Barataria
The United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In January 1808, the government began to enforce the Embargo Act of 1807, which barred American ships from docking at any foreign port. This was problematic for New Orleans merchants, who had relied heavily on trade with Caribbean colonies of other nations. The Lafitte brothers began to look for another port from which they could smuggle goods to local merchants.
They established themselves on the small and sparsely populated island of Barataria, in Barataria Bay. The bay was located beyond a narrow passage between the barrier islands of Grande Terre and Grande Isle. Barataria was far from the U.S. naval base, and ships could easily smuggle in goods without being noticed by customs officials. Workers would reload goods into smaller batches onto pirogues or barges for transport through the bayous to New Orleans.
Based in New Orleans, Pierre Lafitte served as a silent partner, looking after their interests in the city. Jean Lafitte spent the majority of his time in Barataria managing the daily hands-on business of outfitting privateers and arranging the smuggling of stolen goods. By 1810, the island had become a booming port. Seamen flocked to the island, working on the docks or at the warehouses until they were chosen as crew for one of the privateers.
Lafitte was unhappy with the time it took to transport goods from the port to the merchants; navigating the swamps could take a full week. In 1812, Lafitte and his men began holding auctions at the Temple, a prehistoric memorial earthwork mound halfway between Grande Terre and New Orleans.
Dissatisfied with their role as brokers, in October 1812 the Lafitte brothers purchased a schooner and hired a Captain Trey Cook to sail it. As the schooner did not have an official commission from a national government, its captain was considered a pirate operating illegally. In January 1813 they took their first prize, a Spanish hermaphrodite brig loaded with 77 slaves. Sale of the slaves and additional cargo generated $18,000 in profits and the brothers adapted the captured ship for use in piracy, naming it Dorada. Within weeks, Dorada captured a schooner loaded with over $9,000 in goods. The captured schooner was not considered useful for piracy so, after unloading its cargo, the Lafittes returned the ship to its former captain and crew. The Lafittes gained a reputation for treating captive crew members well, and often returned captured ships to their original crew.
The brothers soon acquired a third ship, La Diligent. They outfitted it with 12 fourteen-pounder cannons. Dorada captured a fourth ship, a schooner they renamed Petit Milan. The brothers stripped down their original ship and used its guns to outfit the new one. They sailed three ships, which Davis described as likely "one of the largest privately owned corsair fleets operating on the coast, and the most versatile." For several months, the Lafittes would send the ships directly to New Orleans with a legal cargo and would take on outgoing provisions in the city. The crew would create a manifest that listed not the provisions that had been purchased, but smuggled items stored at Barataria. Uninterested in exports from New Orleans, customs agents rarely checked the accuracy of the manifests. The ship would sail to the mouth of Bayou Lafourche, load the contraband goods, and sail "legally" back to New Orleans, with goods listed on a certified manifest.
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