Picture of Skull

Pierre Le Picard (17th century)


Buccaneer in the seventeenth century. He was part of a fleet fitted out and manned at Tortuga under the command of the buccaneer L'Ollonais. The fleet of L'Ollonais was also able to capture and plunder the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar in 1666. In 1667 L'Ollonais also plundered the harbour city Puerto de Cavallo and the town of San Pedro. After having captured a Spanish ship in the neighbourhood of the coast of Yucatan his fleet split up. Moses Vanclein, captain of a ship captured at Puerto de Cavallo, (probably) left together with Pierre le Picard. Picard also commanded a ship of his own. He sailed for the town Veraguas on the coast of Costa Rica. The town was captured and plundered. Afterwards they made an attempt to capture the town of Nata nearby in 1668. They did not succeed this time. Esquemeling provides a brief description on pages 79 and 80 of his book The Buccaneers Of America.

In 1669 he was a guide for Henry Morgan's fleet at Maracaibo. Afterwards he was part of the expedition to Panama. During this expedition he commanded the vessel Saint-Pierre, of 10 guns and 90 men.
We hear of him again in 1682 when the Governor of Jamaica mentions him as the Captain of a small vessel, cruising along the coasts of the Island of Jamaica and disturbing the trade between the English and the Spanish.

Sometime during the first half of 1685 he was part of a fleet of French buccaneers that crossed the Isthmus of Panama on their way to the South Sea. They sacked Guayaquil in May 1687 and in the same year Picard leaves the South Sea and retuns to the Caribbean waters. On his way to the Carribean he attacks and plunders the city of Segovia. In 1688 he arrives at Hispaniola at later the same year he retires to Acadie (in the South-East part of Canada).

In 1689 and 1690, during King William's War, Picard commands some small ships. In 1690 he attacks an English colony at Rhode Island, but he is forced to abandon the attack with heavy losses. This is the last we hear of the illustrious Pierre Le Picard.


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Part of the information as well as some of the sources were provided by Raynald Laprise.

Written sources:

Du Loup, Georges
Les flibustiers "fidèles sujets du Roy" / Georges Du Loup
In: Bulletin de la section de géographie du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, (1927), P.: 87-112
Camus, Michel-Christian
L'île de la Tortue au coeur de la Flibuste caraïbe / Michel-Christian Camus. - Éditions L'Harmattan, 1997
Raveneau de Lussan
Journal du voyage fait à la Mer du Sud / Raveneau de Lussan ; Eng. trans. by M.E. Wilbur. - Cleveland, 1930. - Origin. ed.: Paris, 1689
Exmelin (sic), A.O.
Histoire des Frères de la Côte / A.O. Exmelin. - Paris : Éditions J’ai Lu, 1984. - Reprint of the French ed. of 1699
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