The pirate who refused a British offer to fight the Americans later helped American forces defend New Orleans — and vanished into a treasure legend nobody has found.
Jean Lafitte was a French pirate, privateer and smuggler whose birthplace is still disputed by historians. By 1810 he and his brother Pierre were running a hugely profitable base at Barataria Bay, Louisiana, and many New Orleans residents, who enjoyed the imported luxuries, quietly supported the operation.
In 1814 the British moved in. HMS Sophie intercepted one of Lafitte's vessels, and British officers delivered a proposal from King George III: citizenship and land grants for him and his men in exchange for fighting the United States. They threatened to destroy Barataria if he refused.
Lafitte turned the offer down, believing the Americans would win. He instead wrote to Governor William C.C. Claiborne offering to defend Louisiana, calling himself 'the stray sheep, wishing to return to the sheepfold,' and asking for leniency for his imprisoned brother.
On September 13, 1814, a U.S. Navy force under Commodore Daniel Patterson raided Barataria, capturing most of his fleet and 80 prisoners, but Lafitte escaped. When Andrew Jackson reached New Orleans that December and found the city poorly prepared, he agreed to pardon Lafitte's men in exchange for military service.
Lafitte's former lieutenants, Renato Beluche and Dominique Youx, commanded artillery positions that repelled British advances during the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson praised the Lafitte brothers in official dispatches, and both received full pardons on February 6, 1815.
After the war, the brothers became Spanish spies during Mexico's independence struggle. In 1817 Lafitte founded Campeche on Galveston Island, then Spanish territory, and at its peak the colony held over 2,000 people and 120 structures, generating more than $2 million a year from smuggling and privateering.
Campeche ran on forged letters of marque from nonexistent nations, and new arrivals had to swear loyalty oaths. The colony also took part in the slave trade by exploiting American law: captured slave ships were sold cheaply, and the smugglers profited when the enslaved people were resold in Louisiana.
By 1821 increased American naval patrols threatened the colony. Lafitte sailed away from Galveston that May as his men burned Campeche's fortifications behind him, then obtained a commission from Gran Colombia under Simón Bolívar.
In February 1823, cruising off Omoa, Honduras, Lafitte engaged what turned out to be heavily armed Spanish privateers. He was wounded and is believed to have died at dawn on February 5, 1823, and was buried at sea.
Rumors spread that he had faked his death or rescued Napoleon, and legends of buried treasure persist along the Louisiana coast, though systematic searches have found nothing. In 1909 a con artist was imprisoned for defrauding people with claims about Lafitte's treasure.