Louis-Michel Aury

Who was Louis-Michel Aury?

Louis-Michel Aury was a French Corsair operating in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean during the early 19th century.

Aury was born in Paris, France, in about 1788. He served in the French Navy as a sailor on a ship stationed in the French colonies of the West Indies, but from 1802 he crewed on privateer ships. By 1810 he had accumulated enough prize money to become the master of his own vessel.

He decided to support the Spanish colonies of South America in their fight for independence from Spain. In April 1813 he sailed from North Carolina on his own privateer ship with Venezuelan letters-of-marque to attack Spanish ships. He was then commissioned as a commodore in the navy of New Granada, and at great personal expense, in December 1815 ran the Spanish blockade and evacuated hundreds of people in his vessels from the besieged fortress city of Cartagena de Indias to Haiti. In spite of his success in this dangerous exploit he argued with Simón Bolívar, leader of the Latin American revolutionaries, over payment for his services.

Aury subsequently accepted an appointment as resident commissioner of Galveston Island, Texas, made by José Manuel de Herrera, an envoy from the fledgling Republic of Mexico, who had declared Galveston a port of the Republic. Aury established a privateering base there in September 1816.