what it saw as American collusion with a war on its shipping. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams considered all Spanish-American privateers to be pirates and pushed for a U.S. response. Accordingly, Congress passed legislation restricting the ability of foreign privateers to operate from U.S. ports, and the Monroe administration took steps to bolster maritime law-enforcement efforts to protect shipping.
One of those steps was to assign two newly commissioned Revenue cutters, the Alabama and Louisiana, to Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, respectively. Construction of the sister cutters had been authorized in April 1819 and was completed in New York three months later. On 11 August they began the 30-day transit to their new duty stations.
On the morning of 30 August the cutters rounded the western end of the Florida Keys. As they sailed close-hauled to a very light wind northwest of the Dry Tortugas, a lookout sighted the sails of three vessels on the horizon. One of the three appeared to separate and head downwind toward the cutters, while the other two appeared to be close-hauled and heading away. While the fore and aft rigging of speedy schooners such as the 56-foot cutters allowed them to sail much closer to the wind than square-rigged vessels, their small size also gave them the ability to be “rowed” at 1 to 2 knots in calm winds. Both cutters immediately took up pursuit, wetting down their sails and breaking out their sweeps to give them added speed.
A Shot Across the Bow
As the inbound vessel neared, the Louisiana fired a shot across her bow. Captain Jarius Loomis, the senior of the two cutter commanders, signaled the Alabama to board her while he continued pursuit. The vessel hove to and her master, Captain John Giraudel, identified her as the U.S. merchant schooner Mary and Sally, out of New Orleans, bound for Havana. He reported that he had been stopped late on the previous day by the schooner Brave, which had flown the flag of revolutionary Mexico. While his own vessel had not been molested, he had been forced to take on passengers who had been robbed and removed from the Spanish schooner Filomena. He had left the corsair and her prize that morning. After gathering this intelligence, the master of the Alabama, Dagomier Taylor, encouraged his crew to pull hard on the sweeps to catch up with the Louisiana.
Like the cutters she would soon encounter, the Brave also was on her maiden voyage—but from rather than to New Orleans. Jean Lafitte had commissioned construction of the vessel to replace one of three corsairs he had lost to a hurricane the previous year. He had sent a trusted subordinate, Jean Desfarges, to assume command in New Orleans. Desfarges was to oversee her outfitting, raise a crew, and then sail her to the base at Galveston. Manned by 24 officers and men, she was rigged as a schooner—probably near in size to the cutters—and armed with one brass 6-pounder cannon, 20 muskets, and a number of cutlasses. Desfarges also had with him an undated commission, or letter of marque—in Spanish a Patente de Corso—authorizing him to capture Spanish shipping on behalf of the government of Mexico.
Fortune had indeed at first seemed to favor the Brave. Late on the afternoon of 29 August, Desfarges had intercepted the Filomena “about Ninety leagues North West of the bank commonly called the Dry Tortugas.”2 The Spanish schooner had been on the southerly leg of her track from Pensacola, Florida, to Havana. While the vessel’s cargo was not of exceptionally high value—flour and provisions that might have fetched $3,000—a cache of $3,000 in gold and silver coins had been secreted aboard the vessel. The Brave’s crew also stripped several hundred dollars’ worth of coins, jewelry, and fine clothing from the passengers.
Desfarges’ luck continued with the approach of the Mary and Sally. Jean Lafitte had prohibited his vessels from attacking U.S. ships or territory—but this actually was in practice a “code” and not a “guideline.” In one instance, Lafitte would hang the captain of one of his vessels who violated t dictum and then turn four members of the crew over to the United States for prosecution. Despite Lafitte’s proscription, Desfarges felt secure in stopping the Mary and Sally to “persuade” Captain Giraudel to accept most of the hapless passengers from the Filomena. Although they had been robbed of all valuable personal possessions, at least the transferred passengers could expect to reach their destination of Havana.
When first sighting the two newcomers downwind of him the next morning, Desfarges would have been justified in feeling confident he could outrun them—only another schooner capable of sailing close to the wind would be able to follow. As the morning wore on, however, the range to the vessels astern steadily shrank. By afternoon it was apparent he would be overtaken. Desfarges decided to change his tactics. Not knowing if his pursuers were pirates, privateers, or pirate-hunters, he ordered the Filomena to continue on, while he brought the Brave about to confront his pursuers. The odds did not look to be in his favor.
