Thomas Tew

Thomas Tew (c.1640-1695) was an Anglo-American privateer turned pirate, most famous for establishing a route that would become known as the Pirate Round, a circuit around the Atlantic, the Cape of Good Hope, the Horn of Africa and India, copied from the route taken by East India Company ships, that would become a popular circuit for pirates in the years following.
It is written that Tew had a family in Rhode Island as early as 1640. however his birthplace is a mystery. Whether he was born in New England or Great Britain is a matter of some debate. What is known is that he enlisted as a privateer against the French and Spanish, and by 1691 had moved to Bermuda. The following year, Tew obtained a letter of marque from the Governor of Bermuda. Various backers provided him with a vessel, a seventy-ton sloop named the Amity, armed with eight guns and crewed by forty-six officers and men. He and another captain obtained a privateer's commission from the lieutenant governor of Bermuda to destroy a French factory off the coast of West Africa. Thus equipped, in December of that year, Tew set sail as a privateer against French holdings in The Gambia. However, they were not long set sail when Tew announced his intention of turning to piracy, asking the crew for their support, since he could not enforce the illegal scheme without their consent. Tew's crew reportedly answered with the shout, "A gold chain or a wooden leg, we'll stand with you!" The newly-turned pirates proceeded to elect a quartermaster, which was common practice to separate powers from the Captain.

Tew's first voyage was successful, having reached the Red Sea in the later part of 1693, the Amity  chased down a large ship en route from India to the Ottoman Empire. The ship was carrying over 300 soldiers, however they surrendered almost immediately without a single casualty among the pirates. Tew's men helped themselves to the ship’s rich treasure, worth £100,000 in gold and silver alone, not counting the value of the ivory, spices, gemstones and silk taken. Tew's men afterward shared out between £1,200 and £3,000 per man, and Tew himself claimed about £8,000. Tew was in favour of hunting down the rest of the Indian convoy, but yielded to the opposition of the quartermaster. He set course back to the Cape of Good Hope, stopping at the island of St. Mary's on Madagascar to careen. Tew returned to Newport in April, 1694. Benjamin Fletcher, royal governor of Province of New York, became good friends with Tew and his family. Tew eventually paid off the owners of the Amity fourteen times the value of the vessel.

Tew's flag

Tew's second voyage ended in disaster. Having established the route that would later be known as the Pirate Round, Tew set sail again in November 1694 with 30-40 men, but by the time he reached Madagascar had recruited around 20 more. By August 1695, He fell in with a brigade of pirates at the mouth of the Red Sea intent on recreating Tew's success of taking down an Indian treasure ship the previous year. The squadron was led by Henry Avery, captain of the powerful warship, the Fancy. The battle waged on for hours, and Tew himself was disembowelled by cannon fire, whereupon his demoralised men surrendered. However, Avery and the rest of the brigade fought on and eventually won, and Tew's men went free.

Tew's burial place is unknown, but it is said he was the father of the Malagasy king, Ratsimilaho. William Kidd, before he also turned pirate, was commissioned by William III to hunt down Tew. Little did either of them know Tew was already dead when the commission was issued.

Henry Avery, The Pirate King

No pirate was ever so well known in his day as Captain Avery of the Fancy, who has been the inspiration for many pirate myths and characters. Operating in the last years of the 17th Century, Avery and his fleet terrorised the Atlantic and Indian oceans until 1696, and became the focus of the world's first global manhunt.As always with pirates, little is known of their early life, but what is known of Avery is he was born  near Plymouth on the 23rd of August, 1659. He served in the Royal Navy during the Nine Year's War, and afterwards became a slave trader off the African coast. In 1693 he became a mariner again, as first mate on the Spanish warship of forty-six guns, the Charles II. But after the ship's owners failed to pay their wages, so on the evening of the 7th of May, 1694, Avery led a mutiny against the captain, put him ashore with five or six loyalists, and sailed the ship for the Indian Ocean to begin their pirate career.

Henry Avery, the Pirate King

In 1695, The Fancy sailed to the Arabian Sea, where a 25-ship convoy of Grand Mughal vessels was making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, including the treasure-laden flagship Ganj-i-sawai and its escort, the Fateh Muhammed. Avery joined forces with several other pirate vessels, and found himself in command of a small pirate squadron, including a sloop captained by English pirate Thomas Tew. As the pirates gave chase, the smaller vessels in the squadron gradually fell behind, and at some point Tew was killed in an engagement with a Mughal ship. Avery had more success, and captured the escort ship the Fateh Muhammed and then the Ganj-i-sawai, having broken the ship's mast in a broadside. The bloody hand-to-hand battle on deck waged for several hours. The pirates took heavy losses but the spoils were astronomical. Avery had captured up to £600,000 in precious metals and jewels, making him the richest pirate in the world, equivalent to around £52.4 million in present day money. Avery and his crew then tortured and killed a great number of the passengers and raped women of all ages. Some women stabbed themselves with daggers or jumped overboard, committing suicide to escape this fate.The plunder of Emperor Aurangzeb's treasure ship had serious consequences for England, with Avery's attack damaging relations so terribly that the very existence of English trade in India was threatened. When the damaged Ganj-i-sawai finally limped its way back to harbour in Surat, news of the pirates' rape of the Muslim women was considered an unforgivable violation of the Hajj. The local Indian governor, Itimad Khan, immediately arrested the English subjects in Surat and kept them under close watch, partly as a punishment for their countrymen's depredations and partly for their own protection from the rioting locals. Aurangzeb was livid, and quickly closed four of the company's factories in India and imprisoned the officers, nearly ordering an armed attack against the English city of Bombay with the goal of forever expelling the English from India.
To appease Aurangzeb, the East India Company promised to pay all financial reparations, while Parliament declared the pirates hostis humani generis ("enemies of the human race"). In mid-1696 the government issued a £500 bounty on Avery's head and offered a free pardon to any informer who disclosed his whereabouts. When the East India Company later doubled that reward, the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history was underway. The Crown also promised to exempt Avery from all pardons and amnesties it would subsequently issue to other pirates. 
Avery meanwhile sailed to New Providence, and under the name of Henry Bridgeman and claiming to be an unlicensed slave trader, offered the Governor £860 to let them stay and not ask questions. New Providence was underfunded and underpopulated, and at serious risk of French attack, and so the Governor agreed. As the manhunt for Avery escalated, the Governor by now having realised who he was, covered for him in exchange for the Fancy, as well as fifty tons of ivory tusks, one hundred barrels of gunpowder, several chests of firearms and ammunition, and an assortment of ship anchors. As the heat mounted, and the governor himself coming under suspicion, he had the Fancy destroyed to remove the key piece of evidence that Avery was in his town.
Regardless the Governor was forced to either put a warrant out for Every's arrest or, failing to do so, effectively disclose his association with the pirate. Preferring the former choice for the sake of his reputation, he alerted the authorities as to pirates' whereabouts, but was able to tip off Avery and his crew before the authorities arrived. Avery's 113-person crew then fashioned their hasty escape, vanishing from the island with only twenty-four men ever captured, six of whom were executed. His last words to his men were a litany of conflicting stories of where he planned to go, doubtless intended to throw pursuers off his trail.

Avery's crew split up, while Avery was spotted in Dublin harbour in June 1696, with about twenty other men in the sloop Sea Flower. They aroused suspicions while unloading their treasure, and two of the men were subsequently caught. Avery, however, was able to escape once again. His fate after this encounter is unknown.