Francois L'Ollonais

Name: Jean David Nau

Nationality: French

Type: Buccaneer (not the same as a pirate)

Known As: Francois L'Ollonais / "Flail of the Spaniards"

Born: 1635

Died: 1668

Active: 1660-1668

Activity: Caribbean, Central America

Flag: [no special roger]

Zoro was named after this guy?!

Indeed he was. He might the most cold-blooded villian around and not even a pirate (a buccaneer is something slightly different), but besides the American "Zorro" his last name is very close to Zoro's. 'Roronoa' could be translated as 'Lolonoa', since there's no distinction between "L" and "R" in Japan. Add the fact that Oda has a penchant for naming his characters after actual pirates (Bellamy, Blackbeard, etc) and you'll see why his Bio is here.

Francois Lolonois (L'Ollonais, L'ollonais) :17th Century Pirate. Lolonais lived in the seventeenth century and was (probably) born in France. He was first employed as a regular mariner but after some time he began attacking Spanish vessels in the Caribbean. His base of operations was the Isle of Tortuga, where the governer (also a buccaneer) gave him his first ship to command. Lolonais captured several Spanish vessels and was ruthless, always killing everyone aboard. With a fleet fitted out and manned at Tortuga he was also able to capture and plunder the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar in 1666. In May 1667 he left the Isle of Tortuga on board his vessel Saint-Jean, a ship that he had taken at Maracaibo. He plundered the harbour city Puerto de Cavallo and the town of San Pedro.

After having captured a Spanish ship around the coast of Yucatan his fleet split up. Lolonais left with his ship but at the Isles De las Pertas he ran aground. After several attempts to get it afloat again they made a long-boat and part of the crew left with him. He reached the river of Nicaragua where he and some of his crew were captured by Indians and killed. His life ended perhaps as miserably as he had made those he had tortured and killed himself: he was cut into pieces and burned.

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"The Buccaneers of America." Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000. Translated from Dutch by Alexis Brown in 1969.