New Museum Showcases Galveston’s Legendary Pirate Jean Lafitte

It wasn’t too long ago – less than 200 years – that Galveston’s sandy shores and growing port were home to notorious pirates.  And now, a newly opened island museum highlights Galveston’s very own buccaneers.

“There aren’t too many places that have their own homegrown pirates,” says Joyce McLean, owner of Pirates! Legends of the Gulf Coast museum, a pirate-themed family attraction where visitors can learn about the legends, myths and stories of the last buccaneers. “Galveston has an illustrious history with part of that involving Jean Lafitte.”

With artifacts, costumed mannequins, and tour guides dressed in pirate garb, the museum highlights the cultured and debonair Lafitte and his sinister comrades.  Coming from New Orleans, Lafitte established a colony known as Campeche on Galveston Island in 1817.   “He was a very complicated character.  His arrival in New Orleans was mysterious – it wasn’t really known if he was from France or the Caribbean,” explains McLean, a past president of the Historic Downtown Strand Seaport Partnership.

“He became part of New Orleans society, and although he was a bandit, had set up an illegal operation nearby,” she adds.  “He had a group of captains under his command that robbed ships heading for New Orleans, and supplied everything from fine silk and household furnishing to the plantations and people there.”

Lafitte later set up shop in Galveston after the War of 1812, in which he helped General Andrew Jackson defeat the British in the critical Battle of New Orleans. “When the British decided they wanted to take New Orleans in 1814, they approached Lafitte, but he refused and instead went to the governor and offered his help and men to defeat the British,” notes McLean.

“On one hand he was a thief who the governor was furious with, but on the other hand the governor needed his help along with Andrew Jackson.  After the war, he was run out of New Orleans because he could no longer run his illegal business.  So he came to Galveston to set up a new stronghold and continue his illegal smuggling operations.”

Located in downtown Galveston, the museum also showcases Lafitte’s brother Pierre as well as other Caribbean pirates including the likes of Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Henry Morgan.  Artifacts include part of a flintlock pistol and bottles unearthed from Lafitte’s Louisiana campground area, and modern-day items including the vest worn by Yul Brynner who played Lafitte in the 1959 movie The Buccaneer.  There are also exhibits on women pirates and buccaneers from a child’s perspective.

“Pirates are so popular right now and have been for many years, especially with the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movies,” says McLean.  “Small children really don’t have a concept of what the 1600s or 1700s were all about, so our museum will give them the generalized concept of who, what, where and when.”

“Kids love pirates – they come in wearing pirates shirts and hats,” she adds.  “What we’re showing is that pirates had a colorful lifestyle, but it wasn’t all fun and games because they were also stealing from people.”

“We want the attraction to be for kids of all ages,” she says.