Boucané(e) on a French menu means smoked. I've wondered idly for years about the origin of this term (what's wrong with fumé after all?). Now thanks to the Rallye des Isles du Soleil I know the answer.

In their June newsletter which I was translating yesterday there was a little item about an outfit called Les Fréres de la Côte. So I did some research into it. It's a version of Just William's gang for grown-ups (sic) which celebrates and reproduces the culture (somewhat romanticized) of the original brothers who were a bunch of pirates hiding out around the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was founded in Chile in the 50s on the birthday of the world's most illustrious prat and has spread around the world.

In this description I discovered that the chaps who weren't busy stealing treasure and making sailors walk the plank were called buccaneers, which I always thought was a synonym for pirate but seems not to have been so originally. In this guise they grew cabbages and hunted wild animals. They smoked the meat from these animals and turned an honest piece of eight by exporting it.

Now the French for buccaneer is boucanier so that's obviously something to do with boucané(e) but which came first? Well it turns out that they were called boucaniers because they used a native grilling device called in the local lingo a boucan in smoking their meat. Hence boucané(e) = smoked.

I suppose I could have found this out years ago by turning to an etymological dictionary or two but then I would not have extended my pitifully limited knowledge of pirates.

I may extend it further by reading Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates but then again I may not.


This is the Brotherhood of the Coast's flag. The resemblance to the Jolly Roger is not coincidental.