Rob Peterson writes:
I recently acquired a copy of NILES' WEEKLY REGISTER for April 26, 1823
which has an interesting paragraph of two sentences on page 2 in a
section "The Pirates". Since it's short, I'll quote it here:
"It is stated that a British sloop of war has captured a piratical
vessel that had a crew of sixty men, under the command of the famous
Lafitte. He hoisted the bloody flag and refused quarter, and fought
until nearly every man was killed or wounded -- Lafitte being among the
former."
I wonder what "It is stated..." means. Could it be from from "The
account..." (no source given) in the paragraph above? Does anyone know
of specific references to this report which may have more detail? I
believe someone said the primary source is from a Columbian newspaper
(New Grenada?) but I haven't found anything on it yet.
I'll attach images of pages one and two and see if they show up on the
Yahoo site. If not I'll put them in the files section.
Rob Peterson
Thanks Rob. This is a mystery I saw several years ago and later obtained the Ship's Logs of all of the British sloops of war I could find from the National Archives of the U.K. that were operating in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in 1822-23.... these vessels were in the West Indies Squadron based out of Jamaica which was charged with anti-pirate activities in that period and I could find no record of this event in the logs I received... I could have missed some logs if the vessel wasn't actually a sloop but it could have been a cutter which is a very similar vessel. And some reporters got them mixed up. I've also found over the years that Niles Register usually reprinted articles from other papers and wasn't normally a primary source. So, I've been trying to find some other newspaper that talks about this because Niles sometimes reprinted a condensed version of the original article. The Nassau (Bahamas) newspapers at the time reported on the West Indies Squadron frequently and I hope to go to Nassau this summer to review their records. The Savannah and Charleston newspapers for 1822-23 should also be looked at.
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