Chasing the Brave
A deposition filed in Havana by Lorenzu Bru, captain of the Filomena, states that Desfarges and a party of his men initially came over in a boat to board him. At least four of them likely remained as prize crew, leaving the Brave manned by only 20 officers and men as she approached the cutters. Each cutter probably had a crew of ten men and three officers and was likely armed with a pair of 3-pounders.3 In Desfarges’ favor, the cutters were strung out—the closest being at least several minutes behind the other—as a consequence of the Alabama having stopped to hail the Mary and Sally. With the advantages of downwind speed and upwind position, Desfarges had a chance of surprising and overwhelming his opponents in succession before they could catch him in a two-on-one match. His crew stood ready with their muskets, but he did not order his one cannon run out—an attempt to preserve the element of surprise, or had he failed to reload it after having fired to stop the Mary and Sally the previous day?
On board the approaching Louisiana, Captain Loomis had ensured his crew was armed and ready. Loomis was no stranger to combat at sea. As a former Navy sailing master, he had been acting commander of the sloop Eagle on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. Although he had run aground and been captured in a fight with three British vessels, his superior had lauded his courage and seamanship. In 1816, while in command of Gunboat Number 149 out of New Orleans, he had been assigned to escort several vessels to supply a U.S. fort up the Apalachicola River in Florida. Loomis found his passage blocked by a fort, mounting a ten-gun battery and garrisoned by British-supported Seminole forces. Not wanting to provoke hostilities in what was technically Spanish territory, Loomis waited for a U.S. Army force to catch up by land. After several of his men were killed in an ambush while searching for water ashore, Loomis brazenly sailed his vessel to within range of the fort and took it under fire. After only a few shots to gauge the range, he ordered a shift to “heated shot.” Miraculously, his first heated projectile struck the fort’s magazine, and the ensuing explosion destroyed the fort, killing 270 of its 300 occupants.
As the Louisiana now closed with the corsair, First Lieutenant Daniel Hazard hailed the Brave from the cutter’s bow. When he instructed Desfarges to strike his flag and prepare to be boarded, the Brave’s crew let loose with a withering volley of musketry that wounded Lieutenant Hazard and three other cuttermen. Unfortunately for Desfarges, the shock of losing nearly a third of their number in one instant did not knock the cuttermen out of action. The Louisiana’s remaining crew quickly returned fire. The two vessels remained in position exchanging close-range musketry until the second cutter arrived. When the Alabama pulled up and fired a broadside into the Brave, the pirates broke and sought shelter belowdecks, leaving six dead or wounded behind. The cutters each quickly launched a boat to send a boarding party to secure the ship. Trapped below by the cuttermen, the pirates had little choice but surrender. Eighteen of them survived to be arraigned.
From Sea Fight to Court Fight
The cutters escorted the Filomena and Brave to New Orleans, mooring at Bayou Saint John. The pirates quickly were arraigned and held in prison for trial.4 Jean Lafitte took an active role in the legal defense of his men and his vessel. He submitted an affidavit to the court on their behalf, arguing that the Brave was operating with a legal commission from Mexico against Spanish shipping. He also submitted the set of instructions he had provided for the Brave before she sailed. Among other things, the articles specified the division of spoils from prizes and provided rules of conduct for the officers and crew—including treatment of prisoners. To Lafitte, this clearly showed his vessel and her complement had acted within the bounds of international law.
U.S. attorney John Dick took a different view. The Brave’s so-called letter of marque was undated and listed an owner other than Lafitte. Most damning was the fact that the vessel had been outfitted and crewed in the United States. This blatant violation of U.S. neutrality law stripped the Brave of any legal privateer status when she attacked the shipping of a nation with which the United States was not at war. A jury found the men guilty and the judge sentenced them all to hang.
An outraged Lafitte protested all the way up to President James Monroe, who discussed the issue with his cabinet in March 1820. Secretary of State Adams advised that the death penalty should not be imposed in cases of “simple piracy” but be reserved for when someone was murdered. However, 45 “Spanish American” pirates waited on death row in five U.S. cities—Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, Savannah, and Richmond. Monroe “concluded that the public justice and example required the execution of two at each place, and the rest might be reprieved and ultimately pardoned.”5
Desfarges was an easy choice for one of the New Orleans executions—he had admitted being part of a mutiny on the U.S. privateer Patriot some years earlier. On 25 May he and the other selection for the noose were transported from the New Orleans prison to be hanged on board a “United States Warship lying at the foot of Customs House Street.”6 Desfarges tried to escape by jumping into the sea as he was led aboard the vessel. He was retrieved and promptly dangled from the yardarm.
