Henry Every, Successful Pyrate

Every carried out what’s been described as the most profitable and brutal pirate raid in history. It became a massive international incident, and Britain tried to repair its relationship with the Mughal Empire through a highly publicized series of trials.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Uh well,
I don't think we've talked about pirates on the podcast
in a while. It's been a little bit, you know,

(00:22):
we've they've had passing mentions in maybe unearthed episodes or
other random stuff, but we have not had an actual
whole episode about pirates and more than a year and
a half, which is a long time. I mean, I
feel like if you look hard enough, any show can
become about a pirate. Sure, So today we're going to
talk about Henry Every. He's also known as Henry Avery

(00:44):
and as Benjamin Bridgeman and as long Ben Avery. And
he's been on my short list for a while. And
it just said Henry Every and then in parentheses pirate.
And I did not write any other indication of what
prompted me to put it on there. So it's a
mystery why why it caught my attention in the first place.
It was not uncharted for because I have not played

(01:05):
that game, but I do know that he figures into
that game. And in case folks were thinking of writing
us to say he was in charted uncharted four. That
was not where um. He did, though, carry out what's
been described as the most profitable pirate rate in history,
and it was also, to be clear, a particularly brutal
and horrifying raid and its treatment of the women and

(01:25):
the men aboard the rated ship. But I did not
know until I got into the research for this that
it also became a massive international incident, with Britain later
trying to repair its relationship with the Mughal Empire, the
target of this raid in a highly publicized, kind of
weird series of trials. So we know very little about

(01:48):
Henry Every's early life except that he was probably English.
He was born sometime in the sixteen fifties. He might
have spent some time in the Royal Navy, but sources
conflict on whether or not that's actually the case. But
he did start working in the slave trade in the
early sixteen nineties under a commission from the British Royal
Governor of Bermuda. After at least a couple of years

(02:09):
as a slave trader, Every was hired as first mate
aboard the English vessel Charles the Second in sixteen ninety three,
the Charles the Second was a privateering vessel and it
had been commissioned to attack French ships and colonies in
the Caribbean. UH. If you need to refresher on privateering,
these were basically pirates, but pirates operating with government authority

(02:31):
to do this piratical work. UH. By May of sixteen
ninety four, though the Charles the Second still had not
left the coast of Europe and the crew had not
been paid for any of their work so far. Naturally,
the crew wasn't happy about this situation, and when the
ship stopped for supplies at the Spanish port of La Coruna,
every let a mutiny. Afterward, the remaining crew elected him

(02:55):
their captain. Every renamed the Charles the Second as the Fancy,
which is often spelled with a pH and sometimes with
an I E, and documents from the time they set
a course for Madagascar, following a sailing route that was
known as the Pirate Round, which was popular among English
pirates starting in the sixteen nineties. Most pirates came into

(03:16):
the Pirate Round from the Caribbean and headed southeast, so
they were kind of joining in with it from the
coast of Europe instead Once it approached Africa, the route
shifted south to pass the Cape of Good Hope, and
then it turned north again towards Madagascar before turning east
to cross the Indian Ocean. The fancies first piratical encounter
was with three English ships, which they caught near the

(03:37):
Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of West Africa. The
Fancy continued down the African coast from there, capturing and
plundering ships from France and Denmark. It was sixte by
the time every and the Fancy reached Madagascar, and by
then the Fancy had a crew of about a hundred
and fifty men. A whole other collection of other, mostly English,

(03:58):
pirates were in the area. When they got there, they
were looking for a fleet that was reported to be nearby.
This fleet belonged to the Mughal Empire now the Mingal
Empire ruled parts of the Indian subcontinent from the early
sixteenth century into the mid eighteenth century. Sometimes the endpoint
is marked a little later than that. By sixteen ninety five,

(04:19):
it's territory covered most of what's now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
and Nepal. The Mughal dynasty was wealthy and its emperor
in sixteen ninety five was areng Zeb, also known as
Muhi al Din Muhammad or as Emperor Alamgir. It was
during aren Zeb's reign that the Mughal Empire reached its
peak in terms of size and power. Aren Zeb's rule

