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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

19. The Great Double Cross

Henry Avery selling his jewels. Pintrest

Seizing the Ganj-i-Sawai was a great coup, but Henry Avery did not want to share its loot with the other pirate ships that had participated in its capture. So Avery and his men tricked them. They loaded Fancy’s hold with the £600,000 worth of loot seized from the Mughal ship, and made arrangements with the other pirate ships to meet and divide the bounty. Then they took off. The Fancy, recently modified for speed, soon out-sailed the other pirate ships, who followed in her wake in impotent rage, until she disappeared below the horizon.

The Fancy made it to the Caribbean, and after the loot was divided, the crew split up and Avery disappeared from history. It is commonly assumed that he established a new identity somewhere and lived his remaining days in great wealth. 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.