Captain La Buse: The Golden Age of Piracy

By Jacques Gasser and Baylus Brooks

Olivier LeVasseur de la Buse was a French pirate in the Golden Age of Piracy. This book includes a description of his life and career, from the time he left Port Saint-Louis in southern Haiti until being dropped from the gallows on the shores of La Reunion Island in the East Indies. Jacques Gasser's rich archival research enhances the story. Gasser made his name researching pirates of the Caribbean and working on the recent La Reunion documentary about LeVasseur's life. Much new information will be discovered in these pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781794781757

Book preview

Editor’s Preface

Maritime enthusiasts across the world lost a valuable and enthusiastic friend in 2020 with the much too early death of Jacques Gasser. He wasn’t trained as a historian, but he was a mariner and a diesel mechanic for boat motors in Mulhouse and quite good at archival research. From a mutual love of the sea, he has been passionate about the pirates and privateers of the Caribbean for thirty-five years, according to Anne Ducellier's La vraie vie des pirates des Caraïbes [4 Nov 2017], in L'Alsace’s Raedersdorf edition.

Jacques dearly loved researching maritime history – particularly the life of his own countryman, French pirate Olivier Levasseur, also known as La Buse. Moreover, he was tenacious and quite competent in obtaining access to multi-national records. Gasser and I held continual correspondence for years. I was quite impressed by his zeal to locate every primary record available in whatever language they might be found. Jacques, a dear friend who always signed his terrifically informative emails with Your Brother of the Coast, will be achingly missed.

Jacques Gasser, of Raedersdorf in the Sundgau, Alsace, France, published the first dictionary listing the hundred greatest pirate captains of the 17th century, titled Dictionnaire des flibustiers des Caraïbes (2017). I first met Jacques when he asked me to translate his masterpiece into English for a western audience.

With William Cally, in 2017, the prolific Gasser had also just helped to bring a fabulous documentary/book combination of La Buse’s experiences to life. From Kapali Studios on the island of La Réunion near Madagascar, they produced La Buse, L’or Maudit des Pirates de L’océan Indien, or La Buse, The Cursed Gold of the Indian Ocean Pirates.

Because Jacques could never remain still and owing to his study of Portuguese records concerning Levasseur or La Buse on the Brazilian Coast, he collaborated with archaeologist Geraldo J. S. Hostin in The History and Archaeology of a Mysterious Shipwreck in the South of Brazil, a preliminary report of 26 February 2020. In fact, it was Hostin who originally informed me of Jacques’ death not long afterward. Hostin is just now (2021) finalizing his work on the Cotinga Island shipwreck, detailing Olivier Levasseur’s voyage there in and subsequent loss of the former La Louise, taken in the North Atlantic only a few months earlier.

Jacques Gasser was never able to publish his book on La Buse. After conferring with his family and obtaining their permission, I offer his fresh and valuable primary-source-packed narrative here for other researchers. Although Jacques depended on the suspect Capt. Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724) – an idea which I continually discouraged – much to my bemusement. He used this book for much of the detail of certain events surrounding La Buse; still, he explored many other sources, as well. Of course, Jacques’ goal with 18th-century pirate history was a laser focus upon his own countryman La Buse. Other information acted as satelites orbiting the French filibuster! He actually used a French version of A General History for which I have replaced those passages in this text with the original English versions. Voraciously, Jacques uniquely relied upon older primary source documents such as depositions, French, English, and Portuguese, and the often less historically-reliable newspapers from many nations. All of these sources have their biases and problems, but they are, by far, better than Johnson’s historical fiction – more a novel than a history. Modern ease of access to millions of digitized primary-source records across the globe in today’s internet-dominated world has reduced this less-reliable polemical book to a rather flamboyant curiosity.

I have also attempted to fill in the gaps as far as citations, for which my friend – as I said – had not been trained to do properly. My correspondence with him over the years helped me in this effort. I have also supplied the narrative with maps and pictures where relevant – essentially finishing the production effort that Jacques had requested of me earlier. So, I was also ready with many of these tools before he died. From time to time, I offer possible alternatives in the footnotes. For the most part, we collaborated on most of the historical detail and were in basic agreement. By chance, I published my own Sailing East: West-Indian Pirates on Madagascar which included Oliver LeVasseur also in 2017, he found me, and our mutual fascination with this pirate began!

Our time in this friendship was far too short and ended quite abruptly and shockingly, since he was only a few years older than myself! I would like to acknowledge with tenderness Jacques’ family in Raedersdorf, who are the most proud of their parent, sibling, and our dear Brother of the Coast!

