Note (return) — Chapter VI

The buccaneers were accused in the reports which reached Barbadoes of deserting the admiral after the accident, and thus preventing the reduction of Curaçao, which d'Estrées would have undertaken in spite of the shipwreck.397 However this may be, one of the principal buccaneer leaders, named de Grammont, was left by de Pouançay at the Isle d'Aves to recover what he could from the wreck, and to repair some of the privateering vessels.398 When he had accomplished this, finding himself short of provisions, he sailed with about 700 men to make a descent on Maracaibo; and after spending six months in the lake, seizing the shipping and plundering all the settlements in that region, he re-embarked in the middle of December. The booty is said to have been very small.399 Early in the same year the Marquis de Maintenon, commanding the frigate "La Sorcière," and aided by some French filibusters from Tortuga, was on the coast of Caracas, where he ravaged the islands of Margarita and Trinidad. He had arrived in the West Indies from France in the latter part of 1676, and when he sailed from Tortuga was at the head of 700 or 800 men. His squadron met with little success, however, and soon scattered.400 Other bands of filibusters pillaged Campeache, Puerto Principe in Cuba, Santo Tomas on the Orinoco, and Truxillo in the province of Honduras; and de Pouançay, to console the buccaneers for their losses at the Isle d'Aves, sent 800 men under the Sieur de Franquesnay to make a descent upon St. Jago de Cuba, but the expedition seems to have been a failure.401