← Back to the front page

The Golden Age of Piracy’s Most Terrifying Pirates

Khalid Elhassan March 7, 2025 16 min

Piracy - A Tortuga buccaneer — A Tortuga buccaneer. Wikimedia

16. The Capture of the Mughal Flagship

Piracy - John Avery enters the quarters of the Mughal emperor's daughter, after seizing the Ganj-i-Sawai — John Avery enters the quarters of the Mughal emperor’s daughter, after seizing the Ganj-i-Sawai. Wikimedia

The richest prize of the Mughal convoy was the fleet’s flagship, the Ganj-i-Sawai, which carried 62 guns and 500 men armed with muskets. After an hours-long ferocious fight in which its Mughal captain panicked and fled to hide below decks among concubines, the pirates seized the Ganj-i-Sawai. After they secured the vessel, Avery and his crew went on a days-long orgy of assaults and torture. The loot from the ship came to about £600,000 in gold, silver, precious metals and goods. It was the largest single haul ever scored by pirates. There is no honesty among thieves, however, and Avery and his men did not want to divide the loot with the other pirate ships. So they resorted to trickery to cheat the others out of their share.

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.