"Buccaneer of the Caribbean" from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates

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Buccaneer

Buccaneer is a term that was used in the 17th century in the Caribbean Islands to refer to pirates who attacked Spanish shipping. more...

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The term \"buccaneer\" derives from the Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame for smoking meat, hence the French word meaning boucan and the name boucanier for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. British colonists anglicised the word boucanier to \"buccaneer\".

Conflict with Spanish forces from the east of Hispaniola drove many of the buccaneers from the mainland to the island of Tortuga. Here, they turned to piracy against Spanish shipping, generally using small craft to attack galleons in the vicinity of the Windward Passage. English settlers occupying Jamaica began to spread the name with the meaning of pirates or privateers sailing in the Caribbean ports and seas. The name became universally adopted in 1684 when the first English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin's book The Buccaneers of America was published.

History

The buccaneers were pirates or privateers who attacked Spanish, and later French, shipping in the West Indies during the 17th century. The term is now used generally as a synonym for pirate. However, properly speaking only native Caribbean pirates, the original boucaniers or their later allies, are buccaneers. Generally, buccaneer crews were larger, more apt to attack coastal cities, and more localized to the Caribbean than later pirate crews who sailed to the Indian Ocean on the Pirate Round in the late 17th century or who bedeviled the world's shipping in the early 18th century during and after the War of the Spanish Succession.

About 1630, some Frenchmen who were driven away from the island of Hispaniola fled to nearby Tortuga (now part of Haiti). They lived by hunting wild cattle and selling the hides to Dutch traders. The Spaniards tried to drive them out of Tortuga, but the buccaneers were joined by many other French, Dutch and English and finally became so strong that they attacked Spanish ships and even sailed to the mainland of Spanish America and sacked cities.

Viewed from London, buccaneering was a low-budget way to wage war on Britain's rival, Spain. So, the English crown licensed buccaneers as \"privateers\", legalizing their operations in return for a share of their profits. The buccaneers were invited by Jamaica's Governor Modyford to base ships at Port Royal. The buccaneers robbed French, Dutch and Spanish shipping and colonies, and returned to Port Royal with their plunder, making the city the most prosperous in the West Indies. There even were navy officers sent to lead the buccaneers, such as Christopher Myngs. Their activities went on irrespective of whether England happened to be at war with Spain, the United Provinces or France.