“ During the first three months his courage was tried by a violent tempest, an imminent shipwreck, the boarding of an English ship, and the threatened destruction of his own vessel by fire. The following year, as a volunteer in a vessel of 28 guns, he was present in a bloody combat with an English fleet of five merchant vessels. The courage he then showed was so remarkable that in 1691, at the age of eighteen, his family gave him a corsair of 14 guns; and having been thrown by a tempest on the coast of Ireland, he burned two English ships in the river Limerick. ”

“ He was born at St Malo on the 10th of June 1673. He was originally intended for the church, and studied with that view at Rennes and Caen; but on the breaking out of the war with England and Holland in 1689 he went to sea in a privateer owned by his family. ”