(04:41):
of the empire and the role he played in its
history is its own complicated story that we're not going
to get into here, but in short, he had a
reputation for ruthlessness and for religious persecution of non Muslims
in the later part of his reign. The fleet that
the pirates were looking for was a large one, and
in did twenty five ships, and among them were merchant

(05:02):
vessels and escort vessels. Several of the ships were carrying
Muslim pilgrims who were returning from the Hajj, and some
of the ships in the fleet belonged to the emperor himself.
The fleet was far too large and powerful for any
one pirate ship to take on a loan, which is
why this collection of mostly English pirates was working together.

(05:23):
One of the other parties involved was Thomas Two, who
was from a prominent Newport, Rhode Island family. Two is
often described as a pioneer of the pirate round, and
like Henry every he had turned pirate after some time
as a privateer. He had legitimately bought a share of
a ship called the Amity in and when it was
tasked with taking a French factory in West Africa, he

(05:46):
proposed to the crew that it would be a lot
more profitable to turn to piracy than to attack a
factory that had no booty to plunder. It was really
that simple. He was like, you know what, this whole
thing or we're supposed to be attacking this factory's not
going to be It's not gonna make so much money.
We can make a lot more money we attacked other
ships instead. Let's stop working for the man. Was very
much like, and this whole let's stop working then for

(06:08):
the man. Where is this going to come up later?
It was one of the reasons that people had a
lot of sympathy for pirates, not necessarily people being attacked
by them, but other people had a lot of sympathy
for pirates. So twos turned to piracy did not stop
officials from working with him. Though. When this raid on
the Mughal fleet took place, he was sailing under a
letter of mark from the Governor of Bermuda. When the

(06:30):
pirates finally spotted a ship from the Mughal fleet, they
learned that the rest of the fleet was farther away
than they had thought. The first ship they took turned
out to be part of the rear guard, so the
fastest pirate ships, which included Every and the Fancy, raced ahead.
Every encountered the Fat Mammy, which was part of the
fleet's escort, and this ship surrendered after a brief firefight,

(06:53):
and the Fancy came away with about fifty thousand British
pounds worth of gold and silver. This didn't seem like
that great the hole once it was divided up among
the Fancy's entire crew, so Every decided to keep going
and to try to find a bigger prize among the
rest of the fleet. He and two other pirate ships
spotted the Ganji Sawai on September seven. So you'll sometimes

(07:15):
see the Gangs of wi anglicized as the guns Way
in documents from the time and also in uncharted four
historical I don't expect uncharted for to be historically accurate,
by the way, so when I make that joke, I'm
not criticizing it was the largest ship in the fleet.
It was possibly the largest ship in the entire Mingal Empire,

(07:37):
and it was owned by the emperor himself. The emperor
also had at least one relative aboard. All those sources
disagree about whether his it was his daughter or his granddaughter.
These were all relatives who were traveling back from Mecca.
And we're going to talk about every encounter with this
ship after we first paused for a little sponsor break.

(08:02):
The gang was well crude and well armed, with about
four hundred riflemen and several cannons. It had more soldiers
and armaments than the three pirate ships that were after it,
possibly even more than the entire pirate fleet did before.
Every and the fastest ships out distanced the rest of them,
but every got lucky. The Fancy fired on the Ganji

(08:22):
Sawai and at the very start of the battle destroyed
its main mast. When the Ganji sa I tried to
return fire, one of its artillery pieces exploded. The resulting
fire and chaos gave the Fancy time to move in
and board the Ganji Sawai, which was captured after some
intense hand to hand combat. So that just just this

(08:43):
would have been enough to draw the ire of Emperor
aren Zeb and the rest of the Mughal Empire. But
after taking the ship, the crew of the Fancy also
brutalized the people on board. I cannot exaggerate this was horrifying.
They stayed with the ship for about a week as
they set for as much plunder as they could possibly holloway.
During that week, the pirates tortured to the men aboard

