How do we know that Bush–for all his rhetoric–is soft on pirates? Because otherwise, surely, Bill Frist would have rebirthed filibusters as Catalan fills de puta, “whoresons.” I can’t get into the OED, but here’s the fairly vague Barnhart dictionary of etymology (1988):

JF Bense’s Dictionary of the Low-Dutch element in the English vocabulary delves deeper, suggesting cross-fertilisation with the Dutch vlieboot:

Columnist The Tatler in the Montreal Herald of 1903/3/7 tells us more about the vlieboot:

However,

The vlieboot derivation actually makes a good deal of sense to me, either by itself (see The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862) or–as Brense suggests–in conjunction with vrijbuiter. I don’t know who The Tatler’s “modern authorities” were, but they may have been operating along the same lines as eighteenth century Royal Navy captain James Burney, who wrote in History of the buccaneers of America (1803):

Burney’s first objection makes no sense–I can’t imagine anyone translating fluyt as “flyboat” (although an English-speaker might conceivably have interpreted fluyt as fluyboot (Dutch)/flyboat, and vlieboot turns up before fluyt in Dutch–but his second is interesting. His point is that this type of boat was designed to specialise in bulk cargo transport on inland waterways, not for pursuing and engaging other vessels, but I think that he’s wrong.

In the C16th the Vlie connected the Netherlands inland waterways with the North Sea, which it entered between the islands of Vlieland en Terschelling, and was the principal channel used by those sailing north and east, to the Hanze ports in north Germany and the Baltic, and was also an important base for ships sailing west, to the Mediterranean and to other continents. It was thus the scene of fierce battles involving the local and global powers, and fleaboats (conventional English transcription) were in the thick of the action.

The first (ambiguous) reference I’ve found is from 1575, in which “Een vlietsche Boot, seer vreeslijck schoot” (A Vliet boat fired a terrible shot). I think vliet is used here in its meaning “stream”, “water”, rather than to refer to the stinking ditch of Roman origin connecting The Hague and Delft. The editorial note agrees, and tells us that this is what Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft referred to as a vlieboot in his tradition-inventing Nederlandse historiën (1642-1656), when Adriaen Corneliszoon van Vlissinge, seeing a colleague under pressure, attacked the Spaniards in his vlieboot. Unfortunately it’s not clear whether Hooft is using 16th or contemporary terminology. It’s also unclear where this site sourced its information, but the message is clear: vlieboten were small but heavily-manned and -armed, and capable of seeing off larger Spanish vessels.

My problem–and Burney’s apparent vindication–is that the Spanish often use filibote–generally accepted as their version of vlieboot–to refer to a cargo vessel, not a warship. Here’s a letter from Philip II of Spain dated 1593/7/3 dealing with bread shipments from the east (grain and wood were the two major imports from the Baltic):

The reference in Pedro Simón’s 1600 tale of overseas conquests Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales is more ambiguous:

There’s a good article here, which, in explaining the differences between the various vessels, makes me suspect that the Philip’s cargo boat and Caribbean pirate ships, while having come to differ from one another as a result of the functional requirements made of them, nevertheless had a common parent–efficacious and economical–on the Vlie.

Bense’s problem with accounting for “the s in the French and Spanish words cited” (eg, how the hell do you get from flyboater, one who travels in a vlieboot, to flibustier) may be explicable in terms of the gradual elision from the spoken language from certain words of certain consonants, consonants which nevertheless continued to be used in writing. Here are a couple of C17th illustrative equivalents which serve as well for the vrijbuiter as for the vlieboot derivation:

Explaining the r/l situation in fribuste/flibuste is slightly more difficult (except for Korean parents). I think I’ve heard this kind of thing happening in Spain, but I can’t remember where. However, it does turn up in Cuba, where pirates used to hang around in large numbers (and still do, according to Mr Bush).

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