Colonel Plug

Colonel Plug
Born	? Rockingham County, New Hampshire
Died	1820? Cache River, at the confluence of the Ohio River, just above the Mississippi River, in Southern Illinois
Cause of death	drowning
Resting place	unknown
Nationality	American
Other names	Colonel Fluger, Colonel Flueger, Colonel Pflueger, "Col. Plug, the last of the Boat-wreckers"
Ethnicity	German
Occupation	river pirate, criminal gang leader, state militia officer
Spouse(s)	Pluggy

Cache River Pirates

Founded by	Colonel Plug, Nine-Eyes
Founding location	Cache River, at the confluence of the Ohio River, just above the Mississippi River, in Southern Illinois
Years active	1790s-1820
Territory	Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky
Ethnicity	European-American, African-American
Membership (est.)	?
Criminal activities	river piracy, theft, fencing stolen goods, murder
Rivals	Samuel Mason (river pirate), Kuykendall (river pirate)

Colonel Plug (1700s? - 1820?) somewhere, between 1790 and 1820, the legendary river pirate also, known and spelled as Colonel Fluger, Colonel Flueger, and Colonel Pflueger, may have been of German ancestry, as these are German surnames, ran a gang of river pirates on the Ohio River, in a cypress swamp, near the mouth of the Cache River, which was below the river pirate hideout of Cave-In-Rock and the U.S. Army post at Fort Massac, which monitored and policed frontier river traffic, just above the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi River.

Tales of Colonel Plug may have been based on the real life, Cave-In-Rock river pirate, Samuel Mason or by his alias, "Bully Wilson". The Colonel's usual tactics were to sneak aboard or have one of his pirates, secretly, go into the hull of a boat and either, dig out the caulking between the floor planks or drill holes with an auger, causing the boat to sink and be easily attacked. The boat and the cargo would later, be sold down, the Mississippi River, in New Orleans.

Little is known about Colonel Plug, if he was actually a real person, except, from the folklorish descriptions provided, in 1830, by Timothy Flint's "Col. Plug, the last of the Boat-wreckers," in the Cincinnati, Ohio newspaper, The Western Monthly Review and "The Boat-Wreckers—Or Banditti of the West," in the Rochester, New York newspaper, Daily Advertiser, Jan. 29, 1830.

According to Timothy Flint, Colonel Plug was described as:

"But being a youth of broad red cheeks, muscle and impudence, and withal, abundantly stored with small talk, from eighteen to twenty-one he was a decided favorite with the fair, and had had various love affairs, being reputed remarkably slippery in regard to the grace of perseverance. At twenty four he had mounted epaulettes, was a militia colonel, had a portentous red nose, and was in bad odour with all honest people."

Colonel Plug had a wife, known as "Pluggy", who always cheated on him. He had a partner and co-leader, of the river pirate gang, named "Nine-Eyes", who may have been an escaped slave, manumitted former slave, or free-born negro.

Colonel Plug claimed to have been a Yankee, native from Rockingham County, New Hampshire and was a former colonel in the New Hampshire Militia. No historical evidence exists to justify this military claim, as no Fluger, Flueger, or Pflueger German surnames, as many spelling variations exist, can be found in the New Hampshire U.S. census records or the Rockingham County military muster rolls.

See also

• Peter Alston
• James Ford (pirate)
• Wiley Harpe
• piracy
• Samuel Mason
• John Murrell (bandit)
• Stack Island (Mississippi River)
• Tower Rock

References

• Asbury, Herbert. The French Quarter: The Informal of the New Orleans Underworld. Knof, 1936.
• Wagner, Mark and Mary McCorvie. "Going to See the Varmint: Piracy in Myth and Reality on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, 1785–1830," X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy. Gainesville,FL: University Press of Florida, 2006.
• Flint, Timothy. "Col. Plug, the last of the Boat-wreckers," The Western Monthly Review. Cincinnati, OH, 1830.
• "The Boat-Wreckers—Or Banditti of the West," Daily Advertiser, Jan. 29, 1830. Rochester, NY.

External links

• Col. Plug and the Pirates of the Cache River
• "Colonel Plug And His Wooden Plugs", The Southeast Missourian Newspaper