The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

by Colin Woodard

  Avery apparently regretted looting English ships in time of war. A few months later he wrote an open letter to all English shipmasters, in which he told them they had nothing to fear from the Fancy and her men. "I have never as yet wronged any English or Dutch [vessels]," he wrote, "nor ever intend to whilst I am Commander." He signed it "As yet an Englishman's Friend." One can see why Avery would become a hero to the poor and downtrodden, a sort of maritime Robin Hood. He'd risen up against injustice and handled his prisoners with remarkable humanity, taking only what he and his band required for survival.

  Not all of Avery's subsequent actions were particularly honorable. His later admirers made much of his upstanding behavior toward English and European captives, but they tended to skip over or make light of his treatment of nonwhite foreigners who fell into his clutches. His crew and captives would later describe many acts of cruelty. Once, on the coast of West Africa, Avery lured a band of local tribesmen aboard his ship with the promise of trade, then stole their gold, clapped them into irons, and sold at least seven of them into slavery. There were numerous instances when his crew captured small, unarmed Arab trading vessels and, after seizing their humble cargoes of rice and fish, proceeded to burn them rather than return them to their captains. While cruising off what is now Somalia, the Fancy's crew burned the town of Mayd to the ground because the residents refused to trade with them. Before leaving Asia, Avery and his men would do far worse.

  By June 1695, thirteen months after the mutiny in Spain, Avery's gang had captured at least nine vessels and sailed from Maio to Madagascar, from the Cape of Good Hope to the coast of India. They had set up camp in the secluded harbors of Madagascar, given the Fancy a thorough overhaul in the Comoros Islands, and gorged themselves on pots of honey purchased from traders in Gabon. Their numbers had swollen to over one hundred, including fourteen volunteers from a Danish merchant vessel and a party of French privateers found stranded on an island near the Mozambique Straits. They had stolen large parcels of rice, grain, brandy, wool, linen, and silks, but only very small quantities of gold, silver, and other easily transportable valuables. If they were to make a real fortune, they had to go after a bigger prize. From their captives they learned that a great fleet would soon be sailing from Mocha, a port on the Red Sea in what is now Yemen, and would pass out of the Red Sea's entrance on its way to Surat, India. Aboard the ships would be thousands of Muslims returning from their annual pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Mecca and dozens of merchants repatriating the profits of their annual trading mission. The convoy's treasure ships—property of the Grand Moghul of India—were the most valuable vessels to sail the Indian Ocean.

  Avery and his crew sailed north for the mouth of the Red Sea, where they planned to lie in wait for the Mocha fleet. But they were not the only English raiders with this in mind. Along the way they came across two armed sloops—small, nimble, single-masted sailing vessels—flying English colors. Their captains turned out to be privateers from Rhode Island and Delaware, men who had been given a license to raid enemy shipping in time of war, but had decided, like Avery, to attack the neutral treasure fleet. A day after arriving at the narrows, three more American privateers showed up, including Thomas Tew of New York, who had been a famous pirate himself. Avery and the captains of the five privateers agreed to attack the treasure fleet together and to share the resulting plunder. They lay in ambush behind a tiny island in the passage of Bab-al-Mandab under the blazing sun: four six-gun sloops, the forty-six-gun Fancy, and a six-gun brigantine.

  The treasure fleet, consisting of twenty-five ships, passed the straits late one Saturday night in August, their lamps unlit, moving so stealthily that the pirates and privateers failed to see the first twenty-four. However they did capture the very last vessel, a slow-moving ketch and, upon interrogating the crew, realized they would have to chase the rest of the fleet across the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. For three days Avery's squadron pursued their quarry. The smaller vessels had trouble keeping pace with the Fancy. They burned the slowest of them so as not to be slowed down; a second sloop fell so far behind that it was never seen again.

