By: Rhea Cortado
The last time Santa Teresa resident Thomas Ritchie launched his extraordinary wooden boat, Aurora Delfin, from the Pochoto rivermouth during the summer of 2009, he was a pirate in the open seas without any registered tags. The coast guard flagged him down numerous times and each time the officials boarded the vessel to inspect, the crew grew nervous.
“Three times we were boarded. They were pretty cool. They came up and grabbed the paddles. They’d start singing these songs, making video, taking pictures,” said Ritchie, relieved. “We were so scared.”
Ritchie’s friend, Angel Garcia, who was also on board added, “Imagine the coast guard boarding and saying, ‘You guys are cool. I know you don’t have drugs. This boat is so cool!’”

Ritchie plans to launch the boat for the first time this summer season in January in Playa Tambor—and this time he will start the journey with registered tags. He envisions that the Aurora Delfin will host small groups of surfers looking for remote waves only accessible by boat and offer educational tours when the ship drops anchor.
Amongst the seascape of white sailboats, the captivating watercraft that resembles something out of a Hollywood movie or fantasy causes a ripple of excitement wherever it’s spotted. During its last voyage, Ritchie gave tours to students from three different schools along the coast. In Puerto Jimenez, the kids dressed up for the field trip to the “pirate ship” with homemade eye patches, fake birds, and pirate flags.

“Later on, I’ll be in some supermarket far away and some Tico [will tap] me on the shoulder, whip out his cell phone [photo] and go, ‘my kid was on your boat.’ I’d be like, ‘this is crazy.’ I want to do more of that. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a good reward to give someone the opportunity,” Richie said.
Building the Aurora Delfin with dark hued teak wood planks, bamboo  (most of which was grown on his property) and epoxy coating, was a process that spanned 10 years. For seven of those years, the boat sat dormant in a garage, half-built and mostly untouched. As a surfer, Ritchie describes designing the graceful shape and smooth glide of the boat in surfboard terms like tail rocker, tapered sides and tapered nose. The double outrigger form, partly inspired by ancient Polynesian design, was made especially for surf conditions.
“The hull was designed to go for shallow areas, for bays and reefs for surfing. The double pontoons make it very stable. It is like a floating camping trip,” Ritchie said.
The final building sprint to the finish line was littered with hurdles and false starts. On one attempt, it didn’t make it out to sea because the glass bottom for viewing sea life cracked on a rock on the beach. For the next attempt, he got it out cruising in the water for seven weeks, but found the hull sat too low in the water and decided to truck it back home by land for a major redesign. After finally working out the kinks through trial and error, the Aurora Delfin II, in its current new and improved incarnation, made it’s first trip up the coast of Nicaragua and down to the border of Panama in January 2009.
Though the Aurora Delfin is Ritchie’s current, most time-consuming creative venture, it is one in a long line of his artistic building projects as a resident of Santa Teresa for 20 years. Ritchie first moved from Vancouver, Canada to Santa Teresa in 1991 after seeing and experiencing the beach’s prime surfable waves
“It was pretty underground,” Ritchie said of surfer tourism to Costa Rica. “Witches Rock [Roca Bruja] was just being discovered. Pavones had been around for 20 years, but no one had talked about it. It was just starting to hit the magazines. Salsa Brava on the Caribbean side—those were the three main waves. It wasn’t a destination spot. People didn’t just flock to Costa Rica.”
Ritchie claims to be the first foreigner to live in Santa Teresa through the rainy season. He camped with no electricity during the four years it took to build his two-story, circular house out of wood and concrete. His past ventures include renting cabinas, a bike store and a surf shop (which he sold and is now called Kina Surf Shop). He also built wood furniture and made art from driftwood and rock, which he continues to do to this day. But now that the fun summer surf season has arrived, he’s ready to escape the bustle of downtown Santa Teresa and live partly off the grid again, on a camping adventure out in the ocean.
“You stand up, paddle, you scuba dive, you’re out in the water,” said Ritchie of life on the boat. “It’s all about getting food, gas, supplies, water, staying on the boat, surfing, living, resting, cooking. It’s a whole different type of camping and living. It’s not for everybody.”
To find out more, visit www.reefrider.net.

A team of Connecticut scuba divers say they’ve discovered off the Westerly coast the wreck of a ship once commanded by Rhode Island naval war hero Oliver Hazard Perry, whose actions helped the United States defeat the British during the War of 1812.
It was after the naval victory at Lake Erie in September 1813 — during which Perry had one ship founder beneath him before transferring to another and continuing the battle — that his message to his commanders would become immortalized: “We have met the enemy and they are ours ...”

