Aury, Louis-Michel

Louis Michel Aury, pirate, was born in Paris about 1788. He served in the French navy and on French privateers from 1802 or 1803 until 1810, when accumulation of prize money enabled him to become master of his own vessels. He sailed from a North Carolina port with a Venezuelan commission in April 1813 and reached Cartagena in May. In August 1813 he was given command over the Granadine Republic's privateer schooners, a service that ended in January 1816, when he reached Aux Cayes, Haiti, after successfully running the Spanish blockade of Cartagena.

At Aux Cayes Aury quarreled with Simón Bolívar and transferred his services to a group of New Orleans associates who were planning a Mexican rebel port on the Texas coast, an invasion of the Provincias Internas,qv and attacks on Mexican Royalist ports, all part of the Mexican revolt against Spain. Aury left Aux Cayes on June 4 and captured several vessels en route to the Belize, where he arrived on July 17. Then he went on to Galveston.

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