Laurens de Graaf: From Enslaved Captive to the Blue-Flag Scourge of Spain

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Laurens de Graaf was born around 1653 in Dordrecht, Holland, and as a youth was seized by Spanish slave traders and put to work on a plantation in the Canary Islands. Freed or escaped by the early 1670s, he married Petronila de Guzmán there in 1674 and sailed for the Caribbean. Flying a plain blue flag instead of a skull and crossbones, he traded up from small prizes to larger ships and in 1679 took a 24 to 28 gun frigate from Spain's Armada de Barlovento, renaming it the Tigre. Henry Morgan, then governor of Jamaica, sent the frigate Norwich to hunt him. Instead of hiding, de Graaf attacked the Princesa, losing perhaps eight or nine men to Spain's 50, and captured 120,000 pesos in silver meant for Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo.

In 1683 he joined Nicholas van Hoorn and Michel de Grammont with 13 ships and about 1,300 men to take Veracruz, sailing in under Spanish colors. They held more than 6,000 residents in churches for three days, and de Graaf helped kidnap about 1,400 people of African descent to sell into slavery. Days later he dueled van Hoorn on Isla de Sacrificios, and the wrist cut he gave him turned gangrenous and fatal. That Christmas he crushed a Spanish force sent from Cartagena and sent prisoners back with thanks to the governor for his Christmas presents. He later ditched cargo and cannon to escape a Spanish fleet off the Yucatán, married Anne Dieu-le-Veut in 1693, and last appears helping the French settle near Biloxi.

• He left his own surgeon and a servant to care for the wounded Spanish captain of the Princesa.
• The Cartagena governor, Juan de Pando Estrada, sent an 800-man force on Christmas Eve 1683 that lost 90 men to the pirates' 20.
• He ignored a letter from his first wife offering a full Spanish pardon and a commission.
• Anne Dieu-le-Veut reportedly pulled a gun on him after he insulted her, and he agreed to marry her.
• Accounts disagree on whether he died around 1704 on the Gulf Coast or quietly in Santo Domingo.