Jacquotte Delahaye (fl. 1656) was a purported pirate of legend in the Caribbean Sea. She has been depicted as operating alongside Anne Dieu-le-Veut as one of very few 17th-century female pirates. There is no evidence from period sources that Delahaye was a real person. Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s.
Delahaye reportedly came from Saint-Domingue in modern Haiti, and was the daughter of a French father and a Haitian mother, who spoke French. [1] Her mother is said to have died while giving birth to her brother, who suffered a mild mental disability, and was left in her care after her father's death. According to legend and tradition, she became a pirate after the murder of her father.
Jacquotte was a war hero, and to escape her pursuers she faked her own death and took on a nom de guerre in the form of a male alias, living as a man for many years. Upon her return, she became known as "Back From the Dead Red" because of her striking red hair. [2]
She led a gang of hundreds of pirates, and with their help took over Tortuga, a small Caribbean island off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, in the year of 1656, which was called a "freebooter republic". [3] Several years later, she died in a shoot-out while defending it. [3]
Primary sources which mention her, her work and happenings, or her life are unknown, nor are there any first-hand accounts. Laura Sook Duncombe wrote: "If Anne de Graaf has only a small chance of having really lived, Jacquotte Delahaye has an even smaller one." [4] The Spanish author Germán Vázquez Chamorro wrote in Mujeres Piratas ('Pirate Women') [5] that she did not exist, but was a literary creation "...added into the lore of the buccaneer period to make the ruthless men more palatable to the modern reader." [4] [upper-alpha 1] Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s. [8] [9] [upper-alpha 2]
As Benerson Little summarizes: [8]
Jacquotte Delahaye, for example, is said to have been a biracial female filibuster. [upper-alpha 3] An entire, if brief, biography has been written of her and repeated without question in books and online. She commanded a ship with a crew of a hundred men; she rejected a marriage proposal from filibuster Michel d'Artigue, known as 'le Basque'; and she led the attack on Fort de la Roche on Tortuga and recaptured it from the Spanish. But there is no evidence that she existed.
Buccaneers were a kind of privateer or free sailors 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.
Sir Henry Morgan was a Welsh privateer, plantation owner, and, later, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he and those under his command raided settlements and shipping ports on the Spanish Main, becoming wealthy as they did so. With the prize money and loot from the raids, Morgan purchased three large sugar plantations on Jamaica.
Libertatia was a purported pirate colony founded in the late 17th century in Madagascar under the leadership of Captain James Misson. The main source for Libertatia is Volume 2 of A General History of the Pyrates, a 1724 book which describes Captain Misson and Libertatia. Little to no corroborating evidence for Libertatia beyond this account has been found, however. Whether Libertatia was real but somehow "lost" to history, a pirate legend that the author recorded based on interviews with sailors, or a concocted work of utopian fiction by the author from the start is contested.
Tortuga Island is a Caribbean 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.
Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin 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.
Jean-David Nau, better known as François l'Olonnais, was a French pirate active in the Caribbean during the 1660s.
The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation for the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritime piracy was a significant factor in the histories of the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Michel de Grammont was a French privateer. He was born in Paris, France and was lost at sea in the north-east Caribbean, April 1686. His privateer career lasted from around 1670 to 1686 during which he commanded the flagship Hardi. He primarily attacked Spanish holdings in Maracaibo, Gibraltar, Trujillo, La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Cumana and Veracruz.
Although the majority of pirates in history have been men, there are around a hundred known examples of female pirates, about forty of whom were active in the Golden Age of Piracy. Some women have been pirate captains and some have commanded entire pirate fleets. Among the most powerful pirate women were figures such as Zheng Yi Sao (1775–1844) and Huang Bamei (1906–1982), both of whom led tens of thousands of pirates.
Anne "Dieu-Le-Veut" de Graaf also called Marie-Anne or Marianne was a French pirate. Alongside Jacquotte Delahaye, she was one of very few female buccaneers. While Delahaye was likely fictional, Dieu-le-Veut was real; however, many of her exploits are inventions of later writers.
Charlotte de Berry was allegedly a female pirate captain.
Moïse Vauquelin or Moses Vanclein was a 17th-century French buccaneer. During his four-year career as a pirate, he served as an officer under l'Ollonais and formed a brief partnership with Pierre Le Picard. He and Philippe Bequel later co-wrote a book detailing their explorations of the Honduran and Yucatán coastline.
Lai Choi San (meaning Mountain of Wealth) was a Chinese pirate active in the 1920s and 1930s. Her historicity, or at the very least the historicity of most of what is known of her, is disputed since the main source on her life is the 1931 report I Sailed with Pirates by Aleko Lilius, a journalist of dubious repute.
Jan Erasmus Reyning (1640–1697) was a Dutch pirate, privateer and naval officer.
John Philip Bear, last name also spelled Beare, was a 17th-century English pirate active in the Caribbean who also served with the Spanish and French.
Jean Fantin was a French pirate active in the Caribbean and off the coast of Africa. He is best known for having his ship stolen by William Kidd and Robert Culliford.
Jean Charpin was a French pirate and buccaneer active in the Caribbean and off the coast of Africa. He is best known for sailing alongside Jean-Baptiste du Casse as well as for his Articles, or “Pirate Code.”
Étienne de Montauban was a French flibustier (buccaneer), privateer, and pirate active in the Caribbean and off the west African coast. Frequently referred to as Sieur de Montauban, he wrote an account of his later voyages including surviving a shipwreck.
Jacob Hall was an English buccaneer and pirate best known for joining a large Dutch and French attack on Spanish Veracruz.
Juan Corso was a Corsican pirate and guarda costa privateer who sailed in Spanish service, operating out of Cuba.