Postillon

The pirate Olivier Levasseur known as La Buse is a very popular figure on Reunion Island. We searched a lot for his hypothetical treasure, but his fabulous career remained buried in the archives. In exhuming the historical figure, the entire golden age of piracy between 1715 and 1725 rose to the surface. Throughout this decade, Captain La Buse had been quite active. He was the only French pirate to stand out during this period in which he met the main protagonists: Benjamin Hornigold, Samuel Bellamy, Edward Thache called Blackbeard, Howell Davis, Jeremiah Cocklin, Edward England and many others. He was finally hanged in Reunion on 7 July 1730, atoning for a very long record of piracy in the West Indies, North America, Brazil, the Gulf of Guinea, and finally in the Indian Ocean.

Like many of his English counterparts, Olivier Levasseur began his career in the murky waters of the filibuster, [for the French, a term meaning a person engaging in unauthorized warfare against a foreign country.] According to the testimony of one of his victims, he formerly commanded privateers in Martinique during the long conflict of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713 ) which pitted France and its ally Spain against a grand European coalition led by England and Holland. He still prefered to hide his true identity by calling himself Captain Chabot. It is under this alias that he continued to be identified by the official authorities of Martinique and Santo Domingo when he began to make people speak about him as a pirate. A general peace was finally published in Martinique on Thursday, August 24, 1713 of which the filibusters were very angry, says Governor General Phélypeaux du Verger, "because they are people who know only how to play and eat in cabarets all they have earned from the moment they have received it."¹

Unfortunately, we found no trace of his activities as a filibuster captain in Martinique. On the other hand, we have a portrait of these filibusters who became pirates under the leadership of an infantry captain in the Isles promoted as a ship's ensign, Sieur François de Bailleul, who knew them intimately. This very forgiving sketch corresponds very well to Captain La Buse or his colleague from Saint Domingue, Captain Jean Martel, the best known examples.

Memoir about the pirates given by Sieur de Bailleul in 1717:

It should come as no surprise that there are so many pirates that cause trade and cause so much disorder.

There were a large number of filibusters in the war time who raced to the Isles of America, who partly supported them against enemies; in two different times, they were against them for the service of the King by will and command. The first with Messrs. [Henri-Louis de Chavagnac (1664 – 9 July 1743)] and [Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville (16 July 1661 – 9 July 1706)], the second with Mr. [Jacques Cassard (30 September 1679 in Nantes – 1740 in Ham)] and had helped to take and make the enemy isles contribute; for what, they would have returned lots or shares in the catch. And as the [shares] have, they said, was unsatisfying and made to spend by expense and delay what they were entitled to having eaten before they received it. Peace having come, having no [source of] living, many returned to France; others, in the idea that our isles had an obligation to them, swore to make them feel their displeasure [and they became pirates]. So they did it having put themselves pirates and began to take our boats that were trafficking from one island to another and our ships from France that were arriving or leaving. They even intended to take our ship La Valeur in 1716; with which they seized several boats which they stopped with her strength. In the mo[nth]s of last August 1717, they captured two ships, one after the other from the Mississippi; from one they took fifty thousand livres of known silver without that of many who had it in said ship.

They are increasing and strengthening every day by the misery of several reformed officers and others who thought they could find a way to live in the Isles. But as money was no longer so common and the inhabitants [no better than] Negroes, they could only become [desperate]. Which made them take the side of following the pirates. That is what makes me say that if we do not order it, they will completely interrupt the trade.

Sieur de Bailleul also reveals in his brief that pirates are very well received in smaller remote islands of the West Indies such as the Grenadines, St. Vincent, St. Lucia or St. Croix. They found among the free and emancipated populations of these islands, some white inhabitants, Caribbean Indians, or fugitive blacks living in autarky (economic independence or self-sufficiency), natural allies. In this environment, it is hardly surprising to see Captain La Buse flourish.

We may not know that we are helping them instead of destroying them. The boats that traffic from one island to another, also go to the islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent, St. Croix, Carriacou [Curaçao] and the Grenadines, to which the islands they fetch lumber and burn, to fish for turtles and other fish and to look for wild Caribbean goats or cabris, brown pigs, parrots and poultry. And as there are some French and other inhabitants in these so-called islands, our boats and others will carry them more than it takes to do their traffic and this because the pirates going there and being very well received take the refreshments they need that they pay handsomely, careen their vessels and have what they need. It cannot be prevented to provide to these inhabitants [what they demand], because they would be plundered if they refused them something. Moreover, they are supported by the fugitive savages and Negroes of the other islands who are gathered in this one that communicates with Paria in the Gulf of Trinidad.

