Illegal Slave Trading:
After being ousted from the Royal Navy he began working on a slave trading ship in Africa. According to Peter Henry Bruce who was a Indian Ocean merchant, Every ran an illegal slave trading enterprise from 1690 to 1692 under the protection of the Governor of the Bahamas, Cadwallader Jones. This was a potentially very lucrative operation because between 1660 and 1698 the Royal African Company had a monopoly on all of the English slave trade. Selling slaves without a license was illegal and could not just be done by anyone. However, when it was done illegally it was a highly lucrative practice.
To ensure that all merchants complied with this decree the Royal Navy protected and backed up Royal African Company ships on the West African coast. They would also occasionally stop other English merchants and inspect their cargo. While this period of his life in not well documented we can assume he simply was engaging in illegal slave trading and making money doing it. He was a disenfranchised sailor and had no qualms about going against his former employers who had just fired him.
Spanish Privateering
The next recorded event in Every's life was in 1693 when he was employed as first mate aboard the warship Charles II. The name of the ship was a homage to the commissioner, Charles II of the Spanish Empire. In the spring of 1693, several London investors led by Sir James Houblon hoped to increase their fortunes by sponsoring a privateering campaign in cooperation with the King of Spain.
They assembled a venture known as the Spanish Expedition Shipping which contained four ships including the Dove of which the famed William Dampier was a second mate aboard. Commanded by an Irishman man named Admiral Sir Don Arturo O'Byrne who served in the Spanish Navy Marines, many of the English crew were distrustful of their Irish counterparts. The ships primary focus was to sail around the West Indies and conduct trade with the local Spanish, giving them supplies and guns along with recovering treasure from wrecked Spanish galleons. They were also licensed to raid any French they encountered. For all of this they were legally given a trading and salvage license from the Spanish Crown.
The sailors were promised to be paid on time, with a monthly stipend to be paid every six months and a down payment of one month in advance. In fact, Houblon himself went aboard and met with the crew to ensure them of his cooperation. The first round of wages was paid by the merchants and the ship departed England in August of 1693 and sailed to the Spanish harbor of Corunna in order to await more vessels. The short trip to the northern city of Corunna should have only taken two weeks but instead for whatever reason took five months. The letter of marque also never came from the Spanish Crown and the owners of Charles II refused to pay any of the sailors wages as they waited months and months. The merchants knew as soon as they paid the pirates they were gone so they refused their petition.
The sailors were unable to make any money to send home to their families and they hardly had any money to leave Corunna. Thus they felt like they had been sold into slavery to the Spanish by the English and a great dissent began brewing among the entire crew. Becoming increasingly desperate, the entire crew demanded their 6 months of pay on May 1st. Houblon again denied their request even despite petitions from the captain himself who was aware of the growing discontent. It was probably around this time the crew began plans to mutiny.
Accession to Piracy
Eventually at 9:00 pm on 7 May 1694 about twenty-five of the crew led by Every seized the Charles II as their own while Admiral O'Byrne was ashore. The entire ordeal was pretty casual. However other ships in the fleet recognized what was going on, with Every calmly replying that he knew. The James fired a few shots at the Charles II which prompted the Spanish to come check it out. This was reported to be Every's exchange with the other English ships:
Every and the small crew were forced to make a run into open sea in order to escape the authorities. After getting safely away the crew had a meeting. They agreed to let all of the non-mutineers go ashore the next time they made port. The only ones they did not let go were the ships surgeon. They also decided that each pirate would get one share of loot and the captain two. While not written down, this was a predecessor to the later pirate code.
Next the pirates elected Every captain due to his experience and decided to sail for the Indian Ocean and make a go at the first Pirate Round. Every might have been inspired by Thomas Tew's successful voyage on the Pirate Round only a year before. Renaming the Charles II the Fancy, the crew set sail for the Cape of Good Hope and quickly took five ships off the African coast en-route.
Every's Pirate Career
Every lasted as a pirate for nearly two years and in that time he organized one of the most profitable pirate raids in recorded history next to the 1716 raid on the Spanish salvage camp by the Flying Gang who managed to capture some of the treasure of the 1715 Treasure Fleet. His exploits, along with Henry Morgan, William Kidd and Francis Drake would inspire an entire generation of men to take to the sea as either privateers or pirates.
First Pirate Round
Off the coast of Cape Verde Islands, Every and his crew committed their first act of piracy. They robbed three English merchants traveling from Barbados of their supplies and food. They recruited about nine men from the ships to join their crew. Every's crew was about 94 men at this point.
Next they decided to sail more south to the coast of Guinea where they robbed a native African tribe. Every convinced the tribes chief to join them aboard the Fancy in order to conduct trade, however the pirates quickly overtook them, stole their riches and left the Africans as slaves. Next Every and the crew stopped at the port of Bioko in the Bight of Benin in order to repair and retrofit the Fancy. Here they careened the hull and razeed the decks. This meant that they ripped apart the ships super structure in order to remove decks and add speed.
