I did a Yahoo search and took this from a website:
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According to the experts, we can only lay claim to one true buccaneer. The California coast was never a hotbed of piracy. Pirates preferred to prowl the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts, following the merchant ships’ routes. Monterey holds the dubious distinction of being the only city in California to have been sacked by a pirate. It happened in 1818, during the Spanish-American wars of independence. Privateers from South America attacked Alta California, which was under Spanish control. French sea captain Hipólyte Bouchard led the attack and plundered Monterey. It was the only time California was conquered by an enemy—and a pirate.
Bouchard started out a privateer in the service of Argentina. In The Burning of Monterey, Peter Uhrowczik’s book about the 1818 attack, Uhrowczik describes Bouchard as tall and dark with piercing black eyes, and calls him “the most colorful privateer at the service of the rebels from Buenos Aires.” Uhrowczik quotes a Chilean historian, Barros Arana, who says Bouchard was “fearless to the point of recklessness, arrogant and excitable, rough in manners, without culture and hard in his feelings.”
I’m starting to swoon.
Uhrowczik, a writer who lives in Los Gatos, began researching Bouchard after overhearing an Argentine tourist asking about Bouchard in a Monterey bookstore. “You mean the pirate raid?” said the clerk.
“No, not a pirate—he was a patriot.”
“Well, he was a pirate to us.”
Uhrowczik says this conversation piqued his interest. He wanted to learn more about Bouchard, pirate or patriot.
“How come someone coming from that far away would attack Monterey?” he says.
Uhrowczik has since learned that Bouchard didn’t find the goods worth looting he had expected to find in Asian waters. So, after enduring a pirate attack on his own ship, with 40 of his men dying from scurvy, and following a horrible storm off Manila, Bouchard stopped off in Hawaii to recoup. There, he met an Englishman who told him about Monterey, and its suspected Spanish riches.
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Piracy and its legal cousin, privateering, were not that uncommon from the Middle Ages through the end of the 19th century.
Uhrowczik writes that beginning in the 16th century, the governments of England, France, Holland and later the US used privateering to increase their naval power.
Privateers commanded privately owned vessels, armed at the owner’s expense with a government license—in the form of a letter of marque—to attack enemy ships. During the early 19th century, it was a legal and much admired profession. It was so successful in England, Uhrowczik writes, that England had trouble attracting crews to its regular navy.
Francis Drake was the most famous privateer, commissioned in 1577 by Queen Elizabeth I. And before he and his crew became the terror of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea from 1716 through 1718, Blackbeard the dreaded pirate was Edward Teach the British privateer.
Privateering was a dangerous job, but with the potential to make lots of money, depending on how many enemy ships a privateer seized.
Bouchard, says Uhrowczik, was “an ideal privateer.”
“He was very effective in the Spanish-American wars of independence,” Uhrowczik says. “His job was to seize and attack Spanish property and assets, and he did that fairly well. I’m not sure he was very lucky, however.”
Bouchard didn’t find the Spanish riches in Monterey that he was counting on.
And his letter of marque expired shortly before he raided Monterey. So technically, Bouchard was no longer a privateer. He was a pirate.
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Bouchard planned to attack Monterey at night. Even though it was the capital of Alta California, Monterey was a sleepy town, with about 400 citizens who lived within the walls of the Royal Presidio, near Lake El Estero. It also had a fort, El Castillo de Monterey, and a warehouse by the beach.
Rancho del Rey (present day city of Salinas) provided meat and horses for the soldiers and their families. In Carmel, the Mission San Carlos de Borromeo headquartered Alta California’s mission system. It also housed the community’s wealth.
Bouchard seemed to have a solid plan: sail into the Bay, covered in dense fog, unload the crew—a motley group of men whom Bouchard had picked up between the Philippines and Hawaii—and raid the town.
But even pirates have bad days, and the plan didn’t pan out. Bouchard didn’t vanquish the city at night. No one knows why he didn’t, says museum historian Tim Thomas. “They were probably too damn tired,” Thomas speculates.
Instead, the pirate arrived on a warm, sunny November afternoon in 1818.
“A beautiful day, probably like today,” Thomas says. “It was flat as hell out there so they couldn’t sail,” Thomas says. “A longboat towed the ships in, and anchored about where the end of the Monterey [Fisherman’s] Wharf is, pretty close in to the shore.”
We’re sitting in Thomas’ office in the Maritime Museum. Outside, it’s warm and bright. Sea lions bark and gulls scream. There’s no fog—not even a cloud—and the Bay is glass. Nice day for a tourist, bad day for a pirate. Bouchard could gain no element of surprise.
On Nov. 20, 1818, guards at the lookout at Point Pinos spotted Bouchard’s two vessels, The Santa Rosa and La Argentina. The next day, The Santa Rosa opened fire at El Castillo—the only battle on the Pacific Coast between a shore battery and enemy ships. The Spaniards on shore won the battle, and rejected Bouchard’s demand for surrender.
Both sides disagree about what happened next.
According to the governor, Don Pablo Vicente de Solá, the last Spanish governor of Alta California, “troops remained vigilant all night under a heavy rain,” writes Uhrowczik. “In contrast, Bouchard wrote, the enemy was celebrating at the fort with a dancing party.”
The next morning, Nov. 22, Bouchard’s 200 men landed at Lovers Point. Half-naked Hawaiians with spears led the charge, and by 10am, occupied the fort.
The Spaniards fled to Rancho del Rey. The town drunk, a settler named Molina, was the only resident who remained behind.
“Bouchard found there wasn’t much here to take,” Thomas says.
The crew began looting houses, but didn’t find much money or valuables. They shot some farm animals, and stole ham, water, butter, blankets and whatever Spanish fashion and furniture they could find.
Pirate or privateer, Bouchard was a good Catholic and he refused to pillage the Mission in Carmel—or any other missions he came upon in California.
Before leaving, the pirates set fire to the presidio houses. They were built of adobe, so all that burned was the beams.
“They took on water, some pigs, they found out adobe doesn’t burn,” Thomas says. “Then they left. And they took the town drunk with them.”
Bouchard later released Molina in Santa Barbara. Molina was, Uhrowczik writes, a local celebrity at this point. But that didn’t stop Solá from sentencing him to 100 lashes and six years in the chain gang.
Bouchard, on the other hand, remains a hero in Argentina to this day.
Perhaps Molina would have had better luck as a pirate.
Thanks for your input.
