The rats dug holes in the soft coral, feeding on corn and wheat in storehouses and eating the crops and other plants grown by the colony.
Despite the colonists attempts to exterminate them, which included using traps, hunting dogs and setting cats into the wild, the rats plagued the colony for several years before the problem was finally brought under control.
[3] In early 1618, Elfrith was hired by Sir Robert Rich, Lord de la Warr and others to captain the Treasurer for a privateering expedition to the West Indies.
Five years later, a lawsuit was brought before the court of admiralty in which the Earl of Warwick was accused by Edward Brewster and other colonists of outfitting the Neptune and the Treasurer with arms and ammunition instead of the badly needed provisions and supplies, such as fishing tackle, that they were promised.
[4] In mid-July 1619, he and John Jope of the White Lion captured the Portuguese slaver São João Bautista carrying around 370 Angolans taken prisoner during Portugal's war in Luanda.
He further stated that ..he had disposed of his lordships negroes according to instructions, but that the Treasurer's people were dangerous-tongued fellows and had given out secretly that, if they were not paid to their uttermost penny of wages, they would go to the Spanish Ambassador [Diego Sarmiento d'Acuna de Gondomar] and tell all.While on a privateering expedition with Captain Sussex Camock of the bark Somer Ilands in 1625, Elfrith and Camock discovered two islands off the coast of Nicaragua, both separated 50 miles apart from each other.
Governor Bell wrote on behalf of Elfrith to Sir Nathaniel Rich, a businessman and cousin of the Earl of Warwick, who presented a proposal for colonizing the island noting its strategic location "lying in the heart of the Indies & the mouth of the Spaniards".
[6] That same year, he left on an unauthorized expedition to Central America where he attacked and captured a Spanish frigate in Cape Gracias a Dios although he was forced to leave behind a pinnace before returning to Providence Island.
In an effort to make peace with the company, he gave them his Logbook which contained an elaborate manuscript describing the coastlines and the navigation directions of the Caribbean.
Considered by modern editors and cartographers as "remarkably accurate", Elfrith wrote that he had compiled this information during his exploration and privateering voyages for his own use and felt that he should make it available to English captains as many of the other "ancient seamen" who also knew these charts were now dead and that the "drafts and platts made in England were very false".