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Buccaneer
Buccaneers were a kind of privateer or free sailors, and pirates particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from the Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, during a time when governments in the Caribbean area were not strong enough to suppress them. Martinique was a home port for French buccaneers as well as pirates like Captain Crapeau. Originally the name applied to the landless hunters of wild boars and cattle in the largely uninhabited areas of Tortuga and Hispaniola. The meat they caught was smoked over a slow fire in little huts the French called ''boucans'' to make ''viande boucanée'' – ''jerked meat'' or '' jerky'' – which they sold to the corsairs who preyed on the (largely Spanish) shipping and settlements of the Caribbean. Eventually the term was applied to the corsairs and (later) privateers themselves, also known as the Brethren of the Coast. Although c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexandre Exquemelin
Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also spelled ''Esquemeling'', ''Exquemeling'', or ''Oexmelin'') (c. 1645–1707) was a French, Dutch, or Flemish writer best known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of 17th-century piracy, first published in Dutch as ''De Americaensche Zee-Roovers'', in Amsterdam, by Jan ten Hoorn, in 1678. Life Born about 1645, it is likely that Exquemelin was a native of Honfleur, France, who on his return from buccaneering settled in Holland, possibly because he was a Huguenot. In 1666 he was engaged by the French West India Company and went to Tortuga, where he worked as an indentured servant for three years. There he enlisted with the buccaneers, in particular with the band of Henry Morgan, whose confidante he was, probably as a barber-surgeon, and remained with them until 1674. Shortly afterwards he returned to Europe and settled in Amsterdam where he qualified professionally as a surgeon, his name appearing on the 1679 register of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Le Grand (pirate)
Pierre le Grand () was a French buccaneer supposedly active during the 17th century. He is known to history from only one source, Alexandre Exquemelin's '' Buccaneers of America'', and thus his historical existence has been questioned. The accounts that Exquemelin gives of Le Grand and another buccaneer named Pierre Francois are also remarkably similar. It is possible that Exquemelin, who was not an eye-witness to these events, was confused. Pierre le Grand (Pierre the Great) could have been a nickname for Pierre Francois. However, there does seem to be at least one reference to Le Grand in historical records other than Exquemelin. C. H. Haring's well-researched 'The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century' (1910), note 1 on page 135, refers to a Spanish report that credited Pierre Legrand with leading a raid against Spanish settlements in Cuba and Havana in 1665. English records, however, credit Edward Mansfield with leading these attacks. Origins Pierre was bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirates
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tortuga (Haiti)
Tortuga Island (, ; ; , , 'Turtle Island') is a West Indian island that forms part of Haiti, off the northwest coast of Hispaniola. It constitutes the ''commune'' of Île de la Tortue in the Port-de-Paix arrondissement of the Nord-Ouest department of Haiti. Tortuga is in size and had a population of 25,936 at the 2003 census. In the 17th century, Tortuga was a major center and haven of Caribbean piracy. Its tourism industry and references in many works have made it one of the most recognized regions of Haiti. History The first Europeans to land on Tortuga were the Spanish in 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus into the New World. On December 6, 1492, three Spanish ships entered the Windward Passage that separates Cuba and Haiti. At sunrise, Columbus noticed an island whose contours emerged from the morning mist. Because the shape reminded him of a turtle's shell, he chose the name of Tortuga. Tortuga was originally settled by a few Spanish colonists un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privateer
A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or delegated authority issued commissions, also referred to as letters of marque, during wartime. The commission empowered the holder to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war. This included attacking foreign vessels and taking them as prizes and taking crews prisoner for exchange. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, with the proceeds divided by percentage between the privateer's sponsors, shipowners, captains and crew. A percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission (i.e. the sovereign). Most colonial powers, as well as other countries, engaged in privateering. Privateering allowed sovereigns to multiply their naval forces at relatively low cost by mobilizi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buccan
Buccan or Boucan is the native South American and Caribbean nameDiccionario de Etimología/ref> for a wooden framework or hurdle on which meat was slow-roasted or Smoking (cooking), smoked over a fire. Spaniards called the same process "barbacoa", later "barbecue".Oxford English Dictionary The term "buccaneer" for pirates or privateers, is said to be derived from buccan. In the Caribbean, seafarers used the wooden frames for smoking meat, preferably pork. From this derived the French word ''boucane'' and hence the name ''boucanier'' for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). English colonists anglicised Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ... the word ''boucanier'' to ''buccane ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brethren Of The Coast