Now, divers Charles Buffum and Craig Harger say Perry would have never been at the Battle of Lake Erie had his schooner not sunk off the reefs of Watch Hill.
Buffum, the owner of a Pawcatuck brewery, declined to name the ship they’ve discovered until a planned announcement Friday afternoon in Westerly. But local marine archeologists, who have heard of the find, identified the vessel as the Revenge, a schooner that sank on Jan. 8, 1811 –– exactly 200 years ago Saturday.
Rhode Island marine archaeologist D.K. “Kathy” Abbass wrote a history of Rhode Island’s early navy for the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., and is leading much of the underwater mapping of sunken ships in Rhode Island waters. She is familiar with the Revenge.

She says it’s a “long stretch” to say, as the divers have, that the vessel’s sinking “changed the course of U.S. history” merely because Perry ended up on Lake Erie two years later.

Further, because of how the Revenge sank –– and the likelihood that hundreds of other wooden vessels have fallen victim to the rocks and rip currents in the area known as The Race — she wonders if the divers have definitive proof they’ve found the Revenge.
According to Abbass, the Revenge, which was conducting the all-important task of charting coastal waters — went aground in fog off Watch Hill. Sailors transferred much of her cargo to other vessels before starting to tow her off the rocks. During the towing, the cable parted and the Revenge began drifting and, eventually, went down.
“If you knew the direction of the wind that day and the tide, you might get a trajectory of where she might be” now, said Abbass. “But it’s a very complicated thing. So, if [the divers] haven’t done the analysis, I’d question if that is really her.”

Buffum said Thursday the divers did not find anything at the wreck that positively identified the ship as the Revenge. Still he said they were confident of their findings.
If the ship is the Revenge, it remains the property of the Navy, said Abbass, and cannot be salvaged by treasure hunters. Buffum said there was little of the ship left. The divers hope a government-funded archeological excavation might mine some historic value.
Perry was born in South Kingstown on Aug. 23, 1785. A biography written by the National Parks Service says that a court-martial proceeding exonerated Perry of the sinking, blaming the Revenge’s loss on the ship’s pilot who had assured Perry he could navigate Block Island Sound.

Still, the sinking blemished Perry’s career. He ended up cooling his heels in Newport for a time, unemployed, until the threat of war in 1812 earned him an assignment of leading a squadron of small gunboats in Newport Harbor.

Dissatisfied that he did not have a high-seas sloop-of-war at his command, he petitioned the Navy Department several times for postings at sea. Finally, as a last resort, he called upon a friend who commanded warships on Lake Erie for a command.
On Sept. 10, 1813, the American and British fleets prepared to do battle. Perry began the fight aboard his flagship, the Lawrence. Just before its sinking, he boarded a lifeboat and rowed with a few remaining sailors to the Niagara, considered an extremely brave action, and carried on the fight to victory.

By Tom Mooney

Journal Staff Writer

http://www.projo.com/news/content/OLIVER_PERRYS_SHIP_01-07-11_4QLR7P8_v9.b14fb.html

Jacob Collaart or Collaert (floruit ca. 1625-1637) was a Flemish admiral who served as privateer and one of the Dunkirkers in Spanish Habsburg service during the Dutch Revolt. He was responsible for the capture of destruction of at least 150 fishing vessels, bringing 945 captured sailors back to his base in Dunkirk for ransom. A leading admiral over the next decade, he would have later encounters with other Dutch corsairs of the period including Captain Claes Compaan who escaped from him after sighting the corsair off the Spanish coast.

From 1633 until 1637, Collaart served as Vice Admiral with the Royal Squadron operating out of Dunkirk and, in 1635, his attacks against Dutch herring redders would cost the city of Flushing over two million guilders in income.

Although the city of Dunkirk was under a Dutch blockade during early 1635, the blockade was temporarily weakened as several warships under Lieutenant-Admiral Philips van Dorp were supporting French naval forces in the Gulf of Biscay and, on 14 August, Collaert sailing out of Dunkirk successfully broke through the Dutch blockade with a fleet of twenty-one vessels.

Within three days, Collaart's fleet located a herring fleet numbering 160 under the guard of a single man-of-war, armed with 39 guns and an 85-men crew. Easily disabling the escort, 74 vessels were either sunk or set afire with the surviving vessels escaping to the Vlie.

On 19 August, after chasing off the six men-of-war escorts, Collaart's forces destroyed around 50 herring boats near Doggersbank. Of the surviving fishermen, 150 sailors including wounded as well as the young and the elderly were put on a merchant vessel from Hamburg and returned to the Dutch Republic while the remaining 775 were held captive for ransom.

