Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Pirate Jean Lafitte - TPR's In Focus - March 11, 2026

Transcript

Pirate Jean Lafitte - TPR's In Focus - March 11, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

• 0:00
  Support comes from the Rosa Parks Museum on Troy University's Montgomery campus,
• 0:05
  located on the spot of Mrs. Parks' historic 1955 arrest, and featuring
• 0:11
  exhibits that chronicle the history of the Montgomery bus boycott.
• 0:16
  More information at Troy.edu slash Rosa Parks.
• 0:20
  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
• 0:27
  In our History in Your Hands series, we talk with archaeologist Michael Thoman of the University
• 0:33
  of West Florida about Jean Lafitte, a pirate of the Florida panhandle.
• 0:39
  As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, the Apalachicola Area Historical Society is
• 0:46
  featuring Mike Thoman's lecture this Saturday about piracy.
• 0:52
  Mike, welcome to Troy Public Radio.
• 0:58
  Thanks so much for having me, Carolyn.
• 0:59
  I look forward to talking to you all about pirates.
• 1:02
  Well, what got you interested in the subject of pirates in the first place?
• 1:07
  I'm actually a military brat, so I grew up in a lot of different areas, but I've lived
• 1:12
  most of my life now in northwest Florida, and one of the schools that I went to, Fort
• 1:18
  Long Beach High School in the city of Fort Long Beach, is actually, they're known for
• 1:22
  a pirate festival, it's the second oldest pirate festival in Florida, called the Billy
• 1:28
  Bolegs Pirate Festival.
• 1:29
  So from the time I was an elementary school kid, I participated in the Billy Bolegs Pirate
• 1:35
  Festival.
• 1:36
  As I got older, I continued to have an interest in history and archaeology, and I've always
• 1:41
  been fascinated by piracy, but also just maritime history in general, which of course, a large
• 1:47
  part of that is piracy.
• 1:49
  And the theme of your address at the Apalachicola Area Historical Society is piracy, the last
• 1:56
  scourge of the Gulf.
• 1:57
  What can you tell us about that?
• 1:59
  A lot of people are familiar with pirates and piracy, mostly from a period of time that's
• 2:07
  had the most written about it, the golden age of piracy.
• 2:10
  So this is the late 1600s up and through about 1720.
• 2:16
  This is a time period when you had people like Jack Rackham, people like Blackbeard,
• 2:21
  people like Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
• 2:23
  And most films in popular literature that have been written about piracy, mostly focuses
• 2:29
  on that period of time.
• 2:32
  When I give these talks, some of the other pirates who operated during the time period
• 2:36
  in which I've mostly focused my studies on, and that's about a hundred years later, in
• 2:42
  the late 1700s, early 1800s, during a period of time that historians refer to as the Age
• 2:47
  of Revolutions, beginning with the American Revolutionary War that kicked off in 1775.
• 2:53
  As those different revolutions spread across the Americas, down into Central and then South
• 2:59
  America, privateering and piracy spread with it.
• 3:02
  That's where I've spent most of my time over the last 15 years or so researching.
• 3:07
  But I think it's just as fascinating and it was just as bad actually, as it was in
• 3:12
  the 1700s.
• 3:13
  One of the pirates you'll be talking about is one of the most famous pirates of that
• 3:19
  era.
• 3:20
  What did you find out?
• 3:21
  Well, yeah, Jean Lafitte is probably one of the most well-known pirates from the time
• 3:25
  period.
• 3:26
  There's been many different books written about Jean Lafitte.
• 3:29
  He's mentioned in the contemporary newspapers of the time period.
• 3:34
  So there's been a great deal written about Jean Lafitte.
• 3:37
  Archaeologists actually have excavated areas where Jean Lafitte had his pirate base just
• 3:43
  outside New Orleans in the 1970s.
• 3:45
  So they were actually able to locate artifacts related to that occupation, that pirate base
• 3:50
  that existed, as well as some of the structures that once were there, most likely related
• 3:57
  to his involvement in the illicit slave trade.
• 4:00
  So Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre were popularly known for being pirates and their
• 4:05
  involvement in the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans, but they were just as much
• 4:11
  involved in that illicit slave trade, which is how they made most of their money, in fact.
• 4:16
  Most of what we know in terms of Jean Lafitte from an archaeological standpoint comes from
• 4:20
  that pirate base just off of New Orleans.
• 4:23
  But there's still so much to learn about him, and there's a lot of mystery and intrigue
• 4:27
  surrounding the life of Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre.
• 4:32
  But there also is a large amount of documentation that is just missing, or that just hasn't
• 4:38
  been uncovered yet.
• 4:39
  And that's where archaeology can play such an important role, and that's what I try to
• 4:42
  do with this talk, show people that in history, during periods of time when we have lots of
• 4:48
  historical documentation about what happened in the past, as historians, we have to rely
• 4:53
  on what has, number one, been created and who created it, but also what has been archived
