After a year of successful looting, the Hornigold party split, Levasseur partnering briefly with Samuel Bellamy before deciding to try his luck on the Brazilian Coast on board a stolen 22 gun Merchant frigate "La Louise". He attacked many boats and ships on his way to the South of Brazil, most notably a Slave ship coming from Angola, whose crew was abandoned to sink in their ship after it was robbed and damaged. He then abandoned 240 stolen slaves on an island off Macae (next to Rio de Janeiro) before a Portuguese armed boat gave him chase. After skirmishes with the Brazilian and Portuguese at Ilha Grande and Ubatuba, where ten pirates were killed, "La Louise" took shelter in Cananeia for some days. There Levasseur was informed of a rich French merchantman in the nearby bay of Paranagua. While giving it chase, "La Louise" was caught in a storm off Cotinga Island and sank on 9 March 1718, with the death of about 80 of its crew. Levasseur escaped on a small brigantine that escorted his ship, and from there went South to Sao Francisco do Sul where he robbed a boat full of cassava flour, to feed the surviving crew, sailing back to Cananeia. The pirates then sailed further North preying on ships again. Later, Levasseur reappeared in the Caribbean in June of that year in a smaller vessel that he managed to steal on his way back from Brazil, but was almost captured by "HMS Scarborough" under the command of Captain Hume, and fled with much of his valuables to the Caribbean area in a smaller sloop. He later joined his former associates. After William Moody was ejected from command by his disgruntled crew in late 1718, they elected Levasseur as captain in Moody's place. In 1719, he operated together with Howell Davis and Thomas Cocklyn (who had also served under Moody) for a time. In 1720, they attacked the slaver port of Ouidah, Kingdom of Whydah (on the coast of what is now Benin), reducing the local fortress to ruins. Later that year, he was shipwrecked in the Mozambique Channel and stranded on the island of Anjouan in the Comores. His bad eye had become completely blind by now, so he started wearing an eyepatch.