Twists of Fate
Strangely enough, the captains of the two Revenue cutters also soon met unfortunate fates. Within a year, Captain Dagomier Taylor of the Alabama caught a fever that would kill him. On board the Louisiana, Captain Jarius Loomis would be accused by the second lieutenant of holding back cash and “trinkets” seized from the Brave and using some of them to buy the silence of the other officers. The second lieutenant turned in a roll of doubloons to substantiate his charge, and the first lieutenant subsequently admitted to being given 23 doubloons as his share. Although the local civilian court declined to pursue the charge, Loomis faced a court-martial over the affair. On 30 January 1821, he chose to resign. He returned both his commission as a Navy sailing master and his Revenue Cutter Service commission to the collector of customs at New Orleans. The entire crew of the Louisiana was dismissed with the exception of one man and a boy.7
Still, the pirate crew fared worse. President Madison eventually pardoned only the Brave’s second lieutenant, John Trichart. The jury recommended leniency for him because he had expressed remorse and testimony showed he had acted to prevent violence against the passengers and crew of the Filomena. The rest of the crew was hanged.
This case was significant in that it was the first successful prosecution of piracy under U.S. administration of New Orleans. In the past, while some merchants might have recovered cargoes that they could identify in civil court, “criminal courts failed to convict anyone.”8 The capture of the Brave by the Revenue cutters and the hanging of her crew as pirates gave clear notice that the United States no longer would tolerate the practices of Spanish-American “privateers.” Although it would take another decade for Revenue cutters and Navy ships to bring the “Silver Age” of piracy to a close, the rate of attacks dropped off considerably after only a few years in the wake of the Brave.
From Pirates to Patriots?
One of the enduring legends about the Battle of New Orleans involves the role played by Jean Lafitte and his pirate crews in helping General Andrew Jackson defeat the British attackers. The story was romanticized, among other places, in the Hollywood film The Buccaneer (1938) and its 1958 remake. The fact that Lafitte had turned down an offer from the Brits to form a rogues’ alliance and instead opted to cast his lot with the American underdogs fueled the storyline on the big screen, and indeed underscores much of the mythology surrounding the events.
But as is often the case when history evolves into folklore, what’s real and what’s fanciful often become blurred. This much is true: Lafitte and co. rallied to the cause and helped repel the campaign against New Orleans in December 1814–January 1815. Lafitte first approached Louisiana Governor William Claiborne, who evidently considered such an offer coming from a brigand to be unworthy of a yes. General Jackson, however, was less picky, and Lafitte’s gunners would go on to play a key role in the fracas. And in the end, of course, came the famous pardon.
But here is what’s not known: Where was Lafitte himself during all this? Though he’s popularly depicted in the thick of the fray, there is no historical record of his presence on the front lines of the battle—all that derring-do accrued in the telling and retelling down through the years. (In his commendations, Jackson was quite specific about the wheres and whats of Lafitte’s officers and artillerymen, but only lauds the Lafitte brothers’ courage in general terms.)
1. David Head, Privateers of the Americas (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 94.
2. Libel by the United States of America of the Armed Schooner Brave, Louisiana District Court, New Orleans, case #1450, 12 December 1819. RG 21, National Archives, Fort Worth, TX.
3. Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford to Collector of Customs Beverly Chew, 20 October 1819, Letters to and from the Collector at New Orleans October 11, 1803–April 11, 1833, in Correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury with Collectors of Customs 1789–1833, RG 21, National Archives, 1956. Microcopy no. 178, roll 16, no. 84.
4. “Eighteen Seafaring Men Charged with Piracy,” Louisiana Gazette, 16 September 1819, http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm/compoundobject/ collection/LWP/id/2240/rec/16.
5. Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co, 1875), 21.
6. John Smith Kendall, “The Successors of Lafitte,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2 (April 1941), 365.
7. Crawford to Chew, 14 February 1821, Letters, Microcopy no. 178, roll 16, nos. 348, 349.
8. Head, Privateers, 117.