After this latest attack, a Dutch fleet was soon raised by the States-General of the Netherlands who ordered all available vessels to set out after the Collaart's fleet. Sailing from Rotterdam, its commander Willem Codde van der Burch was ordered to rendez-vous at the Texel with Philips van Dorp, recently returning from La Rochelle, and Vice Admiral Quast.

Collaart soon encountered the Dutch fleet of Van der Burch and Van Dorp, consisting of a combined twenty warships, and managed to damage four before the arrival of Quast's fleet forced Collaart to abandon the fight. In part due to bad weather, Collaart was able to escape to Dunkirk, arriving with 975 captive fisherman on 8 September 1635.

The following year, while sailing with two other privateers, Collaart and Mathieu Romboutsen were captured (the third captain managing to escape to an English port) near Dieppe after a five hour battle against Captain Johan Evertsen on 29 February 1636.

Collaart died of an illness at La Coruña in August 1637. He had a son who was also a privateer, Jacques Collaert the Younger, and was the father-in-law of the later English Vice-Admiral Edward Spragge.

Claes Gerritszoon Compaen (1587, Oostzaan, North Holland - February 25, 1660, Oostzaan), also called Claas Compaan or Klaas Kompaan, was a 17th century Dutch corsair and merchant. Dissatisfied as a privateer for the Dutch Republic, he later turned to piracy capturing hundreds of ships operating in Europe, the Mediterranean and West Africa during the 1620s.

Born in Oostzaan, his father was an alleged member of the Geuzen of Dirck Duyvel housed in Zaanstreek allied other nobleman in opposition of Spanish rule. Compaen went to sea at an early age and eventually became a successful merchant as a trader along the coast of Guinea. He later used the profits from these voyages to refit his ships for privateering activities against the Spanish. Based from Oostende and Duinkerken, he was initially successful capturing several Spanish prizes within a short period of time, however, several of the ships were later released by Dutch authorities. One of these captured ships was over 200 tons, fitted with 17 guns and manned by a crew of 80 men.

Sometime around 1621, he left port with a letter of marque from the Dutch Admiralty leaving them to pay his debt of 8,000 gilders to the widow of Medemblik ship owner Captain Pieter Gerritszoon, from whom he had purchased his ship. He soon stopped a fishing boat, taking its cargo of herring and salted fish, and used letter of credit issued by Dutch authorities although the Admiralty refused to compensate the fishermen. He seized the cargo of another ship before taking shelter in Vlissingen from an approaching storm. While in port, he took on 50 additional crew members. Shortly after leaving Vlissingen, he resorted to open and indiscriminate piracy selling his cargo in England and the Barbary coast.

In 1625, he began operating from the Duchy of Clare. He was a close friend of the local governor as well as the Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford and freely operated in the Irish Sea and the English Channel under their protection for some time. Compaen later turned up in the Mediterranean, selling captured ships and their cargo at the Moroccan ports of Saffi, Mogador and Salé.

While at Salé, he sold most of his prizes to Simon the Dancer, Jr., son of the famed Dutch privateer Simon the Dancer who had been active in the area during the previous decade. The heavy costs of dealing with him eventually caused Compaen to do business with his chief rival Jan Janszoon. This caused a major disagreement, with Simon sending a fleet to attack him while at port. Compaen was warned of the attack ahead of time and was able to successfully defeat the attackers as well as capture one of the Simon's ships. During the raid, Simon's flagship was reportedly so badly damaged it was forced to retreat from the battle. Following this defeat, Simon was forced to leave Salé seeking asylum in the Dutch Republic. Receiving a pardon from the Netherlands, he eventually becoming a corsair himself.


In 1626, Compaen began looking to request a pardon from the Dutch so as to return to his homeland. On July 5, two ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company were sighted. These ships, the Hollandia and the smaller yacht Grootenbroek, had been separate from the main fleet which had gone ahead to the Verdian Isles without them while the Hollandia was escorted to Sierra Leone to repair a leak (another account claims it stopped to stock up on limes for its crew suffing from scurvy). Compaen ordered his four ships to attack the stragglers although he was forced to withdraw after his flagship suffered severe damage from the Hollandia under Captain Wybrant Schram. Seventy of his men had also been killed in battle. When Schram's logbook was later published, Compaen gained particular notoriaty from the battle whose reputation was established as "the most notorious Dutch pirate".

With his other three ships guarding the harbor, both protecting the flagship and preventing the two East India ships from leaving, Compaen managed to sail his ship into Sierra Leone for repairs. Although tensions were high between the two parties while in port, he left peacefully with his fleet once repairs had been completed. The Hollandia and the Grootenbroek were allowed to leave and eventually arrived in Batavia in December 1626.

