The accounts that Exquemelin gives of Le Grand and another buccaneer named Pierre Francois are also remarkably similar.

Pierre had recruited a crew of 28 men on a single small boat and sailed in search of Spanish ships to rob.

After a long, fruitless cruise, his buccaneer band spotted a ship, a straggler from the Spanish treasure fleet.

The legend says that Pierre ordered the crew's surgeon to cut a hole in the side of their own boat and sink it, to inspire the men to fight their hardest for lack of a means of retreat.

Pierre le Grand then forced some of the Spanish crew into his service, set the rest ashore (presumably on Hispaniola), and took his captured ship and his men to France.