How Henry Every Became the King of Pirates
Henry Every was born near Plymouth in Devon, England in 1653. He followed in his father’s footsteps and embarked on a career at sea, beginning with a position as mate on a merchant vessel. He then enlisted in the Royal Navy against the backdrop of the Nine Years War in 1688 and served as a midshipman on HMS Rupert. Although he saw action against the French and gained a promotion to Master’s mate, Every’s career in the navy was relatively short lived for he was discharged in August 1690.
He is then suspected to have become involved in slave trading for the Royal Governor of the Bahamas, by capturing and transporting slaves from the coast of Guinea to the Americas, although this part of Every’s life is relatively undocumented and cannot be corroborated.
In 1694, Every joined the privateering ship Charles II, which was part of an expedition fleet funded by the Spanish Crown to attack French possessions in the Caribbean. The fleet sailed from London to the Spanish port of La Coruña but were prevented from going any further when their paperwork from the Spanish authorities failed to arrive. Several months passed by, with Charles II and its crew stuck in the port against their will, without pay and no sign of being released. Until one night, when the ship’s captain was confined to his cabin with an illness, Every roused a number of the crew to mutiny and seized control of the ship.
After making a swift getaway from La Coruña in the dead of night, the mutineers voted for Every to be their new captain on account of his previous naval experience and coming from a lower social rank he was believed to have the best interests of the crew at heart. Once they had put ashore the previous captain and a number of men who had not volunteered to join the mutiny, Every renamed the ship as the Fancy and convinced the mutineers, who had now gone without pay for several months, to set sail for the Indian Ocean, where they could plunder countless richly laden merchant ships of their treasure as pirates.
Setting a course for the Cape of Good Hope, Every committed his first act of piracy by robbing three passing English merchant ships of provisions and supplies. 9 men from these ships were persuaded to join Every's crew, which now numbered about 94 men. Every then continued south, hugging the African coastline until stopping at the Bight of Benin, where the Fancy was careened and had some of its structure cut away to improve the ships speed. In October 1694, Every captured two Danish privateers near the island of Príncipe, stripping the ships of ivory and gold and welcoming 17 defecting Danes aboard.
In early 1695, the Fancy finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in Madagascar where the crew restocked supplies. They next sailed to the island of Johanna in the Comoros Islands. Here Every's crew rested and took on more provisions, later capturing a passing French pirate ship, looting the vessel and recruiting some 40 of its crew to join their own company. Every's total strength was now about 150 men. Whilst on Johanna, Every wrote a letter addressed to all English ships in the Indian Ocean, falsely stating that he had not attacked any ships of his own nation and would continue to do so provided that any passing English ships use a predetermined signal to identify themselves. Whether Every intended to conduct himself as he had set out in his letter remains unclear but it may have been a ploy to avoid the unwanted attention of the powerful East India Company, whose heavily armed vessels traversing the Indian Ocean posed a dangerous threat to the comparatively small Fancy.
Although Every may not have sought to engage in piracy against his fellow countrymen, he was well aware of the immense prizes that could be captured from vessels of other nations. Only the previous year, Captain Thomas Tew seized a large Indian dhow sailing to Arabia with an estimated £15 million worth of treasure in today's money on board. Hoping to similarly strike it rich for themselves, Every and the crew of the Fancy set sail for the Red Sea.
In August that year, Every reached the volcanic island of Perim where he joined forces with five other pirate captains who were also waiting for a richly laden Indian fleet to pass them by. Amongst these pirates was Thomas Tew himself, who had been granted a privateering commission from the Royal Governor of New York. The pirates agreed to join forces and elected Every to be the admiral of their fleet of 6 ships.
Soon a convoy of 25 Mughal ships was spotted sailing past on their return from pilgrimage to Mecca and now heading home to Surat in India. The majority of the Mughal fleet had slipped past the pirates in the night but two straggling ships; the enormous 1600-ton Ganj-i-Sawai with eighty cannons and 1100 crew, and it’s even larger escort, the 3200-ton Fateh Muhammed with ninety four cannons and 800 crew, were well within sight when day broke.
The pirates quickly gave chase, with Captain Tew in his ship, the Amity, pursuing and engaging the Fateh Muhammed. In the resulting battle, the Amity was overwhelmed by the more powerful Mughal ship and Captain Tew was killed in action, reportedly being disembowelled by a cannon ball. The rest of the pirate fleet eventually caught up with the Fateh Muhammed a few days later and forced it’s surrender, taking a great deal of treasure in the process.
