JEAN LAFITTE "Prince of Pirates" (1941)

This "true life" story appeared in Choice Comics #1, from Dec. 1941. Thanks to Phil Barnhart for sharing it on ComicBookPlus. Tentative art credits point to Pagsilang Isip. 

Free Today for Kindle - ACTION: Pulse Pounding Tales Vol. 1

Today and tomorrow only, this monster collection of 37 hard-hitting stories (a four dollar value) is available for $0.00 from Amazon.

If you can afford it, I'd be honored if you took a look at the Evan Lewis contribution, "The Judgment of Jean Lafitte."

For Amazon U.S., click HERE.

The book is supposed to be free today and tomorrow on Amazon UK too, but there appears to be a glitch. I'll keep you posted.

Overlooked Films: The Buccaneer (1958)

Yep, this is The Overlooked Films of Jean Lafitte Part 2 (of 2), and the last in our Lafitte marathon. Like the 1938 original, this movie shows us a little of what Lafitte was doing before the War of 1812 found it's way to Louisiana, then what he did when it arrived. In a nutshell, he turned down an offer to help the British, then offered his expert gunners, cannons and stockpile of powder and balls to the American cause, thereby saving Andy Jackson's bacon. Plenty of rip-roaring action. Dang! This makes me want to see it again.

 

 

 

More Overlooked Films: Sweet Freedom

More Jean Lafitte (as in "The Judgment of...") right HERE

The Memiors of Jean Laffite??

I’ve been yapping about America’s most famous pirate a lot this week because editor Matt Hilton was kind enough to include my story, "The Judgment of Jean Lafitte" in the new anthology ACTION: Pulse Pounding Tales Vol. 1 (available HERE).

This week we've looked at the real Lafitte from several different angles. Today we discuss his memoirs. Or do we?

It has long been believed that Lafitte died sometime in the 1820s in the Gulf of Mexico. But is it possible he survived, changed his name and moved to St. Louis, where he raised a family and lived until 1854, dying of pneumonia at age 72?

The answer is . . . Well, Jeez, with Jean Lafitte, dang near anything is possible.

The manuscript eventually published in 1999 as The Memoirs of Jean Laffite first came to the attention of Lafitte historians in the 1940s. A very strange individual by the name of John A. Lafitte turned up in New Orleans claiming to the great grandson of the great pirate. In a suitcase, along with other family documents, he carried a manuscript, handwritten in French, said to be a journal of Jean Lafitte.

 This painting, supposedly depicting Lafitte in 1804,

was part of the John A. Lafitte collection.

John A. Lafitte was exceedingly paranoid, giving hints of the document’s contents to many but showing it to few. His goal, he said, was to sell the manuscript to someone who would have it published.  He spent the next fifteen years being secretive and evasive with a succession of Lafitte scholars, eventually alienating them all. Finally he had the document translated by a group of nuns, and it was published in 1958 as The Journal of Jean Laffite*.

At about the same time, a new biography called Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover, was published by Stanley Clisby Arthur. Arthur had been given access to most or all of the “Journal” and treated its contents as fact in his book. That’s when the real controversy began.

Historians have been squabbling over the issue ever since. Is it real or fake? Or part real and part fake? Soon after the Journal’s publication, a number of self-proclaimed experts branded the work a forgery and were generally believed. But in the years since new discoveries have come to light. And it's been shown that the “experts” had either misrepresented their qualifications, were commenting purely on hearsay, or had other axes to grind.

Meanwhile, the “Journal” was found be poorly translated, and not really a journal at all, but a memoir. So a new translation was prepared, resulting in this book, The Memoirs of Jean Laffite.

The lengthy introduction detailing the manuscript’s history is a fascinating detective story. I had read that introduction before, but not the rest of the book. Not until now.

NOW I understand what all the controversy is about. My gut tells me that much of detailed information contained in this document is real. If it did not come from Lafitte himself, it had to have come from records kept by him or someone close to him. On the other hand, my gut tells me that some of this is NOT real, and that some unknown writer was exploiting Lafitte’s notoriety to expound his own opinions.

You see the dilemma. It’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction here, or to separate what might be real Lafitte from phony Lafitte.

Some passages present lengthy and detailed descriptions of significant events in Lafitte’s life. Other passages are made up of scattered thoughts - brief paragraphs focusing on unrelated events, memories or observations.

As if this isn’t confusing enough, there is a good deal of political diatribe. The author describes his lifetime war against both Spain and England, and often takes the U.S. to task for being untrue to the principals of the Declaration of Independence. He refers to his smuggling bases in Grand Terre and Galveston as his “communes”, and later claims to have donated large sums of money to Marx and Engels to help save the world from “wage slavery”.

So what’s the bottom line? Did Lafitte write this (or part of it) or not? Did he really move to St. Louis and create a new identity? Heck, I can’t decide. All I’m sure of is that this manuscript merits much further study.

* We touched on the Lafitte/Laffite earlier this week. I think it's silly to be changing the spelling of his name after 150 years, just because he signed it both ways. So he wasn't a great speller. So what?

