David Jewett - Service To The United Provinces

Service To The United Provinces

After the War of 1812, Jewett offered his services to the newly-independent United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (later Argentina), which accepted his proposal and authorized his corsair activities against the Spanish; he was appointed a Colonel in the Argentine Navy.

He was given command of the frigate Heroína as a privateer and in March 1820 and set out on a voyage marked by misfortune, a mutiny, scurvy and piracy against Portuguese and American ships. Some 80 of his crew of 200 were either sick or dead by the time he arrived on 27 October 1820 at Puerto Soledad (later renamed Puerto Luis by Argentine settlers, it was the one-time Spanish capital of the Falkland Islands). At anchor there he found some 50 British and U.S. sealing ships.

Captain Jewett chose to rest and recover in the islands seeking assistance from the British explorer James Weddell of the British Brig Jane. Weddell reports only 30 seamen and 40 soldiers out of a crew of 200 fit for duty, and how Jewett slept with pistols over his head following an attempted mutiny for which he had executed 6 members of his crew.