The Death of Jean Laffite

Concerning the death of Jean Laffite ... I translated an article from two Colombian newspapers from 1823.....The first article appeared in the GACETA DE CARTAGENA, where Jean Laffite's ship returned after it's privateering voyage of September 1822-March 1823. The article was then reprinted shortly thereafter in the GACETA DE COLOMBIA (published in the capital of Gran Colombia: Bogota) as follows...I have a photocopy of the original article which came from the Vanderbilt University Collection...(my notes are in bold print)

GACETA DE COLOMBIA

No. XXIX Bogota, Sunday April 20, 1823

NAVAL COMBAT

The Colombian corsair GENERAL SANTANDER of 43 tons, under the command of Captain Jean Laffitte gave chase (at 0500 hours on February 4, at 20 leagues off the port of Omoa (modern day Honduras) in front of the Triumph of The Cross (a monument on the coast near Omoa)) to a Spanish brig schooner and another schooner until 2200 hours that night. The schooner brig was close to surrendering after an hour of combat but then made lantern signals to the schooner and they then both turned on the corsair. After this turnabout, Captain Laffitte was mortally wounded but stimulated the ardor of his crew and turned over command to his second-in-command who then suffered the same fate. The third-in-command, Francisco Similien, continued in combat until 0100 hours and when it became impossible to continue he turned the ship about and the Spanish ships did the same as they were very damaged by the shots from the corsair. Captain Laffitte died from his wounds the next day. The loss of this brave naval officer is moving and the boldness with which he confronted the superior forces demonstrates why he is so well regarded after his heroic death. The schooner brig had 12 cannons aboard and the schooner had six cannon with a 16 pounder in the stern.

From the GACETA DE CARTAGENA issue # 63

Note: I have traced Francisco Similien's family back to the north coast of Cuba and Jean Laffite supposedly had a wife and daughter nearby in Cayo Cristo, Cuba. Research is ongoing to see if there is any merit to this.

When Jean Laffite received his commission in the Colombian Navy in the summer of 1822, it was published in the naval records of Colombia and there was an article in the local newspaper talking about Jean Laffite's presence in Cartagena that summer . Another newspaper article published in New England confirmed that Jean Laffite was spotted on the GENERAL SANTANDER off the coast of Cuba in late 1822. There seems to be no doubt that Jean Laffite was on board this vessel during late 1822-early 1823 and that he either faked his death or he died on board.

There were no subsequent articles published anywhere about Jean Laffite after the Spring of 1823 which leads me to believe that this Death Notice article is accurate.

Jean Laffite Descendants In Cuba?

Rob and I were having a discussion about Laffite descendants in Cuba ....please see the comment below....if anyone has any comments/ideas/questions about this, please reply to this Post...

"....Rob, when I get some spare time I'm going to publish some photos of some other original newspaper articles about JL written in 1823...I'm particularly interested in how Jean Laffite met his demise and want to get to the bottom of it...

Also I want to prove if he had any surviving children and I'd like to know what happened to them,,,,,there are many Cubans today with the surname "Laffite/Lafitte/Laffitte/Lafita" and some claim to be decendants but I've seen no conclusive proof..... some Cuban websites claim he left a daughter in Cayo Cristo, she later moved to Sagua La Grande and her married name became Maria Laffite Rodriguez...others claim he and Pierre bought a ranch in the outskirts of Havana (now inside the city limits) with the proceeds of their espionage earnings and some of their kids settled there later (but were in school in France when their fathers passed away).... the "Laffite House" still stands in the suburb of "Jesus Del Monte" and Ernie Hartmann took photos of it which I will publish later (the laptop with all my photos crashed and it's time-consuming to recover them...don't ever buy a Windows-driven computer...Apple is by far the best!!!!!!!!)...the Catholic Church across teh street from teh "Laffite House" supposedy has some crumbling (baptismal/death/etc) records from the1820's-60's and we want to go through them in detail because if the Laffite children lived nearby they'd probably show up in the records.... I'm trying to trace the title to the "Laffite house" but Fidel and Raul Castro aren't allowing this at the moment because they feel that it will open up American lawsuits to recover seized properties....so we are hoping that Cuba opens up soon....

....thanks for your interest and comments...

Jean Laffite In Niles Register

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