(09:06):
to try to get information about where their valuables were.
They also assaulted and raped many of the women aboard.
A British colonial agent for the Mughal Emperor reported that
several women aboard the ship took their own lives rather
than be raped. Once the crew of the Fancy finally
left the Ganji Sawai, they had taken on an immense
hall of gold, silver and jewels. It had an estimated

(09:29):
worth of three D twenty five thousand to six hundred
thousand British pounds at the time, which would be well
into the millions today. And then they followed the pirate
round back to the Caribbean, where they headed for New
Providence Island in the Bahamas, which is home to the
Bahamian capital of Nassau. They had heard from other pirates
that its governor, Cadwalader Jones would be sympathetic when they

(09:51):
got to New Providence Island in March of six six,
though Jones was no longer the governor. The new governor
was Nicholas Trot, and like it's predecessor, fortunately for these pirates,
he was very willing to look the other way if
the price was right. So every bribes Trot to make
them welcome on the island, and otherwise they didn't really
advertise who they were or what they had done. They

(10:14):
masqueraded as slave traders, and they traded the fancy for
a load of ivory. Trot might have been a little
less willing to deal with every if he had known
what the pirates had done, or if he had any
idea that he was now caught up in an international incident,
but he almost certainly didn't. Word reached the Google Empire
long before it reached Britain or any of its colonies.

(10:35):
What had happened? The Ganji Sawai struggled into harbor at
Surrett without most of its cargo and several of its
former passengers about a week after the pirate attack. So
people in the Empire were outraged when they learned what
every and the other pirates had done. Riots spread throughout
the city of Surrett. Many of these riots targeted the

(10:56):
offices of the East India Company. There, a mob tried
to break in and kill the forty or so e
I S agents who were working inside, but the governor,
it's him Ad Khan intervened and stopped them. Although the
East India Company employees lives were spared, Khan had them
all arrested. He also arrested at least three captains from

(11:18):
East India Company ships and all the other British subjects
that he could find in sur It. It's possible that
he thought that the attack on the Ganji Sawai was
a conspiracy and that the e I C was somehow
behind it. He would not be the only person to
think this, which we will talk about it is a
little bit more in a bit so from prison, the
British captives wrote to Sir John gay Or. Gay Or

(11:39):
was a representative of the East India Company and the
governor of Bombay, which is now known as Mumbai. Bombay
was south of Surat and had been captured by Portugal
in fifteen thirty four. It came under British control in
sixteen sixty two when Charles the Second of England married
Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza. The East India Company was

(12:00):
inting it from the monarch and had built its Indian
headquarters there. That came up in our Tea episode as
well it did. You could do a little ven diagram
of the overlapping stuff of this episode. In that one
Gayer wrote to the Lords of Trade saying that British
subjects had been clapped in irons and were being imprisoned
in rooms with boarded up windows. He also reported that

(12:21):
one english Man had died of injuries he sustained in
the initial melee. So it took a long time for
messages to get anywhere at this point in history, and
it would be months before Here's communication actually got to London,
and the meantime, Emperor aren Zeb shut down for East
India Company factories. He ordered an attack on Bombay. Now,

(12:43):
if he had done this, an attack probably would have
been disastrous for Bombay and for the East India Company
as a whole. The e I C And the Mughal
Empire had been at war just a few years before
in a conflict known as Child's War, and during that
time Bombay had been under siege and partly to destroyed.
Fortunately for the e I C, an official named Samuel

(13:04):
Annesley was able to negotiate a ceasefire, but it was
obvious that the Emperor would be more than happy to
force the British completely out of India, which would have
been catastrophic for British colonies and trading relationships in Asia
and the Pacific. So Annesley made the Emperor several promises.
He promised that Britain would compensate the Emperor for all

