Frequently referred to as Sieur de Montauban (last name occasionally Montauband), he wrote an account of his later voyages including surviving a shipwreck.

Born in 1660, Montauban visited the African coast as early as 1676, “having begun to use the Seas at the Age of Sixteen.”[1] In 1690 he sailed under fellow French corsair Mathurin Desmarestz in the Caribbean.

[2] Montauban captained La Machine off Newfoundland in 1691 after parting with Desmarestz, where he forced some French sailors into piracy, and the same year he captured an English fort when he returned to Africa's Guinea coast.

[4] Montauban was badly injured and thrown free but managed to cling to wreckage before some of his surviving sailors picked him up in a small boat.

Two years later he published an account of his African voyage, and wrote that “I do not know whether I have bid the Sea adieu.”[1] Some sources report that he died in 1700,[5] others that he continued to captain French privateer ships as late as 1708.