Simon Tredrea

Captain's full name: Perran Simon Tredrea

Age of joining the Navy: 22

Current Age: 25

Reason for joining the RN: The Royal Navy offered Simon an escape route when his past finally caught up with him in Guyana. Sum up your captain’s personality and traits: Never one to shy away from the action, Simon spent 10 years of his young life getting involved in more trouble, with the law and lawless alike, than was really healthy. His perhaps brash style of “diplomacy” often led him down the wrong path, but his genuinely jovial and loveable nature kept him out of serious bother...until Guyana.

Captains Quote: “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise this was your ship”

Your captain’s aims and goals: Firstly, to put as much (metaphorical) distance between his past and future. Secondly, to earn enough money to one day own a ‘Hercules’ Mastercraft Frigate, like the one he tried to borrow 3 years ago. Thirdly, to find a decent barber to shave his sideburns off, without deforming his charming face! And finally to help as many Frenchman into the next life as humanly possible!

Background Timeline of Important Events:

November 13th 1696: Born Perran Simon Tredrea in a small village in Cornwall, England. His mother died in child-birth, so he was raised by his father, Michael Perran Tredrea, a mine worker at South Crofty Tin Mine.

1703: Starts working with his father at South Crofty.

1703-1706: Starts as a runner for the mining company, but is soon sent down the mine to transport the tin and excess rock & earth out of the shafts.

1706: Collapse of the main shaft kills 100 miners, including Daniel Tredrea.

1707: Aged 10 and a half, Perran runs away from the church where had been placed in the care of the nuns. With no clue what to do next, he walks the 60 miles to Plymouth in hope of finding his Uncle Charles (who admittedly he had never met).

1708: Having failed to find his Uncle, Perran had lived on the streets of Plymouth for over a year. However, the young, naive lad from the Cornish countryside saw a way out of the life he had: a ship. HMS Tamar, a 16-gun Sloop, was heading for the New World, and the captain was looking for young deckhands. December 13th 1708: Perran decided to drop his Christian name to avoid questions about its origin. He was going to the New World to leave his past behind...to forget.

1709: Simon Tredrea is born anew in the West. Stepping off the Tamar in Port Royal, the only things he had were the clothes on his back, his father’s watch (the only thing he had kept from his previous life), and an appetite for adventure!

5 Years Pass

1714: Simon had spent much of his first 5 years in the Caribbean either running from Magistrates’ men or the men that the Magistrates’ wanted locked up. Simon was not a bad sort; he just didn’t know how to avoid trouble. Blamed for many transgressions of either his peers or enemies, Simon avoided any serious problems for these 5 years, never being caught or formally charged with any wrong doing.

1715: For all the years he could remember, his youthful roguish charm had allowed him to avoid many things that would otherwise have landed him in a jail cell. Now 20 years old, however, trouble seemed to be catching up with young Tredrea. Fists began to be thrown where before threats had sufficed. The men he thought of as “Sir” turned out to be more “Boss”. Pirates. What Simon had always thought of as “running errands” and “escorting valuable customers” turned out to be more “smuggling” and almost certainly “kidnap”. Some sense of morality from his past brought Simon Tredrea to an impasse: Continue with the life he has or make a change. He chose the latter.

1716-17: Simon spent much of the years of 1716 and 1717 running. This time however, it was not from the Law; it was solely from the Law-less! Some of his previous “employers” weren’t exactly happy about having an asset like Mr Tredrea rogue in the Caribbean, where he could spill all sorts of secrets and implicate many men in “business”. All the while, Simon had stayed on the right side of the law, not drawing attention to him, and working honestly as a deckhand on Royal Navy ships. One ship he frequented, the HMS Scillonian, was captained by a man named Captain William Trevorow. Now in his fifties, Cpt. Trevorow instantly recognised Simon’s surname as being as Cornish as his own and kept a special eye out for the young man.

1718: HMS Scillonian was on a detail in Guyana, protecting trade routes between Jenny Bay and Port-of-Spain. One night when ashore in Jenny, Simon got into a scuffle with a local Captain over the use of a table in The 13 Coins tavern. During the encounter, his father’s watch had gone missing. He had kept it for all the years he had been in the Caribbean, never allowing it to be sold or taken by even the most insistent of men. But now it was gone!

