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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

23. The Monster of Maracaibo Gets Eaten by Cannibals

The death of Francois L’Olonnais. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Upon his arrival at Maracaibo with a pirate fleet, Francois L’Olonnais discovered that the citizens had fled. So he plunged into the surrounding jungle after them, tracked them down, and tortured them into revealing where they had hidden their valuables. He and his men then spent two months in an orgy of widespread rape, pillage, and murder. They finally put the town to the torch and tore down its fortifications before leaving.

The following year, L’Olonnais led an even bigger pirate expedition against Central America, only for his men to get ambushed and massacred in Honduras. He was one of the few survivors who managed to escape back to a ship, but it ran aground off the coast of Panama. Disembarking, L’Olonnais led his men inland in search of food, only to get captured, killed, and eaten by an indigenous tribe.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.