Jacquotte Delahaye

Flag attributed to Jacquotte Delahaye

Jacquotte Delahaye (fl. 1656), was a pirate of legend in the Caribbean sea. She was depicted as operating alongside Anne Dieu-le-Veut, as one of very few 17th-century female pirates. There is no evidence from period sources that Delahaye was a real person. Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s.^[1]

Biography[]

Delahaye reportedly came from Saint-Domingue in modern Haiti, and was the daughter of a French father and a Haitian mother, and spoke French. Her mother is said to have died while giving birth to her brother, who suffered mild mental disability, and was left in her care after her father's death. According to legend and tradition, she became a pirate after the murder of her father.

Jacquotte was a war hero and to escape her pursuers she faked her own death and took on a male alias, living as a man for many years. Upon her return, she became known as "Back From the Dead Red" because of her striking red hair.

She led a gang of hundreds of pirates, and with their help took over Tortuga (Haiti) a small Caribbean island in the year of 1656, which was called a "freebooter republic".^[2] Several years later, she died in a shoot-out while defending it.^[3]

Though no official documentation of any children exists, it was rumoured she had a daughter named Dinah Delahaye, who shared her mother's striking red hair, and who grew up to become a master swordswoman, and pirate commanding a small fleet of ships.