December 1718: The 22 year old Simon Tredrea was working full time on the HMS Scillonian, still as a deckhand, as it was the only position he could hold as he was not in the Royal Navy. Captain Trevorow had taken the ship into port at Bridgetown, in the Antilles. Here, the crew, Navy and civilian, were given four days rest and recuperation after a full month at sea. It was in Bridgetown that Simon’s life would be forever changed for the second time. December 11th 1718: On the third day of leave, Simon and his fellow civilian crew members were in the tavern when he spotted something he instantly recognised...his father’s watch! It was hanging from the pocket of a jacket on the back of a chair on the other side of the room, but he could still tell it apart from another watch even at that distance. The chair, which was empty when he saw the watch, was now filled by a well dressed man in a Captain’s uniform. Simon’s cool temperament that had kept him safe for 10 years now vanished in a blink and he charged over to the now occupied chair, intent on only thing; getting HIS watch back! On reaching the man and demanding his watch with as much politeness as he could muster given his rage, he realised he was addressing a man in Navy uniform...but French Navy! After a row of over 5 minutes, a brawl broke out amongst other patrons (though this was mainly due to the nature of taverns – “You’re only ever 5 minutes from a brawl in any tavern in the British Empire.” – Cpt. WPT Trevorow – wise man indeed). During the ensuing action, the Frenchman made for an escape out of the back door, but Simon was wise to his attempt and cut him off in the passageway. Now he was almost pleading with the Captain to return his watch. The Frenchman appeared to take pity on the young lad and held out the watch towards Simon’s outstretched hands. At the last second however, the swine dropped the watch to the hard, stone floor, and it shattered into so many pieces of clockwork carnage. Dumb struck, nothing happened for about 20 seconds, while Simon took in what had just happened. The last vestiges of a life he once knew, a life he wanted to forget, but could not ever bring himself to do so completely, was now gone, destroyed by this French bastard, who at this point had taken to grinning from ear to ear at his triumph! The 20 seconds passed however, and regaining his senses, Simon relapsed to a time 5 years ago when confronted by a man twice his size and half his intelligence; he caught the Frog square on the chin and sent him flying backwards at least 4 paces. In a moment of insanity, Simon ripped the insignia from the French Captain’s hat and dashed out of the tavern’s back door and made his own escape! Luckily for Simon, there weren’t many ships moored in Bridgetown at the time, so the Frenchman’s ship wasn’t difficult to find. However, when he did so, he couldn’t believe what he saw. He was about to steal and single crew a ‘Hercules’ Frigate, and a Mastercraft one at that if the extra guns on the deck were any indication! What Cpt. Trevorow had seen as a keen aptitude for sailing was about to proven correct, and then some. The Frenchman had taken away the most important thing in his life, so Simon Tredrea was going to do exactly the same thing to him. A light wind allowed Simon to ready the sails and manoeuvre the Mer Dieu out of the protective harbour walls. He allowed the wind to take him in its desired direction, in this case South East, directly towards Guyana and Jenny Bay! The Frenchman had already ordered a pursuit, and 2 other French vessels in Bridgetown made ready to set sail after Simon. Cpt. Trevorow was quicker however and made it to the Open Sea first, bearing down on Simon in the Scillonian. December 12th 1718: Simon had beaten all of them to Jenny, though not by enough to escape completely. Single crewing a 50 gun Frigate proved a lot harder than he had anticipated (though Cpt. Trevorow would later declare it the finest act of sailing he’s ever witnessed or even heard of). Rather than attempt to flee into the jungles of South America, Simon sought help from Cpt. Trevorow when he arrived in Jenny. It would be only an hour before the 2 French crews reached port, so decisions were made quickly. William Trevorow made Simon Tredrea an offer. Join the Royal Navy as a Privateer; swear loyalty to King and Country, and he would protect him using agreements made between the Navies of the four nations in the Spanish Main relating to matters of personal grievance. The other option of course was either death or at least arrest and jail. It was one of the easiest and yet most important decisions Simon had made yet. He chose life!

December 13th 1718: Simon Tredrea was officially drafted into the British Royal Navy as a Privateer and assigned to the HMS Scillonian. He served under Cpt. Trevorow for a year.

1720: Having shown exceptional sailing ability in his theft of the ‘Hercules’ and exemplary service aboard the Scillonian, in March 1720, Simon was recognised as a Captain of the Royal Navy. However, he was drafted as a Privateer, and a Privateer is all he could ever be due to the lack of education and formal training. Therefore, he was given command of a ship of his own, a ‘Halifax’ Schooner, which was named HMS Scillonian II by Cpt. Trevorow. Setting sail from Jenny Bay aboard his own ship, Captain Tredrea couldn’t help but wonder what his father and his mother would think of him now. He hoped they would be proud. Attired in his black, well-worn coat, a bandana to keep his dark locks in check, and a patch over his left eye to conceal a wound obtained when the Frenchman objected to Cpt. Trevorow’s use of the Rules, Captain Tredrea set about his duty. Protecting the British Empire and all its colonies from French, Spanish and Pirate aggression! He would forever pay particular attention to the French however, and exact revenge for his father’s watch at any opportunity.

December 13th 1721: Exactly 3 years after his drafting, Simon Tredrea had an opportunity he could not resist. An elite group within the Royal Navy, known as the Saint George Squadron of the White, were looking for new blood, and particularly Privateer Captains already within the Royal Navy’s fold. Jumping at the change to further his career in the Navy, and hopefully assist in larger battles with the damned French, Captain Tredrea offered his services to the SGS and was greeted with a friendly yet firm welcome. Viscount Lord Middlemore set out the terms of a Privateer’s life in the SGS, namely attitude, honour and appearance. To that end, Captain Tredrea dropped the bandana in favour of neatly cropped hair, discarded the eye patch now his eye had healed, and swapped the long black coat for a dark navy Huntsman he acquired in Jenny Bay from a senior Privateer he had assisted. His new appearance met the standards set out by Lord Middlemore, and his honour was without question after a reference from Cpt. Trevorow. The brash, confident nature Captain Tredrea had developed over the last 13 years was not lost however, and he was still the first into the fray, be it charging at full sail into enemy fleets or mowing headlong into bands of Pirates with just his cutlass and flintlock! Although was his right as a Privateer of the British Royal Navy, Captain Tredrea vowed never to steal another ship, unless the owner clearly wanted Simon to relieve him of the terrible burden of ownership! Now sailing a ‘Postillionen’ Heavy Frigate, Captain Tredrea still one day hopes to sail a ‘Herc’ MC again...but with a crew this time!