Pierre le Grand was a French buccaneer from Dieppe said to have operated from Hispaniola in the mid-17th century. According to Alexandre Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America (1678), the only source that records him, he led a crew of 28 men in a small boat against a becalmed Spanish galleon near Hispaniola, scuttling his own boat before boarding so his men could not retreat, and seized the ship after catching its captain off guard. The raid is often cited as an early, defining episode of Caribbean buccaneering against Spanish shipping. Exquemelin says Pierre sailed the captured galleon to France afterward, though separate immigration records place a man of the same name in Montreal in 1653, an unresolved conflict in the record. Because Exquemelin’s account cannot be independently corroborated, some historians treat Pierre le Grand’s existence and exploits as unverified.
Pierre le Grand
