Louis-Michel Aury was a French Corsair operating in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean during the early 19th century.
Aury was born in Paris, France, in about 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 decided to support the Spanish colonies of 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 a commodore in the navy of New Granada (Colombia), and at great personal expense, ran the Spanish blockade and evacuated hundreds of people from the besieged city of Cartagena, Colombia to Haiti. In spite of his success in this dangerous exploit he argued with Simón Bolívar, leader of the Latin American revolutionaries, over payment for his services.
Aury subsequently accepted an appointment as resident commissioner of Galveston Island, Texas, made by José Manuel de Herrera, an envoy from the fledgling Republic of Mexico, who had declared Galveston a port of the Republic. Aury established a privateering base there in September 1816.
However, while Aury was away transporting Francisco Javier Mina and his men to the Santander River in 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 founded 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 on August 30, 1821, though some sources claim he was living in Havana in 1845.
In 1820 Guatemala City was still the capital of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, so Central America was seen as yet under the sway of Spain, and thus was open to attack from its enemies. In an attempt to secure their independence, the Colombian insurgents fitted a combined sea and land expedition to operate against the ports of Omoa and Trujillo, in Honduras.
On the 21st of April, 1820, the watch-tower at Capiro in Trujillo Port announced the approach of a Colombian flotilla. The port's garrison, commanded by Jose M. Palomar, at once made emergency preparations for the impending attack. At two o'clock in the afternoon the approaching flotilla hoisted a flag with two blue bars and a white one between them showing an escutcheon in the center. Commodore Louis-Michel Aury dispatched a boat to shore to demand the port’s surrender within one hour. The town did not comply. The following day Commodore Aury moved the flotilla to the mouth of the Guaimoreto River and began bombardment. The attack started at 9 AM and lasted until 2 PM. The firing ceased when the flotilla was ordered out to sea and out of the reach of the port’s cannons. A portion of the land force then attempted to enter the town by the rear, but was detected and driven out.
During the night of the 24th, the Colombian vessels dropped out of sight. On the 25th the flotilla appeared off the port of Omoa and for several days attempted to land. Commodore Aury was unsuccessful and left the area on the 6th of May. It is believed that Louis-Michel Aury died the following year, but he is not recognized by any of the countries he served. Aury was perceived as a member of the Colombian liberation fighters because of his affiliation with Simon Bolivar.
History of Central America, by Hubert Howe Bancroft