The life and times of Louis Guittar are extremely sparse with no mention of his life before turning to piracy other than he was possibly born in 1667 perhaps in Brittany. He became active in the latter part of 1690 captured a fast merchant vessel, the La Paix (Peace) in Barbados, converted it into his pirate flagship, then seized other ships to assemble a pirate fleet. They preyed upon trade vessels in the Caribbean and Mid-Atlantic region. He sometimes wore a golden toothpick on a golden necklace. Described by the master of a captured ship, “The Captain was a man of middle stature, square-shouldered, large jointed, lean, much disfigured with the smallpox, broad speech, thick-lipped, a blemish or cast in his left eye, but courteous."

At the beginning of 1700 the act of plundering ships in the Chesapeake Bay was startled when an English warship under the command of Captain William Passenger to combat pirating in the area. Deciding to instead to a hasty retreat option Guittar selected another target Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia a few months later to which a battle ensued and he was coerced to admit defeat and with a last-ditch effort threatened to explode the ship if he was not pardoned. Capt. Guittar and the entire crew pleaded quarter as a defense plus the pirate's invariable defense -- "Those other wicked pirates forced me to serve against my will." But, as usual, the forced-to-serve defense failed because the defendants couldn't prove it. The quarter defense failed because quarter was granted only under the illegal threat of murder. Capt. Guittar and his crew were well and truly hanged in 1700 for Piracy on the High Seas.