Henry Avery or Every was a sailor from youth, serving on various Royal Navy ships. By the early 1690s he had entered the Atlantic slave trade, in which he bought slaves on the West African coast, then he would capture the slave traders themselves and chain them in his ship's hold alongside their former captives.
His aliases included John Avery, Long Ben, and Benjamin Bridgeman. He is most famous for being one of the few major pirate captains to retire with his loot without being arrested or killed in battle. As a pirate captain Avery made only one long voyage. But that one voyage is the single richest act of piracy in history. He gained about 1,600,000.
He then proceeded around the Cape of Good Hope to the island of Johanna. Here he had the Fancy careened and modified her, to improve her speed. With this done, the Fancy became one of the fastest ships then sailing in the Indian Ocean. Henry Avery promptly exploited his new speed advantage to capture a passing French pirate ship, looting the vessel and recruiting some forty of the crew to join his own company.
From Johanna, Avery wrote a letter addressed to the English ship commanders in the Indian Ocean, falsely stating that he had not attacked any English ships, describing a signal English skippers could use to identify themselves so he could avoid them, and warning them that he might not be able to restrain his crew from plundering their ships if they failed to use the signal.
In August, 1694, Henry Avery and the Fancy reached the Mandab Strait , where he teamed up with four other pirate ships, including Thomas Tew's sloop Amity . Soon they encountered the greatest ship in Aurangzeb's fleet, the Ganj-I-Sawai, and its escort Fateh Muhammed, both passing the straits en route to Surat .
Avery and his men attacked the Fateh Muhammed, which had earlier fought off an attack by the Amity, killing Captain Tew. Perhaps intimidated by the Fancy's 46 guns or weakened by their earlier battle with Tew, the Fateh Muhammed' s crew put up little resistance, and Avery's pirates seized the ship for thousands in treasure.
Avery then pursued of the Ganj-I-Sawai, overtaking her in about eight days. She was a fearsome opponent, mounting 62 guns and a musket-armed guard of four to five hundred, as well as six hundred other passengers and crew. But the opening cannon rounds evened the odds. The Fancy drew alongside the Ganj-I-Sawai and the pirates clambered aboard. A ferocious hand-to-hand battle ensued, in which Avery's outnumbered crew lost 20 men. However, the superior Indian force was let down by its leader, Ibrahim Khan, who rushed below and hid among his concubines. After two hours of resistance, the Indians surrendered.
The victorious pirates then gave to their captives several days of horror, torture and murdering prisoners at will, and using these means to force them into revealing the location of the ships' treasure. Some of the Muslim women committed suicide to avoid violation or humiliation. The women, who did not kill themselves or die from the pirates' brutality, were taken aboard the Fancy. The other survivors were left aboard their ships, which the pirates set free.
The loot from the Ganj-I-Sawai totaled between 325,000 and 600,000, including 500,000 gold and silver pieces. Henry Avery and the surviving pirate captains set sail for Reunion, where they shared out 1,000 and some gemstones to every man in the crew. Avery took two shares as captain and some gems.
Avery and the Fancy parted from their allies at Reunion. They set course for Nassau in the Bahamas. Avery took on 90 slaves on the way. At Sao Tome he stopped to take on supplies. The Fancy's next stop was St. Thomas, where the pirates sold some of their booty. When they finally reached Nassau, they bribed Governor Nicholas Trott to give them refuge, in return for some 2,000 pounds in bribes. The British government fired Trott the following October but allowed him to take his loot to South Carolina.
Henry Avery captured an Indian treasure ship and managed to escape with the booty. Although other pirates took more booty, his robbery engaged the British East India Company and aroused great public interest.
Meanwhile, the Indian emperor took out his anger on the British East India Company. Indian officials seized the company's trading posts and imprisoned its officials, treating some so severely that they died in jail. The British government offered 500 pounds for every man in Avery's crew, and the East India Company doubled the reward.
Unable to buy a pardon in Nassau or Jamaica, Avery's crew split up, some heading to North America, while the majority, including Avery, returned to Britain aboard the sloop Isaac. landing in Ireland. Though 24 of his men were caught, many soon after disembarking, Henry Avery was never seen again. His last words to his men was a mass of conflicting stories of where he planned to go, doubtless intended to throw pursuers off his trail.
Over the years, 14 were arrested, and six were hanged. But Henry Avery vanished with his plunder.
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In the spring of 1694, he was serving as first mate aboard the 46-gun privateer Charles II, under a Captain Gibson, which at the time was anchored at La Corunna, Spain. Avery and a few other conspirators succeeded in a mutiny and set Captain Gibson ashore. Avery then, renamed the ship the Fancy and sailed for the Cape of Good Hope.
In the Cape Verde islands, Hebry Avery committed his first act of piracy. He robbed three English merchantmen.
