Peter the Great Very prominent among the early regular buccaneers was a Frenchman who came to be called Peter the Great.

This man seems to have been one of those adventurers who were not buccaneers in the earlier sense of the word (by which I mean they were not traders who touched at Spanish settlements to procure cattle and hides, and who were prepared to fight any Spaniards who might interfere with them), but they were men who came from Europe on purpose to prey upon Spanish possessions, whether on land or sea.

Some of them made a rough sort of settlement on the island of Tortuga, and then it was that Peter the Great seems to have come into prominence.

He gathered about him a body of adherents, but although he had a great reputation as an individual pirate, it seems to have been a good while before he achieved any success as a leader.
The fortunes of Peter and his men must have been at a pretty low ebb when they found themselves cruising in a large, canoe-shaped boat not far from the island of Hispaniola.

There were twenty-nine of them in all, and they were not able to procure a vessel suitable for their purpose.