33 Facts About Henry Every

Henry Every, known as Henry Avery, sometimes erroneously given as Jack Avery or John Avery, was an English pirate who operated in the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the mid-1690s.

Henry Every probably used several aliases throughout his career, including Benjamin Bridgeman, and was known as Long Ben to his crewmen and associates.

Henry Every began his pirate career while he was first mate aboard the warship Charles II.

Charles II was renamed the Fancy and Henry Every elected as the new captain.

Henry Every is considered to have died sometime between 1699 and 1714; his treasure has never been recovered.

Parish records suggest that he was the son of John Evarie and his wife, Anne ; the Henry Every family of Devon was quite established at the time, and it is likely he was a kinsman of the Henry Every family of Wycroft Castle.

The account tells of Van Broeck's short captivity by Henry Every's crew aboard Fancy, and claims that Henry Every's father was a trading captain who had served in the Royal Navy under Admiral Robert Blake.

Henry Every was probably a sailor from his youth, serving on various Royal Navy ships.

Henry Every likely participated in the Battle of Beachy Head against the French two weeks later, an engagement which ended disastrously for the English.

Henry Every was employed by the royal governor of Bermuda, Isaac Richier, to transport enslaved Africans from West Africa to the Americas; during this period, Every operated primarily as a slave trader along the Guinea coast.

However, historians have noted that this part of Henry Every's life is relatively undocumented.

James then fired on Charles II, alerting the Spanish Night Watch, and Henry Every was forced to make a run to the open sea, quickly vanishing into the night.

Some reports say that Henry Every was much ruder in his dealings with Gibson, but agree that he at least offered him the position of the second mate.

In either case, Henry Every exhibited an amount of gentility and generosity in his operation of the mutiny that indicates his motives were not a mere adventure.

Henry Every was easily able to convince the men to sail to the Indian Ocean as pirates since their original mission had greatly resembled piracy and Henry Every was renowned for his powers of persuasion.

At Maio, the easternmost of the Cape Verde's Sotavento islands, Henry Every committed his first piracy, robbing three English merchantmen from Barbados of provisions and supplies.

Henry Every then sailed to the Guinea coast, where he tricked a local chieftain into boarding Fancy under the false pretence of trade, and forcibly took his and his men's wealth, leaving them slaves.

At Johanna, Henry Every wrote a letter addressed to the English ship commanders in the Indian Ocean, falsely stating that he had not attacked any English ships.

Henry Every's letter describes a signal English skippers could use to identify themselves so he could avoid them and warns them that he might not be able to restrain his crew from plundering their ships if they failed to use the signal.

In 1695, Henry Every set sail for the volcanic island of Perim to wait for an Indian fleet that would be passing soon.

Henry Every was elected admiral of the new six-ship pirate flotilla despite the fact that Tew had arguably more experience, and now found himself in command of over 440 men while they lay in wait for the Indian fleet.

Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, a contemporary Indian historian who was in Surat at the time, wrote that, as Henry Every's men boarded the ship, Ganj-i-sawais captain ran below decks where he armed the slave girls and sent them up to fight the pirates.

Later accounts would tell of how Henry Every himself had found "something more pleasing than jewels" aboard, usually reported to be Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's daughter or granddaughter.

Four of Henry Every's men took a small boat to Nassau, the island's largest city and capital, with a letter addressed to the island's governor, Nicholas Trott.

Trott sent a letter to Henry Every instructing him that his crew "were welcome to come and to go as they pleased".

Henry Every must have known that the ship's crew were not merely unlicensed slavers, likely noting the patched-up battle damage on Fancy.

British author and pirate biographer Charles Johnson suggested that, after attempting to sell his diamonds, Henry Every died in poverty in Devon after being cheated out of his wealth by Bristol merchants.

About 75 of Henry Every's crew sailed to North America in hopes of escaping the transcontinental manhunt.

Henry Every [Markham] called me rascal and dared me to issue my warrants against these men, saying that he had a good mind to commit me.

Henry Every then ordered the constables not to serve any more of my warrants; moreover being greatly incensed he wrote a warrant with his own hand to the Sheriff to disarm me.

Some fictional and semi-biographical accounts of Henry Every were published in the decades following his disappearance.

Henry Every even has several children with the princess and establishes a new monarchy.

In 1720 Henry Every appeared as the primary character of Daniel Defoe's The King of Pirates and as a minor character in his novel Captain Singleton.