Thomas Tew

 

 

Thomas Tew was something of a visionary in pirate terms. He is best known for pioneering the famous Pirate Round, and for founding Libertalia, a legendary pirate haven and experimental community which is said to have existed in a remote part of Madagascar. The source of many a swashbuckling pirate tale, Tew’s death was not so romantic – he was blown to smithereens during an attack on a Mughal convoy, when he caught a cannonball in the gut.

 

 

Thomas Tew was a 17th century pirate who for many years enjoyed the high life in New York with his wife and daughters. However, he finally met a sorry end while engaged in an attack on a Mughal convoy in the Red Sea, being blown apart by a cannon. Today, he is best remembered as one of the pioneers of the Pirate Round, a route followed by pirates that targeted trade ships sailing from the western Atlantic, around Africa to Madagascar, and then on to Yemen and India. Many of the ships that plied these waters were owned by the East India Company, and promised rich pickings. Tew was also said to be one of the founders of the legendary pirate enclave Libertalia, an anarchist community set up in a remote part of Madagascar. Whether or not Libertalia actually existed continues to be the subject of some debate.

 

Privateer turned pirate

Very little is known about the early life of Thomas Tew, but it is thought that he was born in Maidford, Northamptonshire. Although he later claimed to have a long line of ancestry in Rhode Island, it is likely that he arrived there as a young child when his family emigrated there. He grew up in Newport and as a young man, took up a seafaring career, returning to his hometown as often as he could. He married and had two daughters, and by all accounts enjoyed the comforts of domestic life, although he was often away at sea.

The exact nature of his sailing expeditions was never made clear to his family and friends at home, but most took it that he was engaged as a privateer, hired by the authorities to attack French and Spanish ships as part of the British offensive in the colonial wars. However, at some point in his career, he abandoned the semi-legal practise of privateering and became a pirate, attacking ships at random for his own profit, along with a band of bloodthirsty ruffians. But as long as he kept bringing in the money, on his visits home he and his family remained part of an elite New York social scene, and not too many questions were asked.

 

Striking lucky

In 1692, Tew was backed by the governor of Bermuda, and given an armed ship, the Amity, with a crew of over 40 men. His mission was to fight the French in Africa, but once out of port, he decided to head for the Red Sea instead, to hunt down one of the Indian ships that often crossed there. He soon struck lucky, attacking a huge ship loaded with gold, silver, spices, silk and precious jewels. Unusually, there were no casualties, as the ship’s crew offered no resistance, despite being heavily armed.

Amazed at their good fortune, Tew and his men stopped off in Madagascar to share out the spoils and then sailed back to Newport. By now, he was an extremely rich man, with a fortune of over £5,000, a vast amount of money in those days. Friends flocked to him, including the governor of New York, Benjamin Fletcher, who soon backed him on another voyage.

 

Blown to smithereens

This time, Tew was not so lucky. When he went back to his hunting ground, he found that it was swarming with other pirates, hoping to strike lucky as he had. One of them was Henry Avery in his speedy, heavily armed ship the Fancy. Tew decided to join forces with Avery, and along with a number of other pirates, helped attack a Mughal convoy in the Mandab Strait. While attacking one of the ships, the Fateh Mohammed, Tew was struck down, shot by a cannon in the stomach. His crew immediately surrendered and were captured, but were later set free when Avery arrived and overwhelmed the Indian ship. Ironically, the strike on the Fateh Mohammed and its sister ship, the Ganj-I-Sawai yielded untold treasure and made Avery famous, but Tew was not alive to enjoy his share of the booty.

 

Pirate utopia

After his death, the legend of Thomas Tew lived on, both as the inventor of the Pirate Round, the passage around Africa to India, and as the founder of a pirate commune, Libertalia. (The account of Libertalia comes from one source – that of Captain Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates, published in 1724 and thought by many to be the work of Daniel Defoe.) He was also alleged, while in Madagascar, to have had an affair with a Malagasy queen and fathered a boy named Ratsimilaho, who later grew up to rule a large region of the island. Whether or not this story is true remains unclear, but the idea of a romance between a swashbuckling pirate and an exotic island queen is undoubtedly one that continues to fascinate.