Tortuga Island- Isle de la Tortue

These men were known for the meat that they barbecued (French for smoked meat is viande boucanee), and so eventually were named... Buccaneers. When these hunters learned that piracy was more profitable than selling meat, they were soon making regular raids on the Spanish ships sailing the local trade routes.

An early French governor named Jean le Vasseur used his training as an engineer to build a 24-gun fort by the harbor which helped to repel Spanish attacks. French governors preferred to use the buccaneers for local defense, as the British governors were later to do at Port Royal, and Tortuga Island became well-known for those men calling themselves the Brethren of the Coast.

The most notorious among the pirates of Tortuga was Francois L'Ollonais, a psychopath whose method of choice was often horrible tortures and murder. Sir Henry Morgan started his career of piracy from this very island.

Beginning in the early 1670's, Tortuga Island entered a period of decline after a series of Spanish and French raids, when some buccaneers went south to the better market in French Saint Dominique and some were drawn east to expand the defenses of Port Royal, Jamaica.

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