The Brethren or Brethren of the Coast were a loose coalition of pirates and buccaneers that were active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. They mostly operated in two locations, the island of Tortuga off the coast of Haiti and in the city of Port Royal on the island of Jamaica. The Brethren were a syndicate of captains with letters of marque and reprisal who regulated their privateering enterprises within the community of privateers and with their outside benefactors. They were primarily private individual merchant mariners of Protestant background, usually of English and French origin. History They were originally refugees who settled in Hispaniola, mostly French Huguenots and British Protestants. They would supply wares to visiting ships in exchange for guns and ammunition, an activity which led to the Spanish driving them out. These former refugees lived in something akin to a republic. Despite their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Main
During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish Main was the collective term used by English speakers for the parts of the Spanish Empire that were on the mainland of the Americas and had coastlines on the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. The term was used to distinguish those regions from the numerous islands Spain controlled in the Caribbean, which were known as the Spanish West Indies. Etymology The word "main" in the expression is a contraction of mainland.Online Etymology Dictionary: main (n.) Retrieved 20 August 2014 Composition The Spanish Main included and |
Hispaniola
Hispaniola (, also ) is an island between Geography of Cuba, Cuba and Geography of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by List of Caribbean islands by area, land area, after Geography of Cuba, Cuba. The island is Dominican Republic–Haiti border, divided into two separate Sovereign state, sovereign countries: the Spanish-speaking Geography of the Dominican Republic, Dominican Republic () to the east and the French language, French and Haitian Creole–speaking Geography of Haiti, Haiti () to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin (island), Saint Martin, which is shared between France () and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands (). At the time of the European arrival of Christopher Columbus, Hispaniola was home to the Ciguayo language, Ciguayo, Macorix language, Macorix, and Taíno Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, native pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands and the first independent Dutch people, Dutch nation state. The republic was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands Dutch Revolt, revolted against Spanish Empire, Spanish rule, forming a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht) and declaring their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration). The seven provinces it comprised were Lordship of Groningen, Groningen (present-day Groningen (province), Groningen), Lordship of Frisia, Frisia (present-day Friesland), Lordship of Overijssel, Overijssel (present-day Overijssel), Duchy of Guelders, Guelders (present-day Gelderland), lordship of Utrecht, Utrecht (present-day Utrecht (province), Utrecht), county of Holland, Holland (present-day North Holla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feral
A feral (; ) animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some cases, contributed to extinction of indigenous species. The removal of feral species is a major focus of island restoration. Animals A feral animal is one that has escaped from a domestic or captive status and is living more or less as a wild animal, or one that is descended from such animals. Other definitions include animals that have changed from being domesticated to being wild, natural, or untamed. Some common examples of animals with feral populations are horses, dogs, goats, cats, rabbits, camels, and pigs. Zoologists generally exclude from the feral category animals that were genuinely wild before they escaped from captivity: neither lions escaped from a zoo nor the white-tailed eagles re-introduced to the UK are regarded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galleon
Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships developed in Spain and Portugal. They were first used as armed cargo carriers by Europe, Europeans from the 16th to 18th centuries during the Age of Sail, and they were the principal vessels drafted for use as Warship, warships until the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-17th century. Galleons generally carried three or more masts with a lateen fore-and-aft rig on the rear masts, were Carvel (boat building), carvel built with a prominent squared off raised stern, and used square-rigged sail plans on their fore-mast and Mast (sailing), main-masts. Such ships played a major role in commerce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were often drafted into use as auxiliary naval war vessels—indeed, they were the mainstay of contending fleets through most of the 150 years of the Age of Exploration—before the Anglo-Dutch wars made purpose-built warships dominant at sea during the remainder of the Age of Sail. Terminology The word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
