Capture of Roberto Cofresí

Date: March 5, 1825 • Location: Central Aguirre, United States

Roberto Cofresí, one of the last Caribbean pirates, was apprehended after his flagship sloop Anne was captured by authorities.

Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano, also known as El Pirata Cofresí, was a Puerto Rican pirate. He was born into a noble family, but the political and economic difficulties faced by the island as a colony of the Spanish Empire during the regional independence wars against the metropole meant that his household was poor. Cofresí worked at sea from an early age, which familiarized him with the region's geography, but provided him with only a modest salary. He eventually decided to abandon the sailor's life and become a pirate. He had previous links to land-based criminal activities, but the reason for Cofresí's change of vocation is unknown; historians speculate that he may have worked as a privateer aboard El Scipión, a ship owned by one of his cousins.