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Daring Escapes from Concentrations Camps, Enemies, and Crashed Planes

Khalid Elhassan November 11, 2021 36 min

Mikhail Devyataev had to escape not only German pursuit, but also survive his own side's antiaircraft fire. History Net

23. The Pirate Who Got Away With It

Henry Every (circa 1655 – disappeared 1699), also known as John Avery, Captain Bridgeman, and Long Ben, might have been one of history’s luckiest pirates. Not only did he successfully pull off one of the most lucrative heists in the history of piracy, Every was one of the few major pirates who was not killed in battle or arrested and executed. Instead, he reportedly managed to escape clean, and retire with his loot. Daniel Defoe modeled the hero of his 1720 novel, Life, Adventures, and Piracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton, after Every.

His life also inspired a popular play, The Successful Pyrate, about a fortunate outlaw of the sea who manages to retire after one year of piracy and lives the rest of his life under an assumed name as a rich man. The real-life figure who inspired such fiction was born in Plymouth, England, and went to sea at an early age. By 1694, he was First Mate in the Charles II, a privateer that served the king of Spain, when he led its disgruntled crew in a mutiny that seized the ship.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.