Posted on 07/07/2023 7:28:20 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1730, the pirate Olivier Levasseur was hanged at Reunion Island– legendarily hurling into the crowd cryptic directions to his vast hidden treasure.
Supposedly a bourgeois son of Calais, Levasseur (English Wikipedia entry | French) made his start on the briny deep as a French naval officer-turned-privateer during the War of Spanish Succession, transitioning to full-time buccaneer after that conflict ended in 1714.
By the 1720s — and with a bad eye necessitating that most trite of pirate accessories, the eyepatch — Levasseur had a mixed-race crew raiding the east African coast and the Indian ocean.
His most renowned exploit put him decisively in piracy’s 1%.
Descending upon the Portuguese galleon Cabo — fat with gems and gold bars and loose guineas and silks and a gigantic decorative cross and a noble’s diamond-encrusted +3 vorpal sword, all en route from the wealthy colony of Goa but disarmed at anchor off Reunion Island after having barely survived a storm — Levasseur’s band was able to plunder something on the order of a present-day value well north of £1 billion.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
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