Captain Tew was invited on board the “Victoire,” Captain Mission’s ship, and after being handsomely entertained was invited to visit the pirate colony that had been set up at Libertatia. On returning to the sloop and telling his men what he had learned, the company consented and Mission’s ship was followed until the harbor was reached which they were much surprised to see was well fortified. The first fort saluted them with nine guns and the company on shore received Captain Tew and his men with great civility. He was soon invited to take part in a council of officers to consider what should be done with the large number of prisoners brought in by Mission. Seventy-three of these men, English and Portuguese, took on and the rest were set at work on a dock in process of construction about half a mile above the mouth of the harbor.
Tew and his men were charmed with the settlement and the new friends they had made and here they remained until Captain Mission, desiring to strengthen his colony, decided to send a ship to Guinea to seize slaving ships frequenting that coast. He offered the command of this expedition to Captain Tew and gave him a crew of two hundred men composed of thirty English and the rest French, Portuguese and negroes.
Tew didn’t sight a vessel until in the Atlantic, north of the Cape of Good Hope, where he fell in with a Dutch East Indiaman of eighteen guns which he took with the loss of but one man and secured several chests filled with English crowns. Nine of the Dutchmen joined his company and the rest were set ashore in Soldinia Bay. On the coast of Angola he took an English vessel with two hundred and forty slaves aboard among whom the negroes in his crew found relatives. These men told the slaves of the happy life they lead in Madagascar where none lived in slavery and so prepared, their leg irons and handcuffs were taken off and a course was made for Libertatia where the captured slaves were set at work on the dock.
After his return Captain Tew was given command of a sloop mounting eight guns and manned with one hundred men and with the schoolmaster in command of another sloop of about the same size, made a voyage around Madagascar charting the coast and discovering the shoals and depths of water. Tew’s sloop was called the “Liberty.” The schoolmaster commanded the “Childhood”; and the expedition was absent nearly four months.
Not long after this Captain Tew proposed that he should return to America and arrange with merchants to send to Madagascar ship’s stores, clothing and a variety of luxuries needed for the safety and comfort of the pirate colony. Some of his men also wished to return to their families, and so the “Amity” was refitted and Tew set a course for the Cape and soon was in the South Atlantic bound for the island of Bermuda. Contrary winds prevented, however, and running into a brisk gale he sprung his mast and after beating about for a fortnight at last made his old home at Newport, R. I., where he was received with much respect when his prosperous “privateering” voyage became known.
From here he dispatched an account to his part-owners in Bermuda and an order for them to send an agent to receive their share in the produce of the voyage and a few weeks later a sloop arrived, commanded by one Captain Stone, who, some years after testified that when he presented his order to Captain Tew from the Bermuda owners, he found that part of the money was buried in the ground at Newport and for the remainder he was obliged to go to Boston.[71]
Outerbridge, the councillor, received £540 left by Tew in Boston and his entire share in the proceeds of the voyage amounted to over £3000, which reached him in the form of “Lyon dollars and Arabian gold.” The pieces of Arabian gold were then worth about two Spanish dollars and soon were common in Rhode Island and New York. Tew’s share in the proceeds amounted to about £8000.
Some ten years later, when Kidd and Bradish had been hanged and the Council of Trade was busily engaged in stirring up matters supposedly overlooked or forgotten, an officious agent of the Council appeared at Bermuda and began to uncover the close relations existing between pirates and prominent merchants and officials in the islands. Some of the facts concerning Outerbridge, Colonel White and others then came out and were reported to London. The agent was George Larkin and he brought a commission as Judge of an Admiralty Court which very soon was ignored and when his true activities were recognized he was threatened and various complaints were made under oath and at last he was arrested “by the Marshall with a file of musqueteers and taken to the castle, a forlorne place, where there is but one room and the waves of the sea beat over the platform into it in stormy weather.... The Clerk of the Justices came to the Islands, a fidler in a Pyrate ship and the proceedings here against me differ in few circumstances from the Inquisition till they come to the Rack.”[72]
Captain Tew when in Boston had applied to the governor for a new privateering commission and been refused but found no considerable objection in Rhode Island although it cost him £500. In New York, he found Frederick Phillips not averse to making profitable voyages to Madagascar and soon the ship “Frederick” was dispatched with a full cargo and seven years later the Rev. John Higginson of Salem, when writing to his son Nathaniel, in command of Fort George, at Madras, reported the current rumor that Phillips had attained an estate of £100,000, much of it gained in the pirate trade to Madagascar.
Having completed his arrangements, Tew set sail with a commission authorizing him to seize the ships of France and the enemies of the Crown of England and in a few weeks had rounded the Cape and was at anchor in the harbor at Libertatia.