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The Golden Age of Piracy’s Most Terrifying Pirates

Khalid Elhassan March 7, 2025 16 min

Piracy - A Tortuga buccaneer — A Tortuga buccaneer. Wikimedia

15. No Honor Among Thieves

A down on his luck John Avery selling his jewels. Meister Drucke

Avery’s men loaded their hold with the loot and made arrangements with the other ships’ pirates to meet and divide the bounty, but took off instead. The Fancy, recently modified for speed, soon out-sailed the other pirate ships that followed in her wake in impotent rage, until she disappeared below the horizon. Avery’s ship made it to the Caribbean, and after the loot was divided, the crew split up and its captain disappeared from history. It was commonly assumed that Avery had made a clean escape, established a new identity somewhere, and spent the rest of his life in the lap of luxury. However, some sources claim that he returned to England, only to get swindled out of his riches and end his days an impoverished pauper.

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.