By the early 19th century, several of Spain's colonies in the Americas were on the cusp of independence, including Mexico. These revolutionary movements "brought filibuster expeditions into contact with privateers, smugglers, and slaves dealers in and around the United States."1
In September 1816, French privateer Louis de Aury was recruited by Mexican revolutionary Manuel de Herrera to serve as governor of "Galvezton." Herrera chose the island as his base for planning an invasion of Mexico's interior and receiving supplies from allies. Aury was enlisted to intercept and pillage merchant ships “of an unsuspecting nation, particularly those sailing under the Spanish flag.”2
Aury's crew of privateers seized a wide variety of valuable merchandise from captured ships, which they referred to as prizes or prize ships. Spoils could include pesos (Spanish currency), guns, cannons, lead, sugar, pepper, drief beef, animal hides, agricultural instruments -- and enslaved people, or "human cargo".3
Portrait of Jean Lafitte, undated. Courtesy Galveston & Texas History Center.
Upon Aury’s return, he faced competition. Jean Laffite, a French-born pirate who had fought for the U.S. during the War of 1812, had begun "vigorously smuggling slaves onto the island, where he had established a pirate commune known as Campeche and served as its governor." 4
Laffite had already gained a reputation as a ruthless fighter and skilled smuggler throughout the Gulf of Mexico before arriving in Galveston. Once he arrived to the island on April 15, 1817, he would remain for nearly four years running a highly lucrative smuggling ring that included a large traffic of enslaved people, who were primarily sold to plantation owners in Louisiana.
One of Lafitte’s best clients was James Bowie, a hero of the Texas Revolution and the Battle of the Alamo. From 1817 until 1821, Bowie purchased enslaved people from Lafitte at a rate of $1 per pound. Bowie and his brothers would often smuggle these illegally purchased captives into Louisiana where they would then "turn them in" to U.S. officials for a bounty. When those same enslaved people were then sold at half-price in a public auction, Bowie and his brothers could purchase them once again, having made more money than they spent overall. Through this partnership with Lafitte, Bowie and his brothers raised over $65,000.5
In a section titled "Early Galveston History" in the 1859-60 Galveston city directory, Aury's smuggling activities are acknowledged. The discharged "Barretarians" mentioned in this excerpt were pirates and privateers who had previously occupied Barretaria (also spelled Barataria), an inlet in southeastern Louisiana where the Laffite brothers had organized a colony of pirates and smugglers. The inlet became infamous for its massive black market of stolen goods -- which included enslaved people captured from prize ships. "[Barataria] echoes the Spanish word barato, which means “cheap.” In other words, Barataria is Bargainland. The bayous were a smuggler’s paradise, where good deals could always be found."6
In his article "The Origin and Development of the African Slave Trade in Galveston, Texas, and Surrounding Areas from 1816 to 1836," Fred Robbins wrote:
“The Texas coast presented an excellent area for the establishment of a base of operations for the privateers. This area was close to the shipping lanes in the Gulf of Mexico and to the slaving ports of Cuba. Cuba was a major depot for the African slave trade into Latin America in the early nineteenth century. Since the island was only 800 miles from Galveston, it became the major source of African slaves for the Anglo-American colonists after 1821. A short distance northeast of Galveston, about 60 or 70 miles, was the Louisiana border of the United States. With the relatively short distances to travel on the Gulf of Mexico, the smugglers did not need to spend a great deal of time on the open seas, thereby avoiding prolonged exposure to any authorities that might be patrolling the Gulf.”7
There are no records of enslaved people who were captured and traded by Aury’s forces during the year that he governed Galveston island. However, we can look to the work of early historians to give us an idea of the activities of Aury's smuggling ring. Click through the timeline below to read more about the introduction of hundreds of enslaved Africans into Texas from prize ships captured by Galveston's pirates and privateers. Each yellow mark represents the span of time during which its associated voyage took place -- for most records, there is no precise date of disembarkation recorded.
