His grandfather was Captain John Tinker,[2] Master Attendant of the King's Yard at Deptford[3] who commanded the Coverdine during the reign of Charles II.
[8] By 1730, Tinker had been appointed Chief of the Panama Factory at Portobello for the South Sea Company, where he was responsible for organising the import of slaves under the Asiento de Negros agreement reached at the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
[10] In 1738[11] it was announced that he was to be the next Governor of the Bahamas so it is likely he had left Portobello before Admiral Vernon captured it, but he was still involved in its affairs, as in 1739, when the Board of Trade was considering ways to prevent the Spanish from exporting from their silver mines in Peru and Mexico, both Tinker and his father-in-law Martin Bladen[12] suggested locating a military base at Darien on the Isthmus of Panama.
Despite these difficulties and war with Spain and France, privateers in Nassau seized enemy ships and the whole economy shared in prize money from the vessels.
Tinker had joined the Freemasons in London in 1730 and, in 1755, he made the long journey from New Providence to Philadelphia to attend the greatest procession of Masons ever seen in America at the inauguration of a new Lodge.