  Finally, near the Indian coast, the pirates spotted a sail on the horizon. This turned out to be the Fath Mahmamadi, a ship larger than the Fancy, but also slower and armed with only six guns. The crew of the Fath Mahmamadi fired one pathetic three-gun salvo as the pirate ships gathered around them. The Fancy responded with a deafening twenty-three-gun broadside and a volley of musket fire. The Indian captain surrendered, the Fancy came alongside, and Avery's crew poured onto their 350-ton prize. In the holds they found the proceeds of the Fath Mahmamadi's trade in Mocha: £50,000 to £60,000 in gold and silver belonging to the ship's owner, the merchant Abd-ul-Ghafur. It was an impressive haul, enough to purchase the Fancy fifty times over, but Avery wanted more. He placed the vessel under the control of a detachment of his men—a prize crew—and, together with his fellow captains, continued his pursuit of the great fleet.

  Two days later, along the shores of eastern India, a lookout spotted another ship in the distance bound for the Indian port of Surat. The pirates soon caught up with what turned out to be the Ganj-i-sawai, a gigantic trading vessel that belonged to Grand Moghul Aurangzeb himself. She was far and away the largest ship operating out of Surat, with eighty guns, 400 muskets, and 800 able-bodied men aboard. Her captain, Muhammad Ibrahim, had reason to be confident of fending off the raiders, having more guns and more than twice as many men as the Fancy and the three American privateers combined. The stakes were high, however, for Ganj-i-sawai was heavily laden with passengers and treasure.

  As soon as the Fancy came into range, Captain Ibrahim ordered a gun crew into action. They loaded their heavy weapon and rolled it out of its port. The gunner took aim, lit the fuse, and stood back with the rest of his team, awaiting the cannon's recoil. Instead of a loud report and a burst of smoke, there came a horrifying flash. Owing to some internal defect, the heavy cannon exploded, sending shards in all directions. The gun crew was blown to bits. As Ibrahim was taking in the gruesome spectacle, the Fancy returned fire. One of her cannonballs struck the Ganj-i-sawai in the lower part of her mainmast, the most critical of locations. The mast partially collapsed, throwing sails and rigging into disarray and compounding the chaos aboard the ship. The loss of sail area meant the Ganj-i-sawai began to slow. Her pursuers closed in.

  Swords drawn and muskets at the ready, over 100 pirates crouched behind the Fancy's rails, waiting for the ships to come together. When they did, lines snapping, sails tearing, their wooden hulls moaning and creaking with the stress, Avery and company rushed over the side and onto the decks of the crippled vessel.

  An Indian historian named Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, who was in Surat at the time, wrote that given there were so many weapons aboard the Ganj-i-sawai, the crew would certainly have defeated the English pirates "if the captain had made any resistance." Captain Ibrahim apparently panicked and fled below decks to the quarters of a group of Turkish girls he had purchased in Mocha to serve as his personal concubines. "He put turbans on their heads and swords into their hands and incited them to fight," Khafi Khan wrote. Resistance aboard the Indian ship collapsed. Avery's men began their plunder.

  According to the stories that would later circulate in the waterfront pubs of England, Avery behaved chivalrously. One of the most popular accounts told of how he found "something more pleasing than jewels" aboard the captured ship: the Moghul Emperor's granddaughter, en route to her wedding with a vast dowry and a gaggle of beautiful handmaidens. Avery, it was said, proposed to the princess and, upon receiving her consent, married her right then and there with the assistance of a Muslim cleric. In this version of the story, which was published in London in 1709, "The rest of the crew then drew lots for her servants and, to follow the example of their commander, even stay'd their stomachs 'till the same priest had said Grace for them." The happy newlyweds were said to have spent the whole trip back to Madagascar engaged in conjugal bliss.r />
  The true story is less romantic. Trial documents and accounts of Indian witnesses and English officials make it clear that Avery presided over an orgy of violence. For several days, the pirates raped female passengers of all ages. Among the victims was one of the Moghul emperor's relatives—not a young princess, but the elderly wife of one of his courtiers. Khafi Khan reported that a number of women killed themselves to avoid such a fate, some by jumping into the sea, others stabbing themselves with daggers. Survivors said the pirates treated many of the captives "very barbarously" in an effort to make them confess where they had hidden their valuables. One of Avery's crew, Philip Middleton, later testified that they murdered several men aboard the captured ship. Fact and legend only agree on the scale of the treasure the pirates loaded aboard the Fancy: a trove of gold, silver, ivory, and jewels worth £150,000 or more.