After this extensive retrofit the Fancy was one of the fastest ships in the entire Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In October of 1694, Every and his crew captured two Danish privateers that were sailing near the Portuguese island of Principe. Every and his men looted the gold and ivory aboard the ships and recruited seventeen of the captured into their crew.
Finally in the early months of 1695 Every and the crew of the Fancy made the trip around the Cape of Good hope and stopped off on the island of Madagascar in order to restock and get supplies. Next the crew ventured to the pirate haven on the Comoros Islands in order to rest, get provisions and recruit more men. Every and his crew eventually captured another French pirate ship, looting and recruiting forty of the crew to join his own. At this point Every's crew numbered about 150.
While stopping in Johanna, Every wrote a letter to the British East India Company. He stated he had not attacked any English ships and that he was ascribing a signal that when given Every would avoid them. He also suggests that if English ships do not use the signal, he will not be able to restrain his crew. The document supposedly went as follows:
To all English Commanders lett this Satisfye that I was Riding here att this Instant in ye Ship fancy man of Warr formerly the Charles of ye Spanish Expedition who departed from Croniae [Corunna] ye 7th of May. 94: Being and am now in A Ship of 46 guns 150 Men & bound to Seek our fortunes I have Never as Yett Wronged any English or Dutch nor never Intend while I am Commander. Wherefore as I Commonly Speake wth all Ships I Desire who ever Comes to ye perusal of this to take this Signall that if you or aney whome you may informe are desirous to know wt wee are att a Distance then make your Antient [i.e., ensign, flag] Vp in a Ball or Bundle and hoyst him att ye Mizon Peek ye Mizon Being furled I shall answere wth ye same & Never Molest you: for my Men are hungry Stout and Resolute: & should they Exceed my Desire I cannott help my selfe.
as Yett
An Englishman's friend,
At Johanna [Anjouan] February 28th, 1694/5
Henry Every
Here is 160 od french Armed men now att Mohilla who waits for Opportunity of getting aney ship, take Care of your Selves.
However it was not soon after that Every and his crew would score their biggest prize yet. Every and his crew then set sail for the island of Perim in order to wait for the annual fleet making its pilgrimage to Mecca. This fleet was very similar to the Spanish Treasure Fleet of the Spanish Main in the 15th through 18th centuries and contained about as many riches. The Mughal fleet made annual trips to Mecca so it was just a matter of gaining the information regarding the dates and then waiting in ambush.
In August of 1695, Every and the crew aboard the Fancy reached the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and began preparing for their ambush. It was here that they joined forces with five other pirate captains including Thomas Tew on the Amity with sixty pirates. The other pirate captains were Joseph Faro with the Portsmouth Adventure along with sixty pirates, Richard Want with the Dolphin and sixty men, William Mayes with the Pearl and thirty-forty pirates and Thomas Wake with the Susanna and seventy pirates. All of these pirates had privateering commissions from all across the Eastern seaboard of the North American colonies.
Despite the fact that Tew had more experience in the area, Every was elected admiral of the six pirate ship flotilla and commanded a total of over 400 pirates. Together they all lay in ambush for the treasure convoy to pass through.
Eventually the Mughal treasure convoy did pass right in front of the pirates in the straights of Surat. The treasure convoy was comprised of twenty-five ships including the 1,600 ton flagship Ganj-i-sawai. This ship was a massive, eighty cannon behemoth that was loaded to the brim with treasure along with the 600-ton Fateh Muhammed escort. The convoy managed to initially run from the pirates however, the pirates gave chase.
Fateh Muhammed Capture
The pirates eventually caught the Mughal convoy four or five days later. The Dolphin and the Susanna fell behind initially so the Dolphin was burnt and the crew transferred to the Fancy. The Susanna eventually caught up to the fleet and rejoined them before they overtook the convoy. Initially Every and his crew captured the escort ship, the Fateh Muhammed.
The Fateh Muhammed gave the pirates little resistance and they were able to capture the ship with little losses to the crew and ship. Every's crew personally sacked the ship which belonged to Abdul Ghaffer, rumored to be Surat's wealthiest merchant. The total haul from the Fateh Muhammed was around £50,000 to £60,000, however each pirate received only small shares of the treasure.
After capturing the Fateh Muhammed, the pirates next sailed in pursuit of the second massive Mughal treasure ship named the Ganj-i-sawai which meant 'Exceeding Treasure'. Every and his crew aboard the Fancy caught up to the ship a few days after they sacked the escorts. The Amity along with the Dolphin were not present as Thomas Tew had been slain in a previous engagement with the Mughal ships. This left the Fancy, the Pearl and the Portsmouth Adventure for the final face off with the Mughal treasure ship.