The Legacy of Jean Lafitte

Jean Lafitte’s presence in the city of New Orleans is pretty much limited to a tavern known as Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. Legend has it this shop was once a front for the Lafitte brothers’ smuggling operation. While they surely had a warehouse or two in the city, there is no real evidence linking them with this building or address.

It is, however, a pretty cool tavern, and said to be one of the oldest buildings in the U.S. They sold me a T-shirt stuffed inside a souvenir plastic cup. The cup proclaimed it to be the “Oldest Bar in the USA Since 1772”.
.

On our visit to the city last year, one of the French Quarter souvenir shops was named Pirate Jean Lafitte. But the only actual Lafitte items they stocked were T-shirts (like the one above) and they were going out of business. Though my wife and I  poked our noses into just about every tourist junk shop in the Quarter, I saw not a single coffee cup, key chain, baseball cap or ballpoint pen with Lafitte’s likeness on it.

The State of Louisiana remembers Lafitte (at least in name) with the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve. This umbrella name is given to parks and preserves all over the area, including much of the swamp and bayou area Lafitte used for his smuggling operation. BUT, near as I can tell, within all that territory there is not a single historical site, museum or even monument devoted to Lafitte himself. I got this refrigerator magnet at Chalmette Battlefield, site of the final (and climactic) confrontations of the Battle of New Orleans.

Lafitte is the patron saint of the annual Contraband Days in Lake Charles, LA. They bring in big-name music acts and hold sporting competitions, but other than a few folks dressing up as pirates it sounds much like any other community festival.
 

I suspect Lafitte would be highly amused to see his name emblazoned on the side of a police car.

The old guy would also be amused to see himself on YouTube. This video, like almost any other source of Lafitte info, contains a number of historical boners, but it’s still a good view.

The Memoirs of Jean Laffite

I’ve been yapping about America’s most famous pirate a lot this week. Why? Because last Saturday, the folks at BEAT to a PULP were kind enough to slap up my short story “The Mercy of Jean Lafitte”. This will be its final day as The Weekly Punch, and I'd be mighty pleased if you popped over for a squint at it.

This week we've looked at the real Lafitte from several different angles. Today we discuss his memoirs. Or do we?

It has long been believed that Lafitte died sometime in the 1820s in the Gulf of Mexico. But is it possible he survived, changed his name and moved to St. Louis, where he raised a family and lived until 1854, dying of pneumonia at age 72?

The answer is . . . Well, Jeez, with Jean Lafitte, dang near anything is possible.

The manuscript eventually published in 1999 as The Memoirs of Jean Laffite first came to the attention of Lafitte historians in the 1940s. A very strange individual by the name of John A. Lafitte turned up in New Orleans claiming to the great grandson of the great pirate. In a suitcase, along with other family documents, he carried a manuscript, handwritten in French, said to be a journal of Jean Lafitte.

 This painting, supposedly depicting Lafitte in 1804,

was part of the John A. Lafitte collection.

John A. Lafitte was exceedingly paranoid, giving hints of the document’s contents to many but showing it to few. His goal, he said, was to sell the manuscript to someone who would have it published.  He spent the next fifteen years being secretive and evasive with a succession of Lafitte scholars, eventually alienating them all. Finally he had the document translated by a group of nuns, and it was published in 1958 as The Journal of Jean Laffite.

At about the same time, a new biography called Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover, was published by Stanley Clisby Arthur. Arthur had been given access to most or all of the “Journal” and treated its contents as fact in his book. That’s when the real controversy began.

Historians have been squabbling over the issue ever since. Is it real or fake? Or part real and part fake? Soon after the Journal’s publication, a number of self-proclaimed experts branded the work a forgery and were generally believed. But in the years since new discoveries have come to light. And it's been shown that the “experts” had either misrepresented their qualifications, were commenting purely on hearsay, or had other axes to grind.

Meanwhile, the “Journal” was found be poorly translated, and not really a journal at all, but a memoir. So a new translation was prepared, resulting in this book, The Memoirs of Jean Laffite.

The lengthy introduction detailing the manuscript’s history is a fascinating detective story. I had read that introduction before, but not the rest of the book. Not until now.

NOW I understand what all the controversy is about. My gut tells me that much of detailed information contained in this document is real. If it did not come from Lafitte himself, it had to have come from records kept by him or someone close to him. On the other hand, my gut tells me that some of this is NOT real, and that some unknown writer was exploiting Lafitte’s notoriety to expound his own opinions.

You see the dilemma. It’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction here, or to separate what might be real Lafitte from phony Lafitte.

Some passages present lengthy and detailed descriptions of significant events in Lafitte’s life. Other passages are made up of scattered thoughts - brief paragraphs focusing on unrelated events, memories or observations.

As if this isn’t confusing enough, there is a good deal of political diatribe. The author describes his lifetime war against both Spain and England, and often takes the U.S. to task for being untrue to the principals of the Declaration of Independence. He refers to his smuggling bases in Grand Terre and Galveston as his “communes”, and later claims to have donated large sums of money to Marx and Engels to help save the world from “wage slavery”.