  Once the pirates were satisfied, the Ganj-i-sawai was allowed to sail on to Surat with her surviving crew and passengers. The pirates left in the opposite direction, heading south toward Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. On the island of Réunion, halfway to the Cape, Avery and the privateer captains divided their plunder and went their separate ways. Most of the crew received an individual share of £1,000, the equivalent of twenty years' wages aboard a merchant ship. Avery put to his crew that they sail directly for Nassau to avoid the emperor's revenge. In November 1695 the Fancy began its long journey, halfway around the world, to New Providence Island.

  ***

  Having concluded their deal with Governor Trott, Avery and his men spent several days in Nassau, drinking Trott's refreshments and debating what to do next. A few men—seven or eight at least—resolved to stay right where they were and soon married local women. The remaining pirates split into three parties, each with its own idea of how best to slide into obscurity with their plunder. Twenty-three men, led by Thomas Hollingsworth, purchased a thirty-ton sloop called the Isaac from the islanders and sailed for England in the second week of April 1696, apparently wishing to quietly slip back to their homes. The second party of approximately fifty made their way to Charleston in Carolina, the nearest English colony, 400 miles to the north. The third group consisted of Avery and twenty others, who paid £600 for a fifty-ton ocean-going sloop, the Sea Flower, armed with four small cannon. Around the first of June, they loaded their possessions and treasure and made ready to depart. Henry Adams, the man who had carried Avery's messages to Governor Trott, married a Nassau girl and brought her with him aboard the sloop. Avery ordered the sails raised and the Sea Flower began making its way north with the Gulf Stream, bound for the north of Ireland.

  Nicholas Trott spent the early part of June picking the Fancy clean. To make this process easier—and because the ship was in poor condition already—he ordered her run aground on Hog Island shortly before the Sea Flower's departure. Whether he knew the ship's true identity is unclear, but sometime that summer, other mariners passed through Nassau and recognized the beached hulk as the Charles II. Trott brought a few men in for questioning but claimed "they could give no information." In December he received a letter from his counterpart in Jamaica, informing him that Bridgeman was none other than the outlaw Henry Avery. Trott brought a few of Avery's colleagues in for questioning. He soon released them, noting that the governor of Jamaica "gave no proof." Months later he disingenuously ordered the Fancy be "seized ... in the hope that evidence might be found." Trott would ultimately lose his governorship over the incident, but ended his days prosperously enough.

  Some of Avery's men found shelter in other ports. Several of those who had gone to Charleston continued on to Philadelphia, where they bought the allegiance of another governor, William Markham of Pennsylvania, for £100 per man. Markham, who apparently knew who they were, not only neglected to arrest them, he entertained them at his home and allowed one of them to marry his daughter. When one of the king's magistrates, Robert Snead, attempted to arrest the pirates, the governor had him disarmed and threatened with imprisonment. Snead, unperturbed, apprehended two of the pirates, but they "escaped" from Markham's prison within hours. The incident, Snead wrote back to authorities in London, had allowed "all the people [to] see how Arabian gold works with some consciences."

  The Isaac, the first of the sloops carrying the England-bound pirates, landed on remote Achill Island off the west coast of Ireland during the first week in June. About a dozen pirates came ashore at the foot of Achill Head, piling bags of gold and silver coins onto the wide beach. They later made their way to Dublin and there vanished without a trace. The rest of the Isaacs company sailed down to Westport, County Mayo, where they hastily unloaded and broke company. They offered townspeople £10 each for nags worth not one-fifth of that, and exchanged bags of Spanish silver for purses of gold guineas at a discount, simply to lighten their loads. On small Irish horses laden down with guineas, silks, and other valuables, many rode out of town in the direction of Dublin. Hollingsworth, their leader, sold the Isaac to local merchants and took off himself. Local officials estimated the sloop had arrived in Westport with £20,000 in gold and silver, plus several tons of valuable Bahamian logwood, a tropical species from which dyes were extracted. Only two men, James Trumble and Edward Foreside, were apprehended, though others were seen in Dublin later that summer.

