Louis-Michel Aury

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Louis-Michel Aury was a French pirate operating in the Gulf of Mexico during the early 19th century.

Aury was born in Paris, France, in around 1788. He served in the French Navy, but from 1802 served in privateer ships. By 1810 he had accumulated enough prize money to become the master of his own vessel.

He then gave his support to the Spanish colonies in South America in their fight for independence from Spain. In April 1813 he sailed from North Carolina on his own privateer ship with Venezuelan letters-of-marque to attack Spanish ships. He was then commissioned as "Commodore of the Navy of New Grenada" (Colombia), and at great expense, evacuated hundreds of people from the besieged city of Cartagena, Colombia to Haiti. He then argued with Simón Bolívar, leader of the Latin American revolutionaries over payment for his services.

He then accepted a commission from the fledgling Republic of Mexico as Civil and Military Governor of Texas, and established a privateering base on Galveston Island, Texas, in September 1816.

However while Aury was away transporting Francisco Javier Mina and his men to Mexico, Jean Lafitte took control of the base at Galveston. On his return to Texas, Aury made an ill-fated attempt to establish another base at Matagorda Bay. He finally left Texas in 1817 to assist the Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor, self-styled "Brigadier-General of the United Provinces of the New Granada and Venezuela and General-in-Chief of the armies of the two Floridas", in attacking Spanish Florida from Amelia Island. MacGregor left in November but Aury remained, proclaiming the island an independent republic. However the US Army drove Aury out in December 1817.

On 4 July 1818 he captured Old Providence Island (Isla de Providencia) in the western Caribbean, and began a settlement with a thriving economy based on captured Spanish cargo, while unsuccessfully trying to rebuild good relations with Bolivar. He was thrown from a horse and killed in August 1821, though some sources claim he was living in Havana in 1845.