(13:26):
his lost property, and that the East India Company would
begin providing escorts for all Indian ships headed towards Mecca
for the Hajj, and most importantly, he promised that Henry
Every would be brought to justice. So this is enough
for the Emperor to agree not to attack Bombay, but
he also said that he would not allow trade with
Britain by the Mughal Empire to resume until everyone was captured,

(13:51):
which is a serious economic situation. Extremely uh Sir John
Gayer's letter detailing Henry Every's attack on the Mughal fleets,
riots and the arrests of British subjects in Surret finally
reached London in December of sixteen. Other letters from gay
Or Annesley and others arrived even later, in January and

(14:11):
May of sixteen ninety six. By the time those last
letters arrived, Every had already gotten to New Providence Island
and unloaded the fancy. The Lords of Trade had also
been succeeded by the Lord's Commissioners of Trade and Plantations,
also known as the Board of Trade. They were faced
with what to do about Every in the situation with
the Mughal Empire at their very first meeting in May

(14:33):
of sixteen ninety six. So as Holly just said, this
was a serious problem. It was more than just the
fact that Henry Every had attacked a ship belonging to
the Mughal Emperor, or that he and his men had
plundered the ship and brutalized its passengers and the crew.
It was also that Emperor aren Zeb was well convinced
that England was a nation of pirates, and histories from

(14:55):
the time reflect that belief. In the early eighteenth century,
Persian historian Coffee Ka wrote that the East India Company's
holdings in Bombay were insignificant and that quote the source
of the remaining unstable income of the English is the
plunder and capture of the ships going to the House
of God at intervals of one to two years. They

(15:15):
attacked these ships, not at the time when loaded with
grains they proceed to Mecca and Jetta, but when they
returned bringing gold, silver, Ibrahemis and Real's. And there was
some truth to the Emperor's belief that England was a
nation of pirates. Although the British Empire wasn't plundering the
Mughal Empire's ships in an official capacity, a lot of

(15:37):
the pirates that were plundering in the Caribbean and along
the Pirate round were English and for the most part,
those pirates left English ships alone. On top of that,
multiple British colonial governors had made a habit of either
tolerating pirates or actively working with them, so authorities in
Britain needed to figure out not only how to repair
their relationship with the Mughal Empire, but also know how

(16:00):
to send a signal to the rest of the world
that the nation would not tolerate piracy. So and then
all of this was tied together in the dire economic
consequence of the Emperor not allowing the East India Company
to operate in his territory anymore. So Britain cann't do
anything as dramatic as, for example, summarily executing people suspected

(16:23):
of piracy. That probably would have satisfied some of the criticism,
but that would also violate British law. So they started
with a proclamation issued by the Lord Justices of England
on July seventeenth, sixteen nineties six. This proclamation stated that
they had received information that Henry Every quote under English colors,

(16:44):
acted as a common pirate and robber upon the high seas,
and hath presumed, under such color colors to commit several
acts of piracy upon the seas of India or Persia,
which may occasion great damage to the emergence of England
trading into these parts. That's the end of the quote.
This proclamation went on to say that every had stolen

(17:05):
the ship known as the Charles from the port in Spain,
and that and the proclamation commanded Admirals, Captain's governors and
the like to capture him, offering a reward of five
hundred pounds. Another proclamation followed on August tenth, which included
a lot of the same information, and also said that
every may now be going under the name Henry Bridgeman.

(17:28):
The second proclamation named a number of other alleged pirates
as well, and it said that the men may have
left the Caribbean and come to Ireland. Yet another proclamation
followed on August eighteen six, this one from the Monarch
William the Third, also known as William of Orange. It
was a proclamation quote for apprehending Henry Every alias Bridgeman,

(17:50):
and sundry other pirates. It called every end those sundry
other pirates quote open and villainous transgressors, and it ordered
essentially every sort of law enforcement and military in existence
to seek out and apprehend them. The bounty offered for
every was still five pounds sterling, and for the other

