artykins

Hello again.  I just finished posting the other blog and came across DJ's latest comment...the one about pirates.  In response, I posted my own comment saying 'well, we both know who the pirates are working for, don't we?'  I anticipate some argument over this, so in order to nip this pesky little problem in the bud, I offer you the following, which will be comprised of parts of an academic article.  All italics will be my own thoughts and input since I want to give due credit where it's deserved.

The following are parts of an article by one Mr. Winston Groom, the author of many histories, but most candidly known for the book Forrest Gump.  That's right, kids, life really is like a box of chocolates.

"By autumn 1814, the United States of America, barely 30 years old, was on the verge of dissolving.  The treasury was empty, most public buildings in Washington, including the Capitol, the White House (then known as the President's House) and the Library of Congress, had been burned by a victorious and vengeful British Army, in one of the most dramatic incursions on the War of 1812."

- Damn Redcoats!  I can understand burning the Capitol and the White House since, after all, they were subject to the spoils of war, but burning the LIbrary of Congress to the ground is unforigveable.  You hear me?!  UNFORGIVEABLE!  We're talking about documents that were lost which I shall never have the joy of gazing upon through a five-inch-thick piece of bullet proof glass at the Smithsonian Institute.

"Festering tensions - arising out of Britain's interference with neutral America's lucrative maritime commerce 0 had erupted into hostilities in June of 1812.  American seaports from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico were blockaded by the British Navy, and the economy was in ruins.  The U.S. Army was stymied (that's a great word...stymied) and stalemated; the Navy, such as it was, had fared little better."

- That's right, Britain blockaded our ports.  Heaven forbid Americans gain profit from something that was so admittedly earned.  I mean, come on, even DJ would have to admit to admiring, at the very least, our pluck in declaring ourselves sovereign apart from His Majesty's kingdom and then following this declaration with a severe ass-kicking in a war that we won.

"Then, as leaves began to fall, a mighty British armada appeared off the Louisiana coast with the stated purpose of capturing New Orleans, American's gateway to the great Mississippi River Basin.  The misfotune would have split the United States in two.  New Orleans was as nearly defenseless as a city could be in those days, with only two understrength Regular Army regiments totalinh abouy 1,100 soldiers and a handful of untrained militia to throw against nearly 20,000 veterans of the British Army and Navy, who were descending upon it as swiftly and surely as a hurricane."

"Central to the British design for the capture of Louisiana, which had been admitted to the Union in 1812, was an extraordinary scheme devised by Col. Edward Nicholls to enlist the services of the 'pirates of Barataria' - so named for the waters surrounding their barrier island redoubt - who for the most part not pirates at all but privateers, operating under letters of marque from foreign countries."

- Woo!  We're getting to the good stuff now, I promise.  Now, it's a fine line between pirate and privateer to be sure.  Just take an 'e' an 'r' and a 'v' out and you've got yourself a sure-fire story.  Whereas the actual maritime laws that discern between pirate and privateer are a bit ambiguous, it's generally agreed upon that privateers WERE pirates.  The only difference between the two is that privateers were a form of legalized piracy.  

"It was to the Baratarians that Colonel Nicholls dispatched his emissaries from the HMS Sophie to see if they could be enlisted into the British effort against New Orleans.  On the morning of September 3, 1814, the Sophie dropped ancho off Grand Terre.  Through spyglasses the British observed hundreds of sleepy-eyes, ill-dressed men gathering on a sandy beach.  Presently a small boar was launched from the beach, rowed by four men with a fifth man in the bow.  From the Sophie, a longboat was likewise launched, carrying its captain, Nicholas Lockyer, and a Captain McWilliams of the Royal Marines.  The boats met in the channel, and Lockyer, in his best schoolboy French, asked to be taken to Monsieur Laffite; the response from the man at the prow of the small boat was that Laffite could be found ashore.  Once on the beach, the two British officers were led through the suspicious crowd by the man in the bow, along a shaded path, and up the steps of a substantial home with a large wraparound gallery.  At that point he genially informed them, 'Messieurs, I am Laffite'."