Compaen, at certain times, often found it difficult to control his large crew who were given to heavy drinking and survived on poor rations being short of supplies. In one incident, he attacked a Spanish settlement because his fleet were running low on provisions. He and his crew were unable to defeat the Spanish defenders however and ended up retreating with heavy losses. While sailing along the Spanish coast, he also encountered the pirate Colaert of Duinkerken. Despite his fleet being outnumbered 4 to 1, he was able to escape from the stronger Colaert.

In 1626 or 1627, Compaan returned to Salé with a number of recently captured prizes. While there, he was told he had been granted a pardon from the Netherlands. He sailed immediately for home, only four days before a Dutch fleet arrived looking to apprehend him. Stopping to drop off some of his crew in Ireland, he arrived in Vlie and officially received his pardon from Prince Frederik Hendrik in the Hague. He apparently found less success in his later years, eventually dying a pauper in Oostzanen on February 25, 1660.

A biography on his piratical career, The Life of Claes G. Compaen, was published in Amsterdam by De Groot in 1715.

This entry was posted on January 4, 2011 at 10:44 am, filed under What to Do and tagged Archaeology, Blackbeard, History, Maritime Museum in Beaufort, Museum of History, Queen Anne's Revenge, Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Laboratory. Bookmark the permalink.

François or Francis Le Clerc, known as Jambe de Bois ('Peg Leg'), was a 16th century French privateer, originally from Normandy. He is credited as the first pirate in the modern era to have a "peg leg".

He was often the first to board an enemy vessel during an attack or raid. It was this brazen style that eventually caused him to suffer the loss of a leg and severe damage to one arm while fighting the English at Guernsey in 1549. Although many pirates would have had their careers ended by such an injury, le Clerc refused to retire and instead expanded the scope of his piracy by financing the voyages and attacks of other pirates as well.

Despite his wounds, Le Clerc led major raids against the Spanish, who nicknamed him "Pie de Palo" ("Peg Leg"). In 1553, he assumed overall command of seven pirate craft and three royal vessels, the latter commanded by himself, Jacques Sores and Robert Blundel. This same year he attacked the port of Santa Cruz de La Palma, in the Canary Islands, which he looted and set on fire, destroying a large number of buildings.

This strong fleet raided San Germán in Puerto Rico and methodically looted the ports of Hispaniola (Cuba) from south to north, stealing hides and cannon as they travelled. They sacked Santiago de Cuba in 1554, occupied it for a month, and left with 80,000 pesos in treasure. So completely devastated was Cuba's first capital that it was soon completely eclipsed by Havana and never recovered its former prosperity.

Richer booty was taken on the return voyage as the corsairs plundered Las Palmas on Grand Canary Island and captured a Genoese carrack.

He and his crew of 330 men were the first Europeans to settle the island of Saint Lucia, and used the nearby Pigeon Island to target Spanish treasure galleons.
In 1560, while awaiting a Spanish treasure fleet carrying a cargo of bullion, he caused a great deal of damage to settlements along the coast of Panama.

In April 1562, Protestants in several Norman cities rebelled against their Roman Catholic king. Queen Elizabeth I of England dispatched British troops to occupy Le Havre until June 1563. Le Clerc joined the English invaders and ravaged French shipping. In March 1563, he asked for a large pension as a reward for his actions. Wounded in his pride when Elizabeth turned down his request, he sailed for the Azores Islands. He was killed there in 1563, while hunting down Spanish treasure ships

David Marteen (fl. 1663-1665) was a Dutch privateer based in Tortuga during the mid-17th century, known primarily as the sole non-English Captain who participated in the raids against Spanish strongholds in present-day Mexico and Nicaragua during 1663 until 1665.

Although raids against the Spanish were prohibited under British law, he agreed to join Sir Henry Morgan's expedition and soon set sail from Port Royal along with John Morris and Captain's Jackman and Freeman under letters of marque issued by Governor Thomas Modyford.

After reaching the Grijalva River, Marteen and the others led their men 50 miles overland and successfully looted Villa Hermosa in a surprise raid. Returning to the coast, they discovered a Spanish patrol had captured their ships and, after a fierce battle, they managed to retake two barques and four Indian canoes. Marteen eventually made his way back with the others, raiding Spanish villages on the way, until their arrival in Port Royal in November 1665. Although Marteen served as a pirate hunter under Modyford during the next year , nothing more is known of his activities after this time.

There have been reports that Marteen led a group that later established a base in Connecticut, near the Farmington River and were wiped out during King Philip's war in 1676. There are a few treasure hunters seeking the evidence of Marteen's settlement and possible remnants of any undiscovered treasure.