Ganj-i-sawai Capture
The Ganj-i-sawai was a massive warship that boasted eighty cannons, an armed crew of nearly four hundred along with 600 regular passengers. The ship was commanded by Muhammad Ibrahim and was determined to give nothing for free to the pirates. However, Every's opening broadside luckily destroyed the mainmast of the ship, crippling it in the water. With the ship incapacitated, Every and his crew began to board the ship. Initially being repelled by musket volleys, the pirates were not so easily deterred. When a cannon exploded on the deck and killed several Indians, the pirates took advantage of the chaos and confusion to climb up the steep sides of the ship.
The Indian crew was busy putting out fires on the ship when the stream of pirates began to pour out onto the deck, armed to the teeth with cutlasses and flintlock pistols reading to kill and maim the unfortunate voyagers. Soon the crew of the Pearl joined them on the deck and the pirate crews began a brutal boarding battle that fought last 2-3 hours.
Eventually after hours of brutal hand to hand combat, the Indians surrendered to the pirates. Every lost many of his pirate crew in the raid (some reports say ~100), however it was more than worth it. The Grand Mughal ship was carrying nearly £600,000 in precious metals and jewels. This score made Every one of the richest pirates to ever sail the seven seas.
Atrocities Committed
According to Khafi Khan, the pirates were brutal with the 600 passengers aboard the ship. In response to the slaughter of their men, the pirates raped and tortured all of the passengers in order to find their hidden loot. They went deck by deck and terrorized the entire ship. Some Muslim women actually committed suicide in order to prevent their husbands from seeing them get raped. While some try to deny these claims, it was even corroborated by Every's men at the time of their trial.
According to John Sparkes in his "Last Dying Words and Confession" that while he had no remorse over the piracy acts he committed he expressed deep remorse over the incident and that the;
"Inhuman treatment and merciless tortures inflicted on the poor Indians and their women still affected his soul"
In addition to this testimony, Sir John Gayer the Governor of Bombay and President of the British East India Company, sent a letter to the Lords of Trade in England stating:
"It is certain the Pyrates, which these People affirm were all English, did do very barbarously by the People of the Gunsway and Abdul Gofor's Ship, to make them confess where their Money was, and there happened to be a great Umbraws Wife (as Wee hear) related to the King, returning from her Pilgrimage to Mecha, in her old age. She they abused very much, and forced severall other Women, which Caused one person of Quality, his Wife and Nurse, to kill themselves to prevent the Husbands seing them (and their being) ravished."
Regardless of whatever happened, the pirates left the survivors aboard their looted ships and were free to continue back to India. The loot of the Ganj-i-sawai was valued somewhere between £200,000 and £600,000 including a known treasure of 500,000 pieces of gold and silver. The lower number is what the East India Company believed it was worth while the higher number is what the Mughals filed with their insurance claim and was most likely to compensate for the atrocities committed to his relatives and countrymen. This heist is regarded as one of the largest pirate captures in recorded history.
Enjoying the Loot
With one of the greatest heists of all time under their belt, the pirates now had to divide the treasure and enjoy their spoils. It had been a long road since they started the Spanish Expedition and they had lost a great number of crew in the process of taking the Ganj-i-sawai. According to Charles Johnson in his A General History of Pyrates, he persuaded the other captains to leave the stolen Mughal loot aboard the Fancy and quietly sailed away in the night.
Every and the crew of the Fancy then sailed for Ile Bourbon and arrived in November of 1695. It was there that they decided to divide the loot with each pirate making about £1,000 (£93,300 to £128,000 today). This was more money than most sailors ever made in their lifetime and in addition to the pure gold, each received many gemstones.
This total haul was worth so much that Every and his men were the first known public enemies by the British Empire. The British East India Company was forced to pay a £600,000 insurance claim to the Mughals which rightly pissed off the crown. After the division of loot there were many differences in opinion of where to sail next. The French and the Danish that were recruited by Every decided to leave the crew and stay at Bourbon.
Every and the remaining crew along with the Fancy set sail for the pirate haven of Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. Every and his men decided to use some of their loot to purchase the universal currency of the time, slaves. The belief was that Every could use them to perform the grueling physical labor in order to augment the crew he lost raiding the Mughal convoy. They also could be traded for any supplies along the way and would not reveal any of the stolen currency that they truly had which was most likely in the form of Indian and Arabian coins. They all agreed on aliases and decided to retain a low profile.
To sail from the Indian Ocean to the Bahamas while most of the known civilized world was looking for you was a feat in and of itself. Every and the crew of the Fancy eventually stopped off in Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. While the island was uninhabited they managed to scrape together some food before heading off towards the Bahamas. It was here than seventeen of Every's crew decided to stay on the island instead of continue on to the Bahamas.