In 1818, Cofresí decided to become a pirate and organized a crew composed of eight to ten men from his hometown.

Area where Cofresí and his men operated

Cofresí and his men escaped from prison, however they were captured once again and imprisoned.

On March 29, 1825, Cofresí and his men were executed by a firing squad.

Cofresí ignored the ships that came from other nations including those from France, Holland and England and his attacks were mainly focused on ships from the United States.

Spain and the United States were having diplomatic and political differences, therefore the Spanish colonial government did not pursue Cofresí or his crew as long as he assaulted American ships.

Cofresí felt that the Spaniards were oppressing the Puerto Ricans in their " own home " and he began assaulting Spanish ships along with the American and English vessels that were being used to export the island's resources, gold in particular.

On one occasion Cofresí and his crew were captured after his ship arrived at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

The Spanish government received many complaints from the nations whose ships were being attacked by " El Pirata Cofresí ", as he became to be known.

Two of the pirates died in the battle and six others, including Cofresí, were injured.

Cofresí was captured along with eleven members of his crew, and they were turned over to the Spanish government.

After this event Cofresí declared war on all of those that operated under the flag of the United States.

On February 1825, Cofresí and his crew attacked a second cargo ship owned by a company based on Saint Thomas and gained control of a load of imported merchandise.

The people on the coasts of Puerto Rico are said to have protected him from the authorities and, according to the Puerto Rican historian Aurelio Tio, Cofresí shared his spoils with the needy, especially members of his family and his friends being regarded by many as the Puerto Rican version of Robin Hood.

Sloat estimated that Cofresí had lost a third of his crew in the previous exchange, based on the number of bodies on the water surrounding the boat.

According to legend, Cofresí " maldijo " ( placed a curse on ) Capt.

Born in Aguada, Puerto Rico, Méndez was one of eight children born to Francisco González Monje and Ana González Cofresí and was a direct descendant of the Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresí, on her mother's side.

According to local legend, after Cofresí shared some of his treasure with his family and friends, he would hide what was left over in the cave.

* 1825 – Roberto Cofresí, one of the last successful Caribbean pirates, is defeated in combat and captured by authorities.

The earliest known story states that in the 1800s, Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresí ( El Pirata Cofresí ), to boost his crew's morale, gave them a beverage or cocktail that contained coconut, pineapple and white rum.

Roberto Cofresí ( June 17, 1791 – March 29, 1825 ), better known as " El Pirata Cofresí ," was the most renowned pirate in Puerto Rico.

The entire town of Cofresí, near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, was named after him.

Cofresí ( birth name: Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano ) was born in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico.

When Francisco Confersin ( Franz Von Kupferschein ) immigrated to Puerto Rico, he went to live in the coastal town of Cabo Rojo and changed his name to Francisco Cofresí, which made it much easier for the Spanish authorities to pronounce.

Francisco Cofresí met and married María Germana Ramírez de Arellano, whose father was the cousin of Nicolás Ramírez de Arellano, the founder of Cabo Rojo.

Roberto Cofresí was four years old when his mother died.

Cofresí and his siblings went to school in his hometown.

Living in a coastal town, the Cofresí brothers often came into contact with visiting sailors.

Cofresí met and married Juana Creitoff, a native of Curaçao, in the San Miguel Arcángel Parish of Cabo Rojo.

In 1822, Cofresí and Juana had a daughter, whom they named María Bernada.

It was a common practice then for the Spanish Crown to look the other way when pirates such as Cofresí attacked ships that did not carry the Spanish flag.

Cofresí was influenced by the separatist faction which was supporting Puerto Rico's independence from Spain.

Cofresí then selected six of them and traveled to the main island ( Puerto Rico ) where they hijacked a schooner named Ana forcing the crew to jump into the ocean, an incident which they survived.

The men in Pettigrew's were tired from a night's drinking, their faces red and baggy.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

There were three other men within this prison whom Barton would have liked to liberate, but they were in other cell blocks.

Two men were on duty inside, playing pinochle, relaxed.

A company of cavalry couldn't come in there if two men were guarding that trail ''.

At the moment, the three men were not saying much of anything.

They were all good men.

All through Albany and Laramie counties, other men were doing the same.

The small half-heartedly tended fields of men who'd spent more time rustling cattle than farming were lying fallow.

Jury, judge and executioner were riding the range in the form of a single unknown figure that could materialize anywhere, at any time, to dispense an ancient brand of justice the men of the new West had believed long outdated.

Within a decade or less, few men were left and a feminist society had sprung up.

`` Karipo was great goddess, told our mothers that men were not necessary except to father children '', the crone told me.

The men behind them were Bill Doolin and five of his gang -- every man a killer.

Even today range riders will come upon mummified bodies of men who attempted nothing more difficult than a twenty-mile hike and slowly lost direction, were tortured by the heat, driven mad by the constant and unfulfilled promise of the landscape, and who finally died.

Strong men with strong opinions, frank to the point of being refreshingly indiscreet, the Founding Seven were essentially congenial minds, and their agreements with each other were more consequential than their differences.

others were of men doffing their hats to each other, carrying umbrellas with pomp, reading newspapers, or simply showing loaves of bread spread out.

In much the same way, we recognize the importance of Shakespeare's familarity with Plutarch and Montaigne, of Shelley's study of Plato's dialogues, and of Coleridge's enthusiastic plundering of the writings of many philosophers and theologians from Plato to Schelling and William Godwin, through which so many abstract ideas were brought to the attention of English men of letters.

Although this kind of wholesale objection came at first from some men who were not technically Puritans, still, once the Puritans gained power, they climaxed the affair by passing the infamous ordinance of 1642 which decreed that all `` public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne ''.

There was much sickness in the corps, and the men were, in addition, without the clothing, shoes, and blankets needed for the winter weather.

If the hardships of the winter at Valley Forge were trying for healthy men, they were, of course, much more so for those not in good health.

The younger men, Vere, and Pembroke, who was also Edward's cousin and whose Lusignan blood gave him the swarthy complexion that caused Edward of Carnarvon's irreverent friend, Piers Gaveston, to nickname him `` Joseph the Jew '', were relatively new to the game of diplomacy, but Pontissara had been on missions to Rome before, and Hotham, a man of great learning, `` jocund in speech, agreeable to meet, of honest religion, and pleasing in the eyes of all '', and an archbishop to boot, was as reliable and experienced as Othon himself.

Behind him lay the Low Countries, where men were still completing the cathedrals that a later Florentine would describe as `` a malediction of little tabernacles, one on top of the other, with so many pyramids and spires and leaves that it is a wonder they stand up at all, for they look as though they were made of paper instead of stone or marble '' ; ;