• 4:59
  and survived over the last couple hundred years.
• 5:01
  200 years ago, the people who were creating documentation were people who were literate.
• 5:05
  So people who were illiterate, we don't have a lot of documentation that comes straight
• 5:09
  from them.
• 5:11
  So archaeology can play a very important role in telling these stories of these people who
• 5:15
  didn't leave behind much of a historical record.
• 5:19
  Pirates didn't want to necessarily write down all the different things that they were doing
• 5:23
  that was illegal, because if they were caught, and if they were tried in a U.S. court, a
• 5:28
  Spanish court, a French court, or a British court, then the penalty, if they were convicted,
• 5:34
  was death.
• 5:35
  So archaeology can kind of tease out who they actually were, because at the end of the day,
• 5:39
  they were sailors.
• 5:40
  They had families.
• 5:41
  They had familial connections back on land.
• 5:43
  We think of them as the roving sea bandits, which of course, portions of their life they
• 5:47
  were, but a lot of these people involved in this sort of activity also served on other
• 5:52
  sailing vessels throughout their career, from naval ships to whalers to slavers to merchant
• 5:57
  vessels to fishing ships.
• 5:59
  So we can learn a lot about this kind of maritime culture from the archaeology.
• 6:04
  Mike, when Jean Lafitte was at the Battle of New Orleans, what was his relationship
• 6:09
  with Andrew Jackson?
• 6:11
  Yeah, so the Lafitte brothers were actually approached by both the British and the Americans
• 6:16
  to side with them during the War of 1812 with the Battle of New Orleans.
• 6:21
  So we know that one of the British commanders, a guy named Edward Nichols, he had actually
• 6:26
  written a letter to Jean Lafitte saying, hey, you should join us.
• 6:30
  And then Jackson did the same thing.
• 6:31
  And so eventually the Lafitte brothers chose a side with the Americans.
• 6:36
  Now this wasn't because they were necessarily loyal to the Americans, it's because these
• 6:40
  individuals were very good at adjusting their political sails when needed to.
• 6:47
  I think it's kind of a testament to how they were able to survive and operate throughout
• 6:52
  the Gulf and Caribbean for as long as they did and as successfully as they did.
• 6:58
  Whatever sort of alliances they needed to make, depending on whether it was sailing
• 7:03
  privateer vessels for some of the South American countries in revolt against Spain, or siding
• 7:09
  with the Americans during the War of 1812, is part of the secret ingredients to their
• 7:14
  success.
• 7:16
  After helping the Spanish during the Mexican War of Independence, he landed on Galveston
• 7:21
  Island and named a new colony.
• 7:24
  What do you know about that?
• 7:25
  Yes.
• 7:26
  Eventually the United States decided that they could no longer tolerate Jean Lafitte
• 7:31
  and his pirate activities out of Louisiana.
• 7:35
  So actually a naval squadron was sent to remove them from that area, which is exactly what
• 7:40
  happened.
• 7:41
  One thing that pirates often didn't fare well against were armed naval vessels.
• 7:45
  And in fact, that's why they typically would avoid trying to engage with any armed naval
• 7:51
  ship because they were usually outgunned and outmanned.
• 7:55
  That's essentially what happened.
• 7:56
  And so the Lafitte brothers, like most pirates and privateers during the time period, instead
• 8:02
  of just deciding to do some other sort of trade, they simply picked up and moved somewhere
• 8:08
  else where they could continue to operate.
• 8:10
  And that's what led them ultimately to Galveston, Texas.
• 8:14
  So they just continued to keep operating in the Gulf up until the early 1820s.
• 8:19
  Both of them kind of disappear from the historical record after that.
• 8:23
  Has any of your personal archaeology unearthed any new information about Jean Lafitte?
• 8:29
  Mine hasn't.
• 8:30
  There's been some really great historical volumes written about Jean Lafitte.
• 8:35
  I think one of the best ones was by a historian named William C. Davis, who wrote The Pirates
• 8:41
  of Lafitte.
• 8:42
  Based on the actual historical records, I think that's a really good source.
• 8:46
  But in terms of my personal archaeology, no, I've never been able to excavate anything
• 8:50
  related to the Lafitte brothers, although there are some potential shipwrecks off the
• 8:56
  coast of Texas that could be related to some of his privateering.
• 9:00
  Well, it is lively history.
• 9:03
  Thank you for your time today.
• 9:05
  Can we also do an interview about Charles Gibbs, another pirate with whom you're very
• 9:11
  familiar?
• 9:12
  Sure.
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:14
  He's archaeologist Michael Thoman, Director of Research and Education at the University
• 9:19
  of West Florida and Senior Research Associate with the Florida Public Archaeology Network.
• 9:27
  His lecture about piracy, The Last Scourge of the Gulf, will be presented this Saturday
• 9:32
  at 3 o'clock at the Apalachicola Area Historical Society meeting adjacent to the Apalachicola
• 9:40
  Yacht Club.
• 9:42
  Thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
• 9:48
  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.