(18:10):
pirates named it was fifty pounds. This proclamation also indemnified
all royal subjects from any quote hazard of slaughter, mutilation,
or other acts of violence that they might commit against
Avery and his accomplices, and it advised that anyone sheltering
or assisting any of the pirates was doing so upon
their highest peril. These proclamations made it a point of

(18:33):
naming colonial governors among the people compelled to seek out
and capture Every, because although it was well known among
pirates that a number of colonial governors could be bribed
or would otherwise work with them, authorities in London were
only starting to become fully aware of how extensive this
problem was. The proclamations did not, however, name Thomas two
as one of the wanted pirates. Apart from the amity

(18:56):
being too slow to keep up with the ships that
assaulted the Ganges, why many he was not involved with that.
He had been shot and killed while trying to take
a different ship in that same Mogal convoy. A handful
of men from Every's crew were captured in Ireland, and
even though every wasn't among them, this at least gave
the Crown someone to put on trial. And we're going

(19:17):
to talk about that trial after we pause for a
sponsor break. Henry Every's captured crew members were tried at
the Central Criminal Court a k a. The Old Bailey
in October of six and this trial was weird number one,
even though it was being tried at the Old Bailey,

(19:38):
which is place that has come up before and we've
been talking about criminal activity and Brittain during this point.
It wasn't being tried under English common law. It was
being tried under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, and this
is because common law didn't really cover nautical piracy number two.
The reason they decided to hold a trial under the
jurisdiction of the Admiralty at the Old Bailey rather than

(20:01):
through the Admiralty Court was so that the British citizenry
would have the same access to the proceedings as they
would for any other criminal matter. Since part of the
purpose was to send a message that the British Empire
would not tolerate piracy, they needed public proceedings and public interest,
not a closed door session of the Admiralty Court. They
also needed the Mughal Emperor to hear all of the

(20:24):
details of the conviction and execution of the pirates. Even
with the admiralties involvement, though, everything was operating a lot
like any other trial at the Old Bailey. The prosecutors
were all legal professionals, but the defendants were all on
their own in terms of representation. The trial opened on
October nineteen and Henry every was named in the indictment,

(20:46):
even though he was still at large. Two witnesses who
were former members of Every's crew, provided extensive detail about
the incident, but the questioning also went well beyond just
what had happened with the Mughal fleet. This try ill
was an opportunity for authorities to learn more about the
practice of piracy, and a lot of the testimony was
more about that than about the Ganji so Wi. It

(21:09):
was basically like they said, Okay, you know, it would
be great is if we could get a better handle
on what all's going on with these pirates. So let's
try to establish a whole narrative of the pirate situation
rather than just investigating this one thing. So this testimony
demonstrated unequivocally that the men on trial had all committed piracy.

(21:30):
But when the jury returned a verdict, they acquitted all
of them. That didn't go how they were hoping. No
at this was a problem and it was a complete
shock to the various authorities involved. On top of failing
to deliver a guilty verdict to try to satisfy the
Mughal Emperor, the proceedings also publicly aired a lot of

(21:50):
evidence that multiple British colonial governors were actively working with
and harboring pirates. So this whole carefully choreographed trial at
the Old Bayle just something of a pr move had
done the opposite of what it was supposed to do.
It did not send the message that Britain wouldn't tolerate pirates.
It created a public record that in fact they did.

(22:11):
It was also a good example of how the people
were responsible for this proceeding were pretty out of touch
with the ordinary British citizenry. Basically, people really liked pirates.
Some of this was because of privateers like Sir Francis
Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, who had official and unofficial
support of the Crown and their harassment and plundering of
Spanish ships and colonies. Spain considered both of these men

(22:34):
to be pirates, but in Britain both of them had
been knighted, Drake by Queen Elizabeth the First and Morgan
by King Charles the Second. In the public eye, they
had said an example of pirates as noble patriots who
only targeted Britain's enemies. But it wasn't just about people
like Drake and Morgan. Henry every himself had also become

