18. A Dangerous French Buccaneer
During the Golden Age of Piracy from the 1650s to 1730s, few outlaws of the sea were more dangerous than Anne Dieu-le-Veut (1661 – 1710). A female French buccaneer, she earned a reputation for courage in combat and ruthlessness. Her name means “Anne, God Wants It”. It was reportedly earned because her determination and willpower were so strong, that whatever she wanted seemed to have been what God Himself wanted. She arrived in the Caribbean as one of the so-called “Filles de Roi”, or “King’s Daughters” – impoverished women, many of them convicted criminals, deported from mainland France to far-off colonies.
There, they were expected to turn a new leaf and start a new life, settle down, and marry French colonists. Anne ended up in Tortuga, off Haiti’s northern coast. There, in 1684, she married a buccaneer named Pierre Lelong, and had a child with him. When Lelong was killed in a fight in 1790, she married another buccaneer, Joseph Cherel. Anne became a widow once more, in 1693, when Cherel was killed in bar fight by another buccaneer, Laurens de Graaf. So Anne challenged de Graaf to a duel to avenge her husband.