  Avery and the Sea Flower arrived at the end of June, landing at Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, in the northeast. They were confronted by the local customs official, Maurice Cuttle, who they handled in their usual fashion; each gave Mr. Cuttle about £3 in gold and, in exchange, he not only issued them passes to go to Dublin, he escorted them part of the way there. Six miles out of Dunfanaghy, Avery parted ways with the rest of the men, saying he was bound for Scotland and, ultimately, Exeter in his native Devonshire. Only one person accompanied the pirate: Henry Adams's wife. Together Avery and Mrs. Adams made their way from Donegal Town.

  The other men of the Sea Flower traveled to Dublin. One of them, John Dan, booked passage to England and then ventured overland to London. While passing through the town of St. Albans, Hertfordshire, he ran into Mrs. Adams, who was boarding a stagecoach. She told Dan that she was going to meet Avery, but refused to take him along or tell him where he was. A few days later, at an inn in Rochester, Kent, outside London, a maid discovered the £1,100 Dan had sewn into his quilted jacket. He wound up in prison, as did seven of his former shipmates. Five of them, including the steward William May, were hanged at the Execution Dock in London on November 25,1696.

  Avery was never heard from again.

  ***

  Rumors of Avery's fate circulated the English-speaking world for decades afterward, passing from deckhand to deckhand within the ships and pubs of the empire. It was said that he was literally the King of the Pirates, and had returned to Madagascar with his accomplices to reign over his own pirate domain. There he lived with his wife, the granddaughter of the Grand Moghul, in a sumptuous and well-defended palace, beyond the reach of English law. Pirates were drawing to him from the four corners of the world.

  The legend gained credence in 1709, when a London bookseller published The Life and Adventure of Capt. John Avery, allegedly based on the journal of a man who had escaped from his pirate kingdom. The anonymous author claimed Avery presided over a fleet of more than forty large warships and an army of 15,000 men. "Towns were built, communities established, fortifications built, and entrenchments flung up, as rendered his Dominions impregnable and inaccessible by sea and land." Avery had so much silver and gold that he'd begun minting his own coins bearing his likeness. "The famous English pirate," he wrote, had gone "from a Cabin Boy to a King." The story so captivated the English public that within a few years, London's Theatre Royal staged a play based on Avery's life. In The Successful Pyrate, Avery lived in a vast palace, "a sceptered robber at the head of a hundred thousand ... brother-thieves ... burning cities, ravaging countries, and depopulating nations."

  To abused young sailors and cabin boys, Avery had become a hero. He was one of the
ir own, a man who stuck up for his fellow sailors and led them to a promised land, a sailor's heaven on earth. A champion of the ordinary man, the Avery of legend was a symbol of hope for a new generation of oppressed mariners, as well as a role model for the men who would one day become the most famous and fearsome pirates in history.

  Only years later, as the Golden Age of Piracy was coming to an end, would a competing account of Avery's fate be published. According to A General History of the Pyrates, published in London in 1724, Avery never made it back to Madagascar. After taking leave of his shipmates in Ireland, he headed to his native Devon bearing a large quantity of diamonds. Through friends in Biddeford, he arranged to sell the gems to some Bristol merchants, men who, unlike Avery, were sufficiently wealthy that "no enquiry would be made [of] how they came by them." According to this account, Avery handed over the jewels, with the understanding that he would be sent most of the proceeds of their sale, and relaxed with kin in Biddeford. The payments he eventually received from Bristol "were not sufficient to give him bread." He confronted the merchants and they threatened to turn him in to the authorities, showing themselves to be "as good Pyrates at Land as he was at Sea." Reduced to beggary, Avery fell sick and died on his return to Biddeford, "not being worth as much as would buy him a coffin."