<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (May 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Born at Calais during the Nine Years' War (1688--97) to a wealthy bourgeois family, he became a naval officer after receiving an excellent education . During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701--1714), he procured a Letter of Marque from king Louis XIV and became a privateer for the French crown . When the war ended he was ordered to return home with his ship, but instead joined the Benjamin Hornigold pirate company in 1716 . Levasseur proved himself a good leader and shipmate, although he already had a scar across one eye limiting his sight . </P> <P> After a year of successful looting, the Hornigold party split, Levasseur partnering briefly with Samuel Bellamy before deciding to try his luck on the West African coast . In 1719 he operated together with Howell Davis and Thomas Cocklyn for a time . In 1720, they attacked the slaver port of Ouidah, which was part of the Kingdom of Whydah at the time and is on the coast of what is now Benin, reducing the local fortress to ruins . Later that year, he was shipwrecked in the Mozambique Channel and stranded on the island of Anjouan, one of the Comores . His bad eye had become completely blind by now so he started wearing an eyepatch . </P> <P> From 1720 onwards he launched his raids from a base on the island of Sainte - Marie, just off the Madagascar coast, together with pirates John Taylor, Jasper Seagar, and Edward England, (no doubt planning to capture one of the Great mughal's heavily armed but usually heavily laden pilgrim ships to Mecca). His quartermaster at this time was Paulsgrave Williams, who had had been Bellamy's quartermaster then fellow Captain until Bellamy was killed in a storm off Cape Cod . They first plundered the Laccadives, and sold the loot to Dutch traders for £ 75,000 . Levasseur and Taylor eventually got tired of England's humanity and marooned him on the island of Mauritius . </P>

Who was the pirate who said he hid his treasure