After some times, Exquemelin gains his total liberty and becomes a privateer (in French: flibustier), leading the cowkiller’s life (in French: la vie de boucanier) between the expeditions. Of all the expeditions that he tells us about, Exquemelin took part in only two of them: the sack and plunder of both Maracaibo (1669) and Panama (1670-71). In 1672, while serving on board a privateer at Cuba, he gets tired of the privateer life that he has been leading for five years. Therefore he sets off from Cuba on board a Dutch vessel that is en route to Europe.
Between 1672 and 1686 he makes three other voyages to America both with the Dutch and the Spanish as he writes himself. The Dutch archives have preserved some records of one of these voyages. In the spring of 1674 he enlisted, at Amsterdam, as a chief-surgeon on board a vessel of admiral De Ruyter’s fleet, who sets out to attack the French Antilles. Some days before his departure, on 27 April, he had granted a power of attorney to one of his relative. After an unsuccesful attack of Martinique (in July), De Ruyter drops anchor in Holland in September of the same year. When De Ruyter returns to sea again he sets sail for the Mediterranean Sea, where he will die in 1676. Exquemelin seems to have take part in this second expedition, since his power of attorney was canceled on November 30th, 1676.
In 1678, Exquemelin is again at Amsterdam where the publisher Jan ten Hoorn prints for the first time the book that bears his name. But Hoorn does not limit himself to a translation into Dutch of the French manuscript: he supresses some parts, rewrites others and likewise adds a complete chapter, all of this to make the book more attractive for a Dutch public. This was a common practice at this time (17th century): Exquemelin wasn’t a professional writer and he didn’t have any influence in a city and a country where he was a sea’s surgeon and a stranger. The records of the authorities of the Dutch capital show only this double title (surgeon and stranger) in September of the next year. On October 1679 he passes, with success, his surgeon’s last examination, that enables him to practice his profession in Dutch land as he had done at sea.
In the following years, we loose all trace of Exquemelin. But the history of his book is best known. Since 1679, it is translated in German. In 1681, the first Spanish edition, containing many unpublished details, is printed in Cologne. The translator is the Spaniard Alonso de Buena Maison, graduate of medicine from the university of Leyde, and who probably knew Exquemelin in person. The doctor Buena Maison proceeds to rewrite the book because he does not want it to give offense to Spanish readers. Afterwards, it’s the turn of the English. In 1684, in London, the publishers Crooke and Malthus each print an English version of the Exquemelin’s book; the first edition is a translation of the Spanish edition, the second is a translation of the Dutch one. But sir Henry Morgan, the ex-jamaican privateer and for a while governor of Jamaica, is offended by some parts of the book in which he is the principal hero. Then, he prosecutes the two English publishers. In 1685, Crooke and Malthus are condemned to pay to him an indemnity and to rectify the facts in the preface of the book.
As to Exquemelin, we find him again at Paris, in 1686, where he is working on a commission of the French Royal Navy: a written account of the Chagres River. During his stay there he is presented to the admiral d’Estrées whom he had saw, the first time, 15 years earlier after the sack of Maracaibo. This same year, the Parisian publisher Jacques Lefebvre prints a new edition of his book under the author’s name of Oexmelin, proof that the French surgeon is not consulted about the final text of his adventures. This first French edition contains some ten new chapters. It appears to be based on a new manuscript of Exquemelin that differs from the one that was used for the preceding editions.
Last indication concerning the life of Exquemelin: in 1699 he leaves France one more time and a travels to America. This year, he doesn’t have time to assist in the publication of the second French edition of his book. This last original edition is again increased with many new chapters that relate some of the adventures of the buccaneers since 1682. These new chapters are not based on the manuscript of the French surgeon, but on accounts of anonymous buccaneers.