Captain Oliver la Bouse, or de la Bouche. French pirate.

When Captain Howel Davis had taken and sacked the fort at Gambia and with his crew was spending a day in revelry, a ship was reported, bearing down on them in full sail. The pirates prepared to fight her, when she ran up the Black Flag and proved to be a French pirate ship of fourteen guns and sixty-four hands, half French and half negroes, commanded by Captain La Bouse. A great many civilities passed between the two captains, and they agreed to sail down the coast together. Arriving at Sierra Leone, they found a tall ship lying at anchor. This ship they attacked, firing a broadside, when she also ran up the Black Flag, being the vessel of the notorious Captain Cocklyn. For the next two days the three captains and their crews "spent improving their acquaintance and friendship," which was the pirate expression for getting gloriously drunk. On the third day they attacked and took the African Company's Fort. Shortly afterwards the three captains quarrelled, and each went his own way. In 1718 La Bouse was at New Providence Island. In 1720 this pirate commanded the Indian Queen, 250 tons, armed with twenty-eight guns, and a crew of ninety men. Sailing from the Guinea Coast to the East Indies, de la Bouche lost his ship on the Island of Mayotta, near Madagascar.

The captain and forty men set about building a new vessel, while the remainder went off in canoes to join Captain England's pirates at Johanna.


Taken from The Pirates' Who's Who:Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers by Philip Gosse. Originally published by Burt Franklin of 235 East 44th St., New York 10017 in 1924 and in the public domain.

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