The Buccaneers of Tortuga
The small island of Tortuga is located only a few miles off the northwest corner of Hispaniola. Named by the Spanish for its relative shape of a sea turtle, Tortuga is about twenty miles long and only four miles wide. With a lack of any serious Spanish military presence on the north side of Hispaniola, French colonists established a settlement on Tortuga in 1625, where they lived unmolested for several years.
In 1629, the Spanish launched an expedition to force the French from the island, which succeeded only in driving the settlers across the channel and onto Hispaniola. In an effort to establish permanent control of Tortuga, the Spaniards built a fortress and left a small contingent of soldiers to defend the island. The fort was lightly built and weakly protected, and the French quickly and easily retook the island in a counterattack. They were also savvy enough to recognize the possibilities that the fort provided and set about improving its fortifications.
As a result of the French re-establishing Tortuga, the island would soon become a haven and base of operations for pirates and privateer activity against the Spanish. For a price, the governors of Tortuga would offer safe harbor to any ship that was not Spanish, and offered letters of marque to privateers.
Le Grand Victory
The first recorded pirate victory over the Spanish fleet occurred in 1635, when French buccaneer Pierre le Grand and a crew of twenty-eight captured the flagship of a Spanish vice-admiral. Le Grand and his buccaneers had been scouting for weeks with no luck when they came upon the Spanish fleet near dusk. Under the cover of darkness, they quietly rowed their small pinnace under the bow of the anchored galleon and silently slipped aboard. The Spanish captain and his officers were said to have been playing cards when the buccaneers burst into the cabin, taking the Spaniards completely by surprise. Le Grand scuttled their pinnace, delivered the Spanish crew to the shores of Hispaniola, and then sailed the captured galleon to Dieppe Bay in the French-held island of St. Kitts. With the wealth he'd stolen from under the Spaniard's noses, le Grand retired to a comfortable life, never setting sail again.
Spanish Retaliation
The Spanish response to the loss of one of their great treasure galleons was to launch the fiercest attack the buccaneers of Tortuga would ever witness. With several warships and a massive number of troops, the Spaniards overwhelmed the settlement and slaughtered everyone on the island. The few survivors who managed to avoid the onslaught fled once again to Hispaniola. Convinced that their victory was complete, the Spanish left Tortuga unguarded and deserted. The surviving buccaneers who had fled to Hispaniola returned, and within a few years, the island once again became a thriving French colony and a home to pirates and privateers (See Chapter 16).
