Jean Lafitte is remembered throughout American folklore as not only a pirate and privateer, but also a great hero, and he has since been memorialized in numerous books and movies. Born in Bordeaux, France, on August 15, 1782, this colorful personality was the son of a French father and Spanish mother, and along with his elder brother Pierre moved to the French colony of Saint Domingue in the 1790s. In 1804 the brothers left for New Orleans, already a part of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1807 the Embargo Act banned American ships from importing foreign merchandise, resulting in an influx of illegal goods to Louisiana ports through smuggling. Lafitte exploited the prevailing shortage of goods for New Orleans merchants to his personal profit, and he and his brother looked for other ports to bring smuggled goods for local traders’ use. The brothers soon established an illegal port in the island of Baratria in Barataria Bay.
Jean Lafitte (1776–1823) was a notorious privateer and smuggler in the Caribbean and a leader of the Baratarian pirates. Operating from the so-called Island of Barataria and other Louisiana coastal areas, the Baratarian pirates were actually privateers operating under letters of marque from France. Most importantly in American folklore and legend, however, Lafitte is remembered as a hero of the Battle of New Orleans. (Ridpath, John Clark, Ridpath’s History of the World, 1901)
Lafitte attacked Spanish commercial vessels, taking these ill-gotten goods to Barataria, which became his “pirate’s camp.” It was the ideal place for illegal trade, as the bay was situated in a passage between the islands of Grande Terre and Grande Isle, at a safe distance from an American naval base. The port of Barataria rose to prominence as Lafitte supervised the arrival of smuggled goods, transferring them to various different locations, and many sailors came to the island, taking jobs in warehouses, on docks, and in his crew of privateers. His brother Pierre managed the business interests in New Orleans. The brothers purchased property near the corner of Royal Street and Dumaine, which served as a warehouse for smuggled goods and slaves. The local officials were often bribed, and many people of Louisiana were able to buy valuable goods at very low prices, including spices, clothes, linens, trinkets, furniture, and utensils. In rare cases of prosecution, the pirates were defended by notable attorneys such as Edward Livingston. President James Madison, who assumed office on March 4, 1809, did not have any desire to curb piracy, knowing that it slackened Spain’s domination over Florida. Around 1811 and 1812, Lafitte was the undisputed leading privateer, smuggling through his network at Barataria Bay. An association was soon formed with other privateers, such as Dominique You (actually Lafitte’s half-brother, Alexandre), Renato Beluche, Chigazola, and Vincent Gambie. The ships from Spain were their main targets.
On June 18, 1812, the American Congress approved war with Great Britain, and Lafitte’s involvement in subsequent events catapulted him to fame as both a hero and patriot. On November 24, 1813, Governor William C. C. Claiborne announced a reward of $500 for Lafitte’s capture, and the pirate proclaimed daringly that he would offer $5,000 to anyone who would bring the governor to him. Lafitte had declined the British offer of fighting on their side, and instead assisted the forces of Major General Andrew Jackson during the battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. He played an important role in Jackson’s victory against the British, providing fifty men, operating three cannons, and supplying information about the region. After the war, Lafitte appealed to President Madison for the return of his confiscated property in Barataria, but returned to New Orleans in March 1816 empty-handed. He relocated to Galveston, Texas, outside the jurisdiction of the United States but near the markets of Louisiana. It was then that he worked for a short period as a spy for the Spanish.
On May 7, 1820, Lafitte had to leave Galveston due to the presence of the USS Enterprise, which had arrived there a few months before. Lafitte and his brother relocated to Old Providence, and his life as a pirate went on in the waters of Honduras. During a battle with the armed ships of Spanish privateers, he was injured severely, and Lafitte ultimately died on February 5, 1823. He was buried in the Gulf of Honduras.
Fact and fiction blend together in Lafitte’s legacy. He has been romanticized as well as vilified, and scores of monographs and books have been published about him, researchers diligently working to bring out his life story. Soon after his death, a romantic novel written by Joseph H. Ingraham entitled Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf was published, soon followed by The Memoirs of Lafitte or The Barritarian Pirate, and later A Narrative Founded on Fact, authored by William G. Spears. The region known as the “Neutral Strip,” which was located in the southwest corner of Louisiana and was where buccaneers and pirates like Lafitte resided, became a place of legends and folklore. Some legends also tie Lafitte to Napoleon, saying that he went to France after the Battle of Waterloo in an attempt to bring the emperor to Louisiana (of course, there is not a shred of evidence that Lafitte rescued Napoleon). It is also rumored that Lafitte buried chests of gold and silver treasure in the islands of Galveston, Texas. Whether gold was there or not has long been a matter of speculation, and southwest Louisiana remains full of Lafitte legends. Lord Byron even wrote in his poem The Corsair: “He left a corsair’s name to other times, / Linked one virtue to a thousand crimes.” In the middle of the 1920s, a private party drained the Indian Bayou in Springfield, Louisiana, looking for buried treasure, but gave up halfway through their efforts.
Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Buccaneer (1938) depicts Lafitte’s role in the War of 1812, and another movie called The Last of the Buccaneers, directed by Lew Landers for Columbia Pictures, came out in 1950. There was a remake of The Buccaneer in 1958, directed by Anthony Quinn, with Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte. Since 1957, the town of Lake Charles, Louisiana, has held an annual a festival called “Contraband Days,” which is dedicated to Lafitte. A national park and fishing village subsequently have been named after him. Furthermore, a Lafitte Society (1975–1994) was established in Galveston, Texas, with the aim of studying the life of privateers like the Lafitte brothers and their contemporaries. Variously labeled “The Corsair,” “The Buccaneer,” “The King of Barataria,” “The Terror of the Gulf,” and “The Hero of New Orleans,” Jean Lafitte, pirate of the Gulf of Mexico and hero of the Battle of New Orleans, has become a legendary enigma to contemporary Americans.
Patit Paban Mishra
See also Bellamy, Samuel “Black Sam”; Hornigold, Benjamin; Kidd, Captain William; Rackham, John “Calico Jack”; Thatch, Edward “Blackbeard”; Vane, Charles
Further Reading
Arthur, Stanley C., et al. 1952. Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover. New Orleans: Harmanson.
Charnley, Mitchell V. 1934. Jean Lafitte, Gentleman Smuggler. New York: Viking Press.
Davis, William C. 2005. The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf. New York: Harcourt.
Groom, Winston. 2006. Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.