![]() The crumbling arches and steps now occupying the lot on Harborside Drive had nothing to do with Lafitte-they were part of a home built decades after the pirate died. Nothing remains of Lafitte’s old Galveston village, which he named Campeche, because he burned much of it when fleeing the island under pressure from the U.S. “The legends and lies and truths about Lafitte are great fun, but some of the reality is pathetic and tragic.” ![]() “There’s a real cachet about pirates, even if the legends take on a life of their own,” says Stephen Curley, a retired English professor from Texas A&M University at Galveston who lectures about Lafitte. He and his older brother, Pierre, patrolled the Gulf of Mexico as pseudo-agents of New World governments that had revolted against Spain, exploiting the naval routes that linked the Gulf Coast to the rest of the globe. Aside from a state historical marker out front, there’s little sign this overgrown lot was once the encampment of Texas’ most infamous pirate, Jean Lafitte.įrom 1817-20, Lafitte headquartered his smuggling business on Galveston Island, which was then part of Spanish Texas. On Galveston Island’s east end, behind a rusting chain-link fence, the concrete bones of an old structure sit between a residential home and a metal-sided warehouse.
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