(22:54):
a folk hero Not long after he commandeered the Charles
the Second, someone had written a broadside ballot about it,
first published by theophilist Lewis in six The ballad was
framed as something that every had written himself and then
sent back to shore with one of the mutineers. That
is certainly a fanciful fabrication, but the details in the

(23:15):
ballad are close enough to the historical record that it's
likely that whoever wrote the ballad heard about the mutiny
from someone who was actually there. Ballad was not obscure.
Some of the wives of sailors aboard the Child's a
Second had fouled a complaint against James Hoblin, the merchant
who owned the ship. This was way back before it
was turned into a pirate ship. They claimed that he

(23:37):
was traitorously enslaving their husbands, and in the case that
came up before the Privy Council on August sixteenth of
sixteen four, Hoblin submitted a copy of this broadside ballad
as part of the documents in his defense. Like this
was not a thing nobody had ever heard of before,
were singing the song a lot. It was also a

(23:58):
pretty clear sign of how popular opinion viewed Henry Every.
In printing, it's titled a copy of Verses composed by
Captain Henry Every lately gone to see to seek his fortune,
And it starts, Come, all you brave boys whose courage
is bold, will you venture with me? I'll glut you
with gold. Make haste onto Corona. A ship you will

(24:20):
find that's called the Fancy will pleasure your mind. Captain
Every is in her and calls her his own. He
will box her about boys before he has done French,
Spaniard and Portuguese the Heathen. Likewise, he has made a
war with them, until that he dies after ten more
verses of very high spirited promises, of all the far

(24:41):
off places that Every plans to see and plunder if necessary.
It ends quote, now this is the course I intend
for to steer my false hearted nation. To you. I
declare I have done thee no wrong. Thou must me forgive.
The sword shall maintain me as long as I live.
So with all that in mind, in hindsight, it is

(25:02):
not really all that surprising that the jury acquitted Every's
crew members. They were pirates, and in the public eye,
pirates were somewhere on a spectrum between folk hero and
noble patriot, just also some romanticism in the whole thing. Uh.
The jury also was not particularly sympathetic to the Mughal Emperor,
who was a Muslim foreigner on the other side of

(25:23):
the world. So the Admiralty, the British East India Company,
and the British government were all terrified that the Emperor
was going to learn about the pirates acquittal and that
it would just confirm his suspicion that England was a
nation of pirates. So they turned to Sir Charles Hedges,
chief Justice of the High Court of the Admiralty, to
arrange another trial on a second set of charges, this

(25:47):
time relating to the mutiny aboard the Charles the Second
rather than the attack on the Mughal fleet. This was
great because he would allow them to try the men again,
but it was not ideal because the Emperor definitely wasn't
going to be satisfied with a conviction for mere mutiny,
of which he was not the victim. So in the
second trial, the prosecution, again in a very carefully choreographed proceeding,

(26:11):
tried to establish the legal idea that mutiny was theft
and that theft on the High Seas was piracy, so
therefore mutiny was piracy, but that the men were being
tried for mutiny, not piracy, so this was not an
issue of double jeopardy. This was some mental gymnastics, and
it's even reflected in the official court record from this

(26:32):
second trial, which ends the summation of the previous trial
with quote the jury, contrary to the expectation of the court,
brought in all prisoners not guilty, whereupon the session was
adjourned to Saturday, the thirty one of October, and the
prisoners were committed upon a new warrant for several other piracies.

