Buccaneers and pirates of our coasts

by Frank R. Stockton

There were men among Low's followers who looked upon him as a bold and brave leader, for he was always a blusterer and a braggart, and there were honest seamen and merchants who were very much afraid of him, but time proved that there was no reason for any one to suppose that Edward Low had a spark of courage in his composition. He was brave enough when he was attacking an unarmed crew, but when he had to deal with any vessel capable of inflicting any injury upon him he was a coward indeed.

Sailing in company with one companion vessel,—for he had discarded the greater part of his pirate fleet,—Low sighted a good-sized ship at a considerable distance, and he and his consort immediately gave chase, supposing the distant vessel might prove to be a good prize. It so happened, however, that the ship discovered by Low was an English man-of-war, the Greyhound, which was cruising along the coast looking for these very pirates, who had recently committed some outrageous crimes upon the crews of merchant vessels in those waters.

When the two ships, with the black flags floating above them and their decks crowded with desperate fellows armed with pistols and cutlasses, drew near to the vessel, of which they expected to make a prize, they were greatly amazed when she suddenly turned in her course and delivered a broadside from her heavy cannon. The pirates returned the fire, for they were well armed with cannon, and there was nothing else for them to do but fight, but the combat was an extremely short one. Low's consort was soon disabled by the fire from the man-of-war, and, as soon as he perceived this, the dastardly Low, without any regard for his companions in arms, and with no thought for anything but his own safety, immediately stopped fighting, and setting all sail, sped away from the scene of combat as swiftly as it was possible for the wind to force his vessel through the water.

The disabled pirate ship was quickly captured, and not long afterwards twenty-five of her crew were tried, convicted, and hung near Newport, Rhode Island. But the arrant Low escaped without injury, and continued his career of contemptible crime for some time longer. What finally became of him is not set down in the histories of piracy. It is not improbable that if the men under his command were not too brutally stupid to comprehend his cowardly unfaithfulness to them, they suddenly removed from this world one of the least interesting of all base beings.

Chapter XXX

The Pirate of the Gulf

At the beginning of this century there was a very able and, indeed, talented man living on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, who has been set down in the historical records of the times as a very important pirate, and who is described in story and in tradition as a gallant and romantic freebooter of the sea. This man was Jean Lafitte, widely known as "The Pirate of the Gulf," and yet who was, in fact, so little of a pirate, that it may be doubted whether or not he deserves a place in these stories of American pirates.

Lafitte was a French blacksmith, and, while still a young man, he came with his two brothers to New Orleans, and set up a shop in Bourbon Street, where he did a good business in horseshoeing and in other branches of his trade. But he had a soul which soared high above his anvil and his bellows, and perceiving an opportunity to take up a very profitable occupation, he gave up blacksmithing, and with his two brothers as partners became a superintendent of privateering and a general manager of semi-legalized piracy. The business opportunity which came to the watchful and clear-sighted Lafitte may be briefly described.

In the early years of this century the Gulf of Mexico was the scene of operations of small vessels calling themselves privateers, but in fact pirates. War had broken out between England and Spain, on the one side, and France on the other, and consequently the first-named nations were very glad to commission privateers to prey upon the commerce of France. There were also privateers who had been sent out by some of the Central American republics who had thrown off the Spanish yoke, and these, considering Spanish vessels as their proper booty, were very much inclined to look upon English vessels in the same light, as the English and Spanish were allies. And when a few French privateers came also upon the scene, they helped to make the business of legitimate capture of merchantmen, during the time of war, a very complicated affair.