Pierre le Grand

This article is about the pirate Pierre le Grand. For other people, see Pierre Legrand .

Pierre le Grand (* in Dieppe ) was a French pirate and supposedly the first to choose the Caribbean island of Tortuga off Hispaniola ( Haiti / Dominican Republic ) as a base.

In 1602 he attacked a fully laden Spanish treasure galleon from Tortuga with a small boat and a crew of only twenty-eight men on the western tip of the island of Hispaniola , which had left its convoy and was personally commanded by the Vice Admiral of the Spanish fleet. In a daring move, le Grand had its own ship drilled before he launched the boarding attack. For him and his people there was only the alternative of winning or going under. The Spaniards reacted completely perplexed when they suddenly saw the pirates appear on board. Since the barge had sunk in the meantime, they mistook the cheeky robberies for devils who had fallen from heaven with supernatural powers, against which one could not seriously fight with the prospect of profit. Some Spaniards shouted: « Jesus, son demonios estos! »(German:“ Jesus, there are ghosts! ”) The coup was a success. Pierre le Grand sailed his prize unharmed to France and retired as a made man. He can be seen as the “prototype” of the Caribbean pirate.

It is unclear whether le Grand is a historical figure or an invention by the author Alexander Exquemelin , as there is no other source for its existence.

literature

• Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin : The pirate book of 1678 - The American pirates. Stuttgart 1983, sixth chapter.
• Frank Bardelle: Privateer in the Caribbean Sea. On the emergence and social transformation of a historical “marginal movement”. Westphälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1986, ISBN 3-924550-20-4 .