I have killed hundreds with my own hands, and I know how to die. Fire!
-Last words of Roberto Cofresi
On this date in 1825, the Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresi was publicly shot in San Juan with his crew.
The family of “El Pirata” — his father was an emigre who fled Trieste after killing a man in a duel — bequeathed him the upbringing and honorific (“Don”) due to a gentleman without any of the money. Dunned by multiplying creditors, he took to the sea to keep his finances afloat and for a time made a legitimate living in the late 1810s as a piscator and a ferryman. Soon, the crises in Puerto Rico’s economy and governance prodded him into more adventurous pursuits, beginning with highway robbery around his hometown of Cabo Rojo. Wanted posters testify to his landside notoriety; soon, he would combine his vocations as a buccanneer.
In his brief moment, about 1823-1825, he became one of the Caribbean’s most feared marauders, and one of the last consequential pirates to haunt those waters. His career plundering prizes and evading manhunts is recounted in surprising detail on the man’s Wikipedia page, which is in turn an extended summary of an out-of-print Spanish-language book. Given the development of maritime policing by this point it was an achievement to extend his career so long … but everyone has to retire, one way or another.
Norwich Courier, April 27, 1825
A proclamation issued justifying the execution testifies both to the example authorities wished to be understood by his fate, and their awareness that they contended with a strain of sympathy for the outlaw. This is as quoted in Southern Chronicle (Camden, South Carolina, USA), July 2, 1825:
The name of Roberto Cofresi has become famous for robberies and acts of atrocity, and neither the countryman, the merchant nor the laborer could consider himself secure from the grasp of that wretch and his gang. If you ought to pity the lot of these unhappy men, you are bound also to give thanks to the Almighty, that the island has been delivered from a herd of wild beasts, which have attempted our ruin by all the means in their power. You are also bound to live on the alert, and be prepared, in conjunction with the authorities to attack those who may hereafter be so daring as to follow their example.
His throwback profession, his acclaimed charisma, his talent for eluding pursuit, and a purported streak of Robin Hood-esque social banditry all helped to make him a legend that has long outlived the forgotten Spanish agents who hunted him. With his threat to the sea lanes long gone, he’s become a beloved staple of literature, folklore, and popular history in Puerto Rico and especially his native Cabo Rojo. Again, a lovingly curated Wikipedia page on this posthumous career awaits the curious reader.
Label for a Ron Kofresi-brand rum, which one might use to toast his memory with a piña colada: it’s a drink he’s alleged to have invented.
On this day..
- 1987: Lawrence Anini, The Law
- 1623: Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt, family tradition
- 1929: Luther Baker, moonshine bootlegger
- 1560: Baron de Castelnau, for the Amboise Conspiracy
- 4 BCE: Antipater, disinherited Herodian
- 1875: Richard Coates, gunner and rapist
- Daily Double: Victorian Soldiery
- 1944: Roger Bushell and others for the Great Escape
- 1946: Laszlo Baky and Laszlo Endre, Hungarian Holocaust authors
- 1946: Phillip and William Heincy, father and son
- 1935: Thomasina Sarao, miscalculated
- 1796: Francois de Charette, Vendee rebel
- 1720: Charles Vane, an unsinkable pirate