Thomas Collins (died 1719) was a pirate active in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

. He is best known for leading a pirate settlement and trading post on

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

History

The

privateering A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

ship ''Charming Mary'' left New York in 1694, bound for Madagascar under captain Richard Glover. It was captured by pirates under

John Ireland John Benjamin Ireland (January 30, 1914 – March 21, 1992) was a Canadian actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in ''All the King's Men'' (1949), making him the first Vancouver-born actor to receive an Oscar nomina ...

and

Richard Bobbington Richard Bobbington (died 1697?, name occasionally Philip or Babbington) was a pirate active in the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf in the late 1690s. History Adam Baldridge ran a trading post for pirates off Madagascar, and was willing t ...

and cruised against Moors in the Indian Ocean for several years. Collins had been aboard the ''Charming Mary'', either as one of the original New York crew, or having joined when the ship put into Ile Ste Marie to trade and take on additional crew to continue its piracy. Alternately, Collins may have come to the area with

Henry Every Henry Every, also known as Henry Avery (20 August 1659after 1696), sometimes erroneously given as Jack Avery or John Avery, was an English pirate who operated in the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the mid-1690s. He probably used several aliases ...

before transferring to the ''Charming Mary''. Every's ship ''Fancy'' left London in 1693 and was in the Indian Ocean when he captured the treasure ship '' Gunsway'' in 1695. A Malagasy ruler named

Ratsimilaho Ratsimilaho (c.1694 – 1750) was a ruler of an east coastal region of Madagascar. He is said to be the son of an English pirate Thomas Tew and a Malagasy queen regnant, Antavaratra Rahena. The region, known as the Betsimisaraka confederatio ...

(purportedly born in 1694) was said to be the son of a native queen and an English pirate named "Tom", often cited as

Thomas Tew Thomas Tew (died September 1695), also known as the Rhode Island Pirate, was a 17th-century English privateer-turned-pirate. He embarked on two major pirate voyages and met a bloody death on the second, and he pioneered the route which became kn ...

; it's also possible Thomas Collins was the father. By 1699 Collins had joined Evan Jones aboard his ship ''Beckford Galley''. Working with pirate trader

Abraham Samuel Abraham Samuel, also known as "Tolinar Rex," born in Martinique (or possibly in Anosy, Madagascar), was a mulatto pirate of the Indian Ocean in the days of the Pirate Round in the late-1690s. Being shipwrecked on his way back to New York, he brie ...

at his Port Dauphin settlement, they captured the ship ''Prophet Daniel'', among whose crew was future New York City alderman and mayor

John Cruger John Cruger (1678/1680 – August 13, 1744) was an immigrant to colonial New York with an uncertain place of birth, but his family was originally Danish. In New York from at least 1696, he became a prosperous merchant and established a successfu ...

. Jones tried to recruit additional pirates but some declined so they could return to England or America and seek a pardon. Collins may have returned with them, as he was next listed as carpenter of the ''Degrave'', a ship which left England in early 1701 but was lost off Madagascar that June. Most of the crew made their way among the Malagasy natives, leaving aboard other ships or settling with local tribes. Collins joined the crew of pirate George Booth and helped him capture the ''Speaker'' late that year. Later he sailed with Thomas Howard aboard the ''Prosperous'' but was wounded and left behind when Howard's sailors started a fight at the plantation of ex-pirate Aert Van Tuyl. Escaping from Van Tuyl, Collins had made his way back to Port Dauphin by 1707. Abraham Samuel had died the previous year and Collins took over his settlement and trading post, remaining there for over a decade. Historian Charles Grey writes, "The position was very valuable, for Collins, like Samuells, held the monopoly of the slave trade and, like Samuells, charged ~100 to each ship that called in for that purpose, or to provision and shelter." Future Bahamas Governor

Woodes Rogers Woodes Rogers ( 1679 – 15 July 1732) was an English sea captain, privateer, Atlantic slave trade, slave trader and, from 1718, the first List of colonial heads of the Bahamas, Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of ...

visited Collins there in 1714. Robert Drury, a fellow castaway from the ''Degrave'', came to Port Dauphin in 1716 and found Collins there with fellow ex-pirate trader John Pro, noting that they "had lived without pirating for nine years." By 1718 there were only a few ex-pirates left at Port Dauphin so Collins and John Pro left for Ile Ste Marie, where they died in 1719. Royal Navy ships ousted the last of the Madagascar pirates in 1723.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Thomas 18th-century pirates 17th-century pirates Year of birth missing English pirates 1719 deaths Piracy in the Indian Ocean

History

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