This knowledge makes me say that it will be very difficult to destroy them and that they will do great harm before they come to grips with them. It should be noted that most of these pirates are only made up of the misery that forced them to do so; that if they were made easier to live, they would not do these things. Those who would get away with it would not go back. What makes me say this is that I know almost all of them, having commanded them in the time of war on different occasions for the defence of the Isles where I found them punctual and fond of executing the orders I gave them. I also had them provide the food they needed in various times. What attracted their trust to me was that I spared being in the service of the King; if we do it the way that follows, it will be better to turn them by gentleness than by force and by this means cut short the disorders of trade by following this example.²

In conclusion, Sieur Bailleul offers to them an amnesty on the condition that they agree to move to the new colony of Louisiana.

As for the inhabitants of these remote islands, the governor-general of the Windward Islands François de Pas de Feuquières and the intendant Charles Benard brought a more radical remedy in 1721. Having been informed by trustworthy people that most French inhabitants used without permission in the islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines and mainly Dominica, not content to warn the pirates of the steps we can take to public safety and to destroy or drive out pirates, have made ovens to provide them with fresh bread, give them refreshments, withdraw their stolen goods or plunder and serve them by this means of receivers and uncorking [unloading and fencing their booty], they ordered these inhabitants by an ordinance of 18 November 1721 to leave no later than three months from the day on pain of death and to suffer the punishment of the pirates. This ordinance also provides that from now on the boats of Martinique and the other islands will not be able to go there to cut wood for construction or to burn, planks, staves, canoes, masts or turtle fishing, or to careen only with the permission of the Governor General and by providing sureties for the behavior of their crews before their departure.

Western part of the island of Hispaniola known in 1715 as the French possession of Saint Domingue (present Haiti)

J.N. Bellin - Plan de la Baye Saint Louis.../Carte des Bayes du Mesle des Flamands et../Plan de l´Isle a Vache – 1764

Two years after the peace, La Buse finally took the plunge. He and ten other mutineers deserted Fort Saint Louis [Fort des Oliviers or Saint-Louis-du-Sud] on the south coast of Santo Domingo aboard a large vessel on June 3, 1715. This vessel named Le Postillon is an excellent sailor that was ideally suited to its black designs. In a letter dated 14 June 1715, Mr. Barthomier, the king's lieutenant at Fort Saint Louis, recounts La Buse’s escape in great detail:

I have the honour to inform Your Lordship that Mr. Devaux, director for the affairs of the Royal Company of Santo Domingo in St. Louis, having purchased on behalf of the company about five months ago a large boat named Le Postillon, the said boat was kidnapped by the crew of eleven men who went pirates. This happened on the 3rd of June at three o'clock in the afternoon when the said boat having left the port of Saint Louis at about one o'clock in the afternoon where it had been loaded with three complete sugar crews consisting of a copper boiler and loot and some other effects.

Hardly then, Monseigneur, the said boat was out of sight of the fort that these eleven men revolted against their captain named La Lande de Rochefort having all taken the weapons they had hidden in the hold and deliberated strongly a long time if they would kill him and the pilot who refused to be with them. But they made up their minds to lock them both up with another male passenger in a room, and when they found themselves strong off Isle à Vache about eight leagues from here, they boarded them the next morning in a small canoe [periagua] that belonged to a poor man who was in the back of the boat; which man took advantage of this opportunity to return to the Isle à Vache from where he had come two days ago. These pirates also sent back along with the others this captain and this pilot, [and] instead of coming straight to the fort to warn, [they] went to the safety of Isle à Vache saying that the sea was too rough to go to the fort's side. So that I was not informed until June 5 at 9 a.m. [such] that these pirates must be far away and that Monsieur de La Rigaudière who arrived at this port on May 30 with two frigates of the Company and I did not feel that it was worth time to go after [them], both for the time that this vessel had in advance [a head start] and because it is one of the best sailing boats in the sea and furthermore we had not yet begun to unload the cargoes of these two [company] ships. Nevertheless, I sent people by land on the coves and at Cape Tiburon to see if this vessel [Le Postillon] would not go on these sides but we did not see or hear it and following all appearances it had taken off and set sail for the coast of Spain (Mainland America) and get to Bocator which is a place where pirates retreat. This pirate ship [Le Postillon] has four mounted guns and has about ten to twelve pounds of gunpowder.

I have given notice of the removal of this vessel to Mr. [Archibald] Hamilton Governor of Jamaica and to the Governor of Curacao on occasions I found in those days.³

The vessel Le Postillon and its ten pirates commanded by Captain Chabot (likely an alias used by Olivier Le Vasseur because he pirated island nations in which he had once worked) had indeed set sail without further ado; for he had only one goal, that of strengthening his crew with some old acquaintances of Martinique. Postillon proved to be an excellent sailor that allowed them to reach Martinique around July 20th. The pirates captured no prizes during this trip so as not to arouse suspicion and he probably went down