Dominique You (pirate)
Painting attributed to John Wesley Jarvis , circa 1821.
Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans.
Dominique You or Youx , real name probably Frederic Youx (born probably between 1770 and 1775 in Saint-Domingue ; died on November 15, 1830 in New Orleans ), was a French pirate who, after 1800, mainly in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico was active.
Nothing for sure is known about Youx's origin. It is often wrongly stated that he was an older brother of the pirate brothers Pierre and Jean Laffite , with whom he operated after 1812. The statement, which is often found in historical literature, that Youx served as an artilleryman in Napoleon's army, is probably incorrect.
He first appeared in 1805 when he began to use the ship La Superbe, equipped with a French letter of credit , to arrest ships that were trading with the rebellious colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti ). He sold the prize in the West Indies; he himself operated from the Cuban port city of Baracoa , where in 1807 he also made a contribution to defending the port against a British attack. The fact that the French colonies fell to the British in the following years meant that Youx could hardly find any safe havens and that the letters of piracy previously issued by the French authorities would lose their recognition. When the Spanish port city of Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia declared itself independent in 1811, he was hired by the rebels as a pirate and in the following years hunted mainly Spanish ships under the Cartagenic flag. He first appeared in New Orleans in 1812 . Here he soon worked closely with the notorious brothers Pierre and Jean Laffite, who operated as privateers and smugglers from their bases in the inaccessible swamps of Louisiana.
In 1814 he was convicted in absentia by a jury in New Orleans for piracy and was arrested. However, when British troops landed near New Orleans in the fall of that year during the Anglo-American War , he offered his services to the American defenders of the city and was released from prison like many other convicts willing to fight. At the Battle of New Orleans on January 8th, Andrew Jackson placed him in command of an artillery company that was particularly successful in defending the city. After the battle, he settled in New Orleans as an honorable citizen.
literature
- William C. Davis: The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.
Web links
- Dominique You in the database of Find a Grave (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | You, Dominique |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Youx, Dominique; Youx, Frederic |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French privateer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1770 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | uncertain: Saint-Domingue |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 15, 1830 |
| Place of death | New Orleans |