(26:52):
In the second trial, the prosecution talked to the jury
a lot about how bad piracy was and how Britain
looked to the rest of the world. In that moment.
Chief Justice Hedges also described what would happen if the
pirates were acquitted once again, quote the barbarous nations will
reproach us as being a harbor, receptacle and a nest
of pirates, and our friends will wonder to hear that

(27:15):
the enemies of merchants and of mankind should find a
sanctuary in this ancient place of trade. Nay, we ourselves
cannot but confess that all kingdoms and countries who have
suffered by English pirates, may, for want of redress, in
the ordinary course, have the pretense of justice and the
color of the laws of nations to justify their making

(27:37):
reprisals upon our merchants wheresoever they shall meet them upon
the seas. In case you missed it, the Chief Justice
just called the Mughal Empire a barbarous nation in court.
Ah uh. And even after this whole speech that was
clearly designed to sway the jury, he went on to
say that he was in fact not trying to sway

(27:57):
the jury. So this time the jury convicted all of
the men and they were all hanged on November fifteen,
sixteen ninety six. And with that done, and with a
lot of reparations paid, the Emperor of the Mughal Empire
reluctantly allowed the East India Company to resume its activities
in his territory. The proceedings of the trials were collected

(28:20):
and printed at seven Stars of Ludgate Street, which was
owned by one of London's largest printers and booksellers, the Everingham's.
There are still copies of it in more than forty libraries.
Although it was very widely distributed and widely read, it
did not really shift public opinion on Henry Every or
in fact of pirates in general. Having this thing printed

(28:40):
and widely distributed was part of the plan from the beginning.
They were like, Okay, we're gonna have this trial. It's
gonna be very public trial. They're gonna totally condemn all
of these pirates, and then we're gonna print all of
the stuff from the trial so that everyone can read
it whenever they want. It didn't. It didn't really go
quite as planned. Instead of everybody deciding that Henry every
was a terrible and not rious pirate that had, you know,

(29:02):
brutalized a whole lot of people on a ship that
he had rated, he continued to be the hero and
a number of works of fiction. There was The Life
and Adventures of Captain John Avery by a pseudonymous captain
Adrian von Broke in seventeen o nine. Seventeen thirteen saw
the play The Successful Pirate, written by Charles Johnson and
performed in London for several years. The King of Pirates

(29:26):
being an account of famous enterprises of Captain Avery. The
mock King of Madagascar with his Rambles and Piracies, wherein
all the sham accounts formerly published of him are Detected,
was written in seventeen nineteen. It's often attributed to Daniel Dafoe.
Snappy title uh Every is also, unsurprisingly a prominent feature

(29:46):
in A General History of Pirates, which came out in
seventeen twenty four under the name Captain Charles Johnson, but
is also often attributed to either Daniel Dafoe or Nathaniel Missed.
This colossally popular book on pirates is cited in many
biographies and histories, but it is definitely not an authoritative
work of nonfiction. We talk a little bit more about

(30:08):
it in our past episode on an Bonnie and Mary read.
Henry Avery is the first pirate that's discussed in it,
and that ballad that we talked about and and read
parts of earlier survived through oral folks singing for more
than two hundred years. I mean, there were print copies
of it still. You can still find very old copies
of the original broadside, But the way that people were

(30:29):
passing it was by singing for two hundred years. In
spite of an international manhunt, Henry Every was never seen again.
No one knows exactly what happened to him. Most of
these works of fiction contend that he married the Mughal
emperor's daughter and established his own kingdom in Madagascar. It's

(30:49):
more likely that he made his way back to England
to try to hide himself from that international manhunt and
died there in poverty. And Britain's very public announcements of
a crackdown on pirus they didn't have that much of
an effect on piracy either. The golden age of piracy,
which this incident happened kind of in the middle of,
continued on for more than thirty years, and this was

(31:11):
also a temporary blip in the East India Company's activities,
and what's now India. The e I C went on too,
sees huge amounts of territory on the Indian subcontinent, and
it operated until eighteen seventy four. A bunch of those
later events have come up in other podcasts on the show,
most recently in our one about the East India Company
stealing te secrets from China to then grow the tea

(31:35):
in India. Oh, East India Company, in the middle of
a lot of problems, a lot a lot of problems
when I started this whole thing with the idea of
what will do a pirate. We haven't talked about a
pirate in a while. I was not expecting a weird, convoluted,
uh legal pr move to be in the third act