So what’s the bottom line? Did Lafitte write this (or part of it) or not? Did he really move to St. Louis and create a new identity? Heck, I can’t decide. All I’m sure of is that this manuscript merits much further study.

Tomorrow: The Legacy of Jean Lafitte

The Many Deaths of Jean Lafitte

Actual photo of the grave of Jean Lafitte (and friends)? 

See "The Legend That Disagrees with History" below.

Jean Lafitte died of injuries sustained during a sea battle sometime in 1821 or 1822. Or he succumbed to disease on the Yucatan coast near Isle de Mujeres (the Island of Women) in 1826. Or, in a year unnamed, his ship was sunk and he and his men died fighting on a sandbank. Or maybe, just maybe, he changed his name and moved to St. Louis, where he died of pneumonia in 1854. (We'll deal with the fascinating tale behind that story tomorrow, in Friday's Forgotten Books.)

In his 2005 work The Pirates Laffite, author William C. Davis claimed to have solved the mystery for good. He discovered a piece in a Cartegna (Colombia) newspaper stating Lafitte's ship was attacked at sea by unknown vessels and struck by grapeshot. Suffering a severe wound from a splinter, Lafitte died on February 5, 1823 and was buried at sea. Pardon me if I'm not convinced.

The wildest story yet claims that Lafitte was buried in the Louisiana bayou right next to Napoleon Bonaparte and John Paul Jones. An account of this theory appears below, from the 1943 book The Land of Lafitte the Pirate. This notion later served as the basis of an enjoyable mystery novel, The Lafitte Case by Ray Peters.

 (click to enlarge)

Tomorrow: The Memoirs of Jean Laffite
Saturday: The Legacy of Jean Lafitte
Still playing on BEAT to a PULP: "The Mercy of Jean Lafitte" by Yours Truly

The Life of Jean Lafitte (told with marionettes)

Yes, my tale "The Mercy of Jean Lafitte" is still playing over at BEAT to a PULP, and I'm still in a Lafitte state of mind.

I took these thrilling almost-live action pics  at the Lafitte Museum in the tiny bayou town of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. Though the figures look static here, they are actually in continuous motion, moving arms and legs and sometimes cutlasses.

This mechanical marionette show was built in the 70s and was for years a popular attraction in New Orleans. When Katrina approached, the building was thought threatened, and the puppets quickly auctioned off. High bidder was the mayor of this bayou burg.

Here's Jean at home with his pet pelican on the isle of Grand Terre, south of New Orleans on Barataria Bay. In 1812, when our story begins, this was HQ for his lucrative smuggling and privateering operation.

Jean's older brother Pierre (left) and pal Dominique You (whom some believe was an even older brother) row ashore to get instructions for their next voyages.

One of Jean's more bloodthirsty rogues in a fight aboard a Spanish galleon.

Same fight, different angle. Note the cool blood on the pirate’s hand, the deck and the shoes. Who knew marionettes could bleed?

Rene Beluche, who may have been Jean's uncle, and two of Lafitte's men split the booty.

Jean goes to the theater with a rich friend. The society babe with him is not advised of his identity, and later tells everyone he’s the most charming gent she ever met.

Pierre Lafitte is arrested and tossed in Cabildo prison.  (Don't fret, he'll soon be sprung. The Lafittes have influential friends.)  See that wanted poster? Governor Claiborne was offering $500 for Jean. On the wall at left is Jean's response - a poster offering $5000 for the capture of the governor.

The British come calling, offering Jean big bucks if he'll join their attack on New Orleans. Instead, he warns the governor and offers to help the Americans.

When the Gov refuses Jean's help, Jean drops by to reason with him.

Laftitte’s Blacksmith Shop (now a tavern and tourist trap), where legend has it that Jean met Andy Jackson. Legend is wrong, but Jackson did accept Jean’s offer of help and the two planned the defense of the city. Lafitte provides cannons, expert gunners and an enormous stockpile of ammo for the cause.

The Battle of New Orleans, later immortalized by Johnny Horton.  That’s Dominique You in the pirate hat, commanding one of the big guns. It’s said that one particular shot from this gun killed over 200 redcoats. The pirate with the do-rag is not Jean, who was toiling behind the scenes. And that guy at far right is NOT Davy Crockett.

Acclaimed as the savior of New Orleans, Jean reveals he is the same height as Godzilla.  He’s given a pardon for past crimes, but discovers honesty doesn’t pay and returns to privateering. He soon moves his headquarters to Galveston Island, scene of "The Mercy of Jean Lafitte".

Historical Note: Had Lafitte joined the British, they surely would have won the battle and been poised to sweep into the heart of the country. Though the Treaty of Ghent had officially ended hostilities weeks earlier, neither side knew it at the time. Had the British succeeded in taking New Orleans and gaining control of the Mississippi, they likely would have repudiated the treaty and continued the war - and won.

Tomorrow: The Many Deaths of Jean Lafitte
Friday: The Memoirs of Jean Laffite
Saturday: The Legacy of Jean Lafitte