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 briefly led a combined pirate-Antanosy kingdom from Fort Dauphin (see Tolanaro), Madagascar, from 1697 until he died there in 1705.

Samuel had been born and raised in Martinique. In 1696 he arrived in the Arabian Sea, serving as quartermaster aboard the pirate ship John and Rebecca. Decimated by illness, they sailed down the eastern coast of Madagascar, seeking slaves to bring back to the New World with them. In October, 1697, while at anchor in the Fort Dauphin harbor, a storm came up which resulted in their anchor ropes being severed and their ship beached. They took refuge in the abandoned fort while they waited for another ship to come rescue them. However, the elderly princess of the Antanosy king felt Samuel was her son, who her French husband had taken with him when he left Fort Dauphin in 1674. And before long, with 20 heavily armed fellow pirates who served as his bodyguard along with 300 Antanosy soldiers, Samuel was proclaimed king of the region surrounding Fort Dauphin, taking the title of "King of Port Dolfphin, Tollannare, Farrawe, Fanquestt, Fownzahira in Madagascar" (p. 413). This was most likely the old heartland of the ZafiRaminia kingdom. He had 15 large outrigger canoes and was constantly at war with the Antanosy king Diamarang Diamera.

One of the incidents during Samuel's brief rule of the Fort Dauphin area was the following. In 1698, early in the career of John Cruger (the elder), the Mayor of New York from 1739 till his death in 1744), while he was "a mere youth" he was appointed as Supercargo under Captain (see Captain (nautical)) Appel of the Prophet Daniel, to buy slaves for what was by then a regular "slaver" (slave ship) out of New York. It was bound for Madagascar on what would be its last voyage. Of that fateful trip, during which Cruger met and very unsuccessfully sought to do business with Abraham Samuel in Fort Dauphin, he wrote:

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