(31:57):
of the show. Yeah, that's kind of the best part
of the story. I mean, the whole It's tragic because
I want to acknowledge that horrible things were done, but
I love the idea that they cooked up this whole thing,
not thinking for a minute that people would behave counter
to how they anticipated, Like there was no plan B there.
They were totally like, you're going to convict these pirates,
And that was like, you, guys, that's a listener mail

(32:24):
I do. I have two pieces of listener mail from
folks who sent us a picture of something that they
saw or did, and they're both very brief. The first
is from Emily, and Emily says, dear Holly and Tracy.
Flying home from a conference this weekend, I caught up
on podcast episodes, including the two parter about Sadako Sasaki's
Thousand Cranes. While listening to the second part, I noticed
that the girl in the seat next to me was

(32:46):
playing with her napkin. I zoned out for a while,
started on another episode, and when I looked back, she
could turned her napkin into a cute or agami crane.
So appropriate and odd. I just had to share congratulations
on the thousand plus episodes. I work as a pub historian.
Will be starting a doctoral program in American history this fall.
Even so, there are plenty of things that I missed
in history class. Thanks for all you do, Emily. Thank you, Emily,

(33:08):
what a fun little oddity to just happen spontaneously while
on an airplane. And also thank you for going into
public history as a field. It is very needed, it is.
Have I ever told you that Brian and I always
carry a crane with each of us when we fly? Oh?
Good luck. I didn't know that, so when she first
said that, I was like, oh, maybe someone else does it.

(33:29):
Before I opened the email and I just saw a
crane on a plane as a subject line, I was
like me too, Oh no, this is different. That's so great. Though.
The other one is from Sarah, and this one's titled
Pink Butter, and Sarah says, Hey, there, so I'm a
new listener, and let me tell you I've always had
a love of history. My manager told me to check
you guys out, and I'm so glad she did. I've

(33:50):
been working my way through the episodes and I know
this may be super late. However, your episode on Butter
versus Margarine was my absolute favorite. When a pasta say
I love that one to you. Thank you. I recently
held a party where we were discussing how to take
the chemicals out of our lives, and this episode inspired
me to make pink butter. I made it in my
stand mixeder and dyed it pink with some beet juice,

(34:11):
and while it is not super vibrant and pink, I
thought it was cute enough as a party hand out.
Thank you so much for the inspiration. I cannot wait
to hear future episodes Sarah. And Sarah sent a picture
of her pink butter. Sarah, I have follow up questions, okay,
because I love beat. You love beats a lot. I
super love beats. So I wonder if the butter had

(34:32):
like a nice beat, subtle flavor to it and it
was delicious in a new way, because that would be
some good saute. I think with the nice sweetness of
beat in it well and It reminded me of I
have friends who sometimes will make compounded butters or they
will fold all kinds of amazing things into their butter.
And one time they made, uh, like a bloody mary.

(34:54):
It was not an alcoholic butter. I know this is
not your thing. Holly's making the worst space because bloody
Mary's are not They are not foll ranks. Anything tomato
based is pretty far up. Yeah, it was. It was
the spice, like the blend of spices that you can
use in your in your bloody was that was folded
into it. Um, and then they may that's the one

(35:14):
I remember. That was the one that I put all
over my toast every morning, um, while we were all
on a vacation together. So thank you both for sending
us these notes and for sending us these pictures of
things that you saw or did in life. That is awesome.
If you would like to write to us, we're a
history podcast that how Stuff Works dot com and we
are also all over social media. Missed in History that

(35:36):
is our name, on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and pinterest. Uh.
You can also come to our website, which is missed
in History dot com, where you will find show notes
for all the all the episodes Holly and I have
worked on together. The show notes for this episode includes
links to the full text of a lot of those
proclamations that we read from and the ballad and all
of that. You can also search the archive for any

(35:59):
episode we have ever done ever. That is at our
website which is at mist in history dot com, and
you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play,
and wherever else you get podcasts. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, because it how staff works,
dot com m