- So let's recap.  Americans kick British ass in the Revolutionary War. Thirty-six years later there's still a huge grudge held by the British.  British decide, 'let's teach them a lesson for making us a laughing-stock of the known world.'  The War of 1812 ensues.  America pretty much gets a good thrashing.  British march upon the Capitol.  British burn everything in sight.  British wait two years to blockade a major artery of commerce.  They decide to attack New Orleans to rub salt in the wound.  British hope French will aid them in taking over New Orleans and effectively divide the fledgling country of America.

 Some of you might be missing the point here.  The British decided to employ the French...the people they'd never gotten along with...they STILL don't get on that well.  Now, to generally paraphrase the next two pages, the British delegation basically lays out their bargaining chips for Laffite (he was, by the way, a privateer that had an amazingly lucrative business in smuggling goods into America and he thus carried a tremendous amount of power when it came to his fellow pirates).  These chips included not being ground to pulp by the Royal Navy, alotments of land within the states once they belonged to the king again, an offer to become a British citizen with full and unlimited pardons for any previous crimes and £30,000, which Mr. Groom tells us amasses to more that two million today.  Keep these bargaining chips in mind, kids.  They come into play later on in the story.

"Playing for time against the threatened British assualt on his stronghold, Laffite told the two envoys he needed two weeks to compose his men and put his personal affairs in order.  After that, Laffite promised the Englishmen, he and his men would be 'entirely at your disposal'."

"As he watched the British sail away, Laffite must have considered taking the bribe (he'd have been some sort of machine not to think about that bribe).  He must have also considered the British promise to free his brother Pierre (the Laffite brothers were apparently very close to one another and Jean's older brother, Pierre, had been caught and faced hanging for his crimes), who had been charged with piracy and was locked in a New Orleans jail facing the hangman's noose.  On the other hand, Jean, through a Frenchman by birth, apparently considered himself something of a patriot where American was concerned.  After all, the country had been good to him.  He had amassed a fortune (though in blatant contravention of its laws) by smuggling on its shores.  He promptly sat down with pen and paper and porceeded to double-cross his newfound British friends."

- Imagine that...he bypassed ALL of those incentives to help America.  Long story short, Laffite went on to write the American military leaders.  They ignored him at first because I suppose even then we were stupid, but by December of that same year (1814) we were regular chums.  Laffite's expertise prevented breeches in ramparts while the skills of his pirate friends killed many an Englishmen.  The assualt against New Orleans was finalized on January 8, 1815 when, 'within 25 minutes of the British onslaught, the ourcome of the battle ahd been decided: the Americans defeated the vast British Army.'

Concerning Laffite, however...

"What became of him after Galveston (an island that was hit hard by a hurricane that Laffite attempted to rebuild) has been the subject of much contradictory speculation.  He was reportedly killed in a sea battle, drowned in a hurricane, hanged by the Spanish, succumed to disease in Mexico, and murdered by his own crew."

"If you believe his own journal - scholars disagree about its authenticity - Laffite had departed Galveston for St. Louis.  There, he found God, married a woman named emma Mortimere, fathered a son and settled down to the life of a landlubber."

"According to the disputed memoir, at some point a chagrined Laffite, now turning portly, grew a beard and changed his name to John Lafflin.  During his later years, he settled in Alton, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, where he began writing a journal of his life.  He lived there until his death in 1854 at the age of about 70."

"He wrote in teh memoir that he never got over the shabby treatment he felt he had received from the federal government and from the city he had risked his life and treasure to defend.  And he mused bitterly over what might have happened if, instead of siding with the Americans, he had taken the British bribe.  Answering his own hypothetical, he concluded that the Americans would have lost the battle, as well as Louisiana - and that there would have been no president of the United States name Andrew Jackson.  The very name Jackson, wrote Laffite, 'would have tumbled into oblivion'."

- To be fair, we probably WOULD have lost the battle of New Orleans and suffered the consequences thereof without Laffite's help.  The point of this blog, however, is merely to illustrate where the pirate's true loyalty lies in the world.  So now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go to bed seeing as how it's very late.

Later Days,
Arty