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A Jewish pirate, and a very rotten one at that.
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ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE
BRILLIANT READERS WHO
CORRECTLY IDENTIFIED TELL
ME WHY'S LATEST MYSTERY
PERSON, MANDY PATINKIN.
THOSE WITH THE ANSWER
WERE LEO BARRIS, CHARLES
BERMAN, LILLIAN COLEMAN,
PAULA FINKELSTEIN, RONA
FREEDLAND, SHEILA FREED-
MAN, JOSEPH HIRSCHFIELD,
MIRIAM IMERMAN, JAN JA-
COBS, HANNAH KLEIN, BESS
LIPSON, MARIAN MORRIS, AR-
LENE NISKAR, EDIE RUBIN,
ARNOLD AND INA SKY, AND
DAVID WEXLER.
Q: I was watching a documentary
on pirates, and one segment con-
cerned the 17th-18th century pirate
stronghold of Port Royal in Ja-
maica. Before an earthquake, this
was a bustling town of 7,000, the
report said. Motley people, to be
sure, but, reportedly, the town also
had several churches and one syn-
agogue.
There were many merchants in
Port Royal who might have built the
synagogue. But I wanted to know:
were there ever any Jewish pirates
of the Caribbean?
From reader S.B. in Atlanta
A: You are correct about Port
Royal; the town did have a Jew-
ish community. Later, Kingston
became the main focus of Jewish
life in Jamaica.
As far as we know, no member
of the community was a pirate.
In fact, in all the annals of
Caribbean piracy, there is no ev-
idence of a ptrofessing Jew among
the scum of the sea — with one
curious exception.
One of the most famous pirates
of the early 1800s probably was
a Jew, if only by a halachic tech-
nicality. He was Jean Lafitte,
whose exploits made him a leg-
end in his own time.
Although many stories circu-
lated about Lafitte's origins (some
of them concocted by Lafitte him-
self), reliable research shows that
he was born in 1782 in Port-au-
Prince, Haiti, to a Sephardic-Jew-
ish mother and a French-gentile
father.
In 1804, Lafitte and his broth-
er, Pierre, settled in New Or-
leans, which had become an
American port in the Louisiana
Purchase of
1803. They
,set up a
blacksmith
shop, which, in fact,
was a cover for their
real occupation of II
dealing in
slaves
(which was
forbidden by
the U.S. Con-
stitution).
Nonethe-
less, the
Lafittes
became
well established in New Orleans
society, and Pierre married the
daughter of a prominent artist.
Meanwhile, Jean became the
head of a band of smugglers and
pirates.
The owners of three ships (two
of which were stolen), by 1807,
the Lafittes had established a
base — organized as a commune
— on Grand Terre island in
Barataria Bay, south of New Or-
leans (Pierre continued to live in
the city). Jean and his gang plun-
dered the slave ships on route to
the Caribbean plantations and
sold the captives in Louisiana.
In 1812, the governor of
Louisiana had Lafitte and his
men arrested. Released on bond,
Lafitte continued his pirating,
slaving and smuggling. The gov-
ernor offered a $5,000 reward for
Lafitte's capture, dead or alive.
Lafitte offered $50,000 for the
governor. Not only did Lafitte
avoid capture, he increased his
activities to a point where he was
making about $2 million a year,
and his private navy numbered
100,000 men.
In the meantime, the United
States and Britain were at war,
and the British approached
Lafitte for aid in their planned
attack on New Orleans. They of-
fered him a huge sum of money,
plus a commission in the royal
navy. Lafitte sent the British pa-
pers to the governor of Louisiana,
together with an offer to help the
Americans — provided the Unit-
ed States pardoned him and his
men. The offer was accepted.
Lafitte and his pirates, in charge
of the artillery, came to the aid of
Gen. Andrew Jackson, and dis-
tinguished themselves in the bat-
tle of New Orleans.
After the war, President Madi-
son pardoned the Lafitte broth-
ers, and they promptly resumed
pirating. This time, they estab-
lished themselves on Galveston
Island, Texas, then under Mex-
ican rule. Lafitte accepted a Mex-
r
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ican offer to serve as governor of
the island, but continued to plun-
der ships in the Caribbean. In
1818, a hurricane devastated the
Galveston settlement, and con-
tinuing harassment by the U.S.
Navy led Lafitte to abandon
Galveston in 1821.
Legend has it that Lafitte
picked a crew to man his favorite
vessel, the Pride, and sailed
away, never to be seen again.
Some say he died in southern
Mexico, while others place him
in Paris.
Recent research has shown,
however, that Jean Lafitte
changed his name to John Laf-
flin, moved to Charleston, S.C.,
and became a respected mer-
chant, no doubt keeping his past
well hidden.
In 1832, he married the daugh-
ter of his business partner, Ed-
ward Mortimer, and later moved,
with his wife and infant son, to
St. Louis, Mo.
Lafitte-Lafflin became inter-
ested in European politics, espe-
cially the burgeoning
revolutionary movements. In
1847, he returned from Europe
with copies of works by Marx and
Engels, whom he had met.
Lafitte-Lafflin asked his father-
in-law to send copies of the texts
to Abraham Lincoln, then a
young congressman.
Although rumors circulated
that Jean Lafitte had Jewish
blood, there is no evidence that
he ever identified as a Jew or had
any interaction with the Jewish
communities in the cities where
he resided.
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GARY RAILLER
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