Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the Basques were the main corsairs in European waters. The Basque corsairs sowed terror in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and in Europe. The first mentions of piracy in the Basque Country date from 1303-1304: a text by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani refers to Basque pirates in Bayonne.
The Famous pirates of the Basque Country were : Antton Garai (15th century), Pedro Larraondo (15th century), Juan Pérez de Casa, Pedro Aguirre Campanario (16th and 17th centuries), Michel le Basque (17th century), Joanes Suhigaraitxipi (17th century), Jean Laffite (18th century), Étienne Pellot (18th and 19th centuries), Fermin Mundaka (1825 - 1880)
Joanes Suhigaraitxipi and his vessel
The golden age of piracy for the Basques was essentially in the 17th and 18th centuries. At that time, the Seigniory of Biscay could count on some 77 corsair ships. In the 17th century, mastering naval communications was essential for the economy and shipowners, who were desperate due to taxes, wars and the losses generated by piracy, needed to protect the business in some way. And so the privateering was invented. Although in essence the activity of a pirate and a corsair is the same, the corsairs were "legal"; They conformed to a series of formalities, collected in documents or letters called letters of marque that the monarchs granted to the captains of the boats. Some ships actually carried a notary on board who testified to the captures, thus ensuring the interests of the Crown in the distribution.
Jean Lafitte (left) and Etienne Pellot. Jean Lafitte, according to the archives of the parish of Saint-Martin de Biarritz, he could be from the Beaurivage district in Biarritz. Étienne Pellot "Montvieux", known as "the Basque Fox", born in Hendaye and died on April 2, 1856 in this same city, is the last known French corsair.
Jean Lafitte, represented by Grace King. Engraving from 1895.
Jean Lafitte was born in the years 1770-1780 and probably died between 1823 and 1827, was a French buccaneer who scoured the Gulf of Mexico at the beginning of the 19th century. He created his own "Kingdom of Barataria" in the swamps and bayous near New Orleans to control the mouth of the Mississippi after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, with over a thousand men under his command. His support for the American general Andrew Jackson swung the battle of New Orleans in 1815. He took part in the slave trade, then prohibited. He and his brother Peter then founded Galveston, the first cotton port in Texas, where they spied in the service of Spain against Mexican revolutionaries between and June 1816, according to Spanish archives in Seville.
Even before the era of privateers, in the 14th century Basque pirates went to sea to attack merchant ships. The first known pirates were Anttón de Garai (In the year 1509, the courts of A Coruña sentenced Antón de Garay from Biscay to death for looting ships.) and Pedro de Larraondo, executed for piracy in the Mediterranean in the 14th-15th centuries. In those years, even Edward III of England confronted the Basque corsairs and pirates, feared on the European coasts.
The corsairs soon spread to northern Europe, the American coasts and the Barbary coasts of North Africa. And so came the golden age of privateers, San Sebastián and Hondarribia were the two main squares on the Iberian Peninsula in the 17th century, authentic nests of privateers. Their number in absolute terms was such that the crews of privateering vessels were proportionally more numerous than those included in Royal Navy vessels.
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the Basques were the main corsairs in European waters. The lordship of Vizcaya had no less than 77 corsair ships. Obviously, the Basque population was not large enough to fill all those ships, so levies were used. Only a low percentage of those who suffered attacks at sea survived the outrages of the Basques, who were mainly abandoned on deserted islands. Others, skilled navigators, were forced to join the pirate crew. This was a common practice in hacking, since forever.
Famous Corsicans were also Antonio Urtesabel, who seized the incredible number of 400 Dutch ships between 1759 and 1774, and who later became a lieutenant in the Spanish Navy. Another striking case is that of Michel Etchegorria, nicknamed Michel le Basque, was a Basque-French pirate who sowed terror on the Caribbean coast in the mid-17th century. According to what they say, he had the habit of tearing out the heart of his victims and eating it while he was still beating.
The case of Pedro de Larraondo, a Bilbao merchant turned privateer, used to be a victim of looting by the Catalans, for which he decided to become a pirate and be the terror of those who had harassed him. During the 14th century, he sowed panic in the Mediterranean, to the point that the Catalans were forced to make a pact with their natural enemies, the Moors, in order to get rid of the Bilbao once and for all. What they got. But without a doubt, the most striking and well-known case is that of Lope de Aguirre, known as El Loco or El tyrant, one of the most bloodthirsty pirates in all of history.