Every now directed the fleets attention to the Ganj-i-Sawai, or as the English pirates referred to it, the Gunsway. Although severely outgunned by its 80 cannon, Every in the Fancy managed to fire a lucky pre-emptive broadside that snapped the Gunsway‘s mainmast, preventing it from escape. As the Fancy pulled up alongside, a torrent of musket fire rained down from the deck of the Gunsway, preventing Every and his crew from boarding. Suddenly one of the Gunsway’s cannons malfunctioned and exploded, killing many of the Indian crew and demoralising the remainder to seek safety below deck.
Capitalising on the chaos and confusion unfurling onboard the Gunsway, Every and the pirates launched their main attack and boarded the ship. Ferocious hand to hand combat then ensued, which lasted some 2 to 3 hours until the ship eventually surrendered. The victorious pirates then unleashed a sadistic wave of violence and horror upon the passengers and crew of the Gunsway, murdering anyone they suspected of hiding treasure in the ships hold. Some of the women prisoners decided to take their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, rather than suffer the dishonour of being violated by the frenzied pirates. Once Every and his crew had taken all that they wanted, they set the Gunsway and its few remaining survivors free to continue their journey back to India.
The amount of treasure taken from the Gunsway was truly immense, modern estimates claim it totalled a figure somewhere in the tens of millions in today’s money. The pirate captains and their respective crews swiftly parted company, with Every in the Fancy sailing for the island of Reunion. There each member of his crew received a share of treasure equal to almost £100,000, more than any sailor could have hoped to have earned in their lifetime. It was on Reunion that the French and Danish members of Every’s crew decided they would remain on the island, whilst the remainder agreed to set sail for Nassau in the Bahamas.
En route, Every purchased 90 slaves to help fill the positions of the crew members he had lost and to also provide him with an alibi for when they arrived in the Bahamas. When they eventually reached Nassau harbour in March 1696, Every presented a letter under his pseudonym, Captain Bridgeman, to the Governor of the Bahamas, Sir Nicholas Trott, explaining that they were unlicensed slave traders who had just returned from the Indian Ocean and that they simply wanted some time ashore. In exchange, Every, alias Bridgeman, offered the Governor a handsome bribe to turn a blind eye to the origin of the ship and its valuable cargo. The Governor agreed and the pirates were free to frequent the towns pubs and spend their ill-gotten gains as they pleased.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the attack on the Gunsway created an economic and political headache for the English government, as well as the East India Company. The Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, whose treasure had been stolen and people so barbarously attacked whilst returning from pilgrimage was understandably outraged by the incident and contemplated permanently banishing all English traders from India.
In an attempt to appease Aurangzeb, the East India Company offered financial compensation for the loss of the Gunsway and the English government placed a £500 bounty on Every’s head, which was then doubled to £1000 by the East India Company. What followed was the first recorded global manhunt in history.
The news that Henry Every was a wanted man was slow to reach the Bahamas, although the vast quantity of foreign coins being slipped into Governor Trott’s pocket undoubtedly made him question who these new arrivals really were. When the news did finally reach Nassau and that Every was operating under the alias of Bridgeman, Governor Trott, alerted the authorities but not before tipping off Every and his crew. The pirates hastily went their separate ways, some chose to remain in the Caribbean, whilst the majority headed for North America, and a few sailed onto Europe.
Every himself was never seen again. Some rumoured that he made it to Ireland or to Scotland, whereas others suggest he returned to his native Devon and died a destitute man, after being swindled out of his last remaining treasure but none of these tales have been credited as little more than legend.
The fate of Every’s crew on the other hand is well documented. Of the 113 men who served on board the Fancy, 75 sought refuge in the American colonies where they could bribe corrupt officials to conceal their true identities. Although efforts were made to arrest the suspected pirates, only 7 of Every’s crew were tried in America between 1697 and 1705, and all of them were acquitted.
However, in Britain, 24 suspected men were rounded up after trying to sell their treasure to jewellers and goldsmiths. 18 of these were brought to trial and 6 were convicted on the testimony of 2 other members of Every’s crew who had turned Kings Witness against their former shipmates, in order to save themselves from the gallows. Of the 6 convicted men, one was reprieved after initially pleading guilty, but the other 5 were sentenced to death. On the 25th November 1696, the 5 men were hung at Execution Dock on the bank of the River Thames, as was the fate of all convicted pirates of the age.
The exploits of Henry Every catapulted him to fame almost overnight and he became somewhat of a folk hero in the eyes of the late 17th century public. Every’s disappearance and evasion from capture became legendary in the following decades of the early 18th century and his story undoubtedly allured and inspired other desperate seafarers of the day to take their chances of striking it rich in what would become the final and most infamous years of the golden age of piracy.