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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

21. The Young Mutineer

Henry Avery loading treasure from the captured Ganj-i-Sawai into his hold. Royal Museums Greenwich

Henry Avery was born in Plymouth, England, and went to sea at an early age. By 1694, he had risen in rank to become First Mate in the Charles II, a privateer serving the king of Spain. It was in that capacity that he led the disgruntled crew in a mutiny that seized the ship. Renaming the vessel the Fancy, the now-captain Avery issued a proclamation that English ships had nothing to fear from him. He then fell upon foreign vessels as he sailed into the Indian Ocean.

Avery arrived in Madagascar in 1695, where he had the Fancy refitted and modified for speed. Then, after seizing a French ship and convincing 40 of its crew to join him, he sailed north to intercept the Indian Mughal fleet as it returned from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. In cooperation with 5 other pirate ships, Avery intercepted the Mughal fleet and captured a ship whose holds yielded about £60,000 – a sizeable haul in those days. He was just getting started.

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.