Captain John Smith

John Smith was born in Cathness in Northern Scotland, but had been raised by relations in Carisston in the Orkneys. On reaching maturity he sailed on several ships until signing on as mate on the George Galley, formerly known as the Princess Carolina. The ship sailed for Sancta Cruz on the Barbary Coast. Having been scrimped on by the peevish captain Ferneau during the month long trip, Smith and James Williams conspired to take the ship and turn to piracy. During the return trip from Sancta Cruz, Smith and his confederates seized the ship, killing all the officers that stood in their way.
After some refit and renaming the ship as the Revenge, the crew fell to the trade of pirating. Crossing paths with the Delight and the Bachelor, ships bound from Newfoundland to Cadiz, on November 18 and December 18 respectively, the pirates plundered them of all of value and sank them to prevent any news of their work. From the Coast of the Southward Cape to Cape Finisterre they took a Scottish snow and French ship bound from Cadiz to Brest.
Their next victim was the Triumvirate within thirty leagues of Vigo. The next ship was a French ship of some means that upon approach fired on the pirates rather than surrender. Smith made to stand off form the ship; Williams provoked by this fired a pistol at Smith's head and castigated him for cowardice and upbraided him for passing up a ship that would have had plenty of plunder. The crew, however, approved of Smith's actions and put Williams into the Triumvirate with all the prisoners of earlier raids and set them free. Williams was surrendered to authorities on an English ship in Lisbon, commanded by a Captain Davis. At this time the Ludlow Castle, an English warship was set out to search for the pirates, but after fifteen days gave up the search and returned to Lisbon.
Thinking that things might be getting too hot for them in the area, the pirates set sail for the Orkneys to careen and refit their ship. Here several of the crew who had been pressed into service, made off with a longboat and appraised the authorities of the identities of this ship's crew. Attempting to escape Smith set the ship to rights and making little headway, the wind turned them into shore and grounded the ship off Calf Sound. The pirates were captured and transported to England for trial. Smith refused to plead guilty or not for the court and was punished for this stubbornness. He was hanged on June 11, 1725.
The best of pirates may have had years of success before reaching Smith's demise, but not most. Many would have had short runs like Smith, due to a lack of luck, experience or intelligence. Smith seems to have suffered from two if not all of these shortcomings.

Captain John Evans

John Evans started upon his pirate career in September of 1722. Up to that time he had been legitimately involved in a variety of sailing jobs from master of a sloop belonging to Nevis to work as a mate sailing from Jamaica. Due to a lack of berths on ships at the time he and a band of three or four others rowed out of Port Royal in a canoe. Their first ilegal acts were simple rabbery of houses near the shore, but this was not entirely to their liking and they greatly desired to secure a true ship and move their work out to sea.
They made good their plans when they encountered a sloop, belonging to Bermuda, lying at anchor in Dunns Hole. Having taken the ship they put into at a little village and proceeded to ransack a local tavern of any and all goods that they desired. The next day they set sail for Hispanola in the sloop, which they renamed the Scowerer. Their first true prize as pirates was a Spanish sloop. After this they set coarse for the Windward Islands, where they captured the Dove, a ship bound from New England to Jamaica, off Puerto Rico, captained by a Captain Diamond. They forced the Dove's mate into service and added three others to the crew. After releasing the Dove, they set into one of the islands for fresh water and supplies.
The next prize was the 200 ton Lucretia and Catherine, Captain Mills, off the island of Disseada on January 11th. This done they went to the little island of Avis, intending to careen their hull and clean. However, before they could begin they sighted a sloop and gave chase, but failed to catch the ship, being slowed by the Lucretia. They were then nearer the island of Ruby, and so decided to careen there. This design was again forstalled as they ran up with a Dutch sloop and captured her. This new sloop being more to their liking than the Lucretia, they released the Lucretia and kept the sloop. The Scowerer and captured sloop set sail for the north coast of Jamaica and soon captured a sugar drover, before driving to the Grand Caymans, again with the intention of cleaning their hulls.
Prior to making landfall, the boatswain and Captain Evans exchanged ill language, and the boatswain taking offense challenged Evans to a duel. When the sloop arrived, however, the boatswain refused to go ashore and pursue the duel. Captain Evans, angered by the man's cowardance, beat him about the shoulders and back with his cane, upon which the boatswain drew his pistol and shot Evans in the head. The boatswain then jumped overboard and tried to swim to shore, but he was soon picked up by the Scowerer's crew. The crew, so angered at the death of the captain resolved to torture the man, but were unable to fulfill the threat as two of the crew shot him first. Lacking a willing candidate to take over as captain the crew set ashore at the Caymans with 9,000 pounds to be split among the 30 crew members.
Evans and his crew seemed to be doing pretty well, if it had not been for the unfortunate death of the captain at the hands of one of the crew, we can speculate that Evans might be a little more well known today. As is, the crew had a run of several months, perhaps giving them enough plunder to last a few months in port, while they looked for further opportunities.

Captain John Bowen

John Bowen was a Welsh pirate. He operated in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf before he died 1704. Born in Bermuda, Bowen moved to South Carolina and became captain of a ship trading in the West Indies. After some years, he was captured by French pirates. The French brigands crossed the Atlantic, pillaged along the African coast, and wrecked their ship on Madagascar's southwestern coast. About 18 months later, Bowen and the other survivors were picked up by a Captain Read. The pirates took over a larger Arab ship (but little hooty) in the Persian Gulf. At this time (or perhaps earlier), Bowen enlisted with the pirates and was elected sailing master.
Returning to western Madagascar, Bowen's gang sailed in consort with George Booth. In April 1700, the two crews captured and took over the Speaker, a strong 50-gun slave ship. More than 200 pirates of many nationalities sailed to Zanzibar with George Booth as captain. Bowen took command at the end of 1700, when Booth was killed fighting Arab troops. Near the mouth of the Red Sea, Bowen captured an Indian vessel with £ 100,000 in booty and (in November 1701) a British ship that was sold on the Indian coast. Returning to Madagascar, Bowen wrecked his ship on Mauritius Island but saved most of the men and treasure. In return for large bribes, the Dutch governor warmly welcomed the pirates and allowed them to buy a ship. In April 1702, Bowen went back to Madagascar and set up camp on the eastern coast. Some time after, the pirates seized and took over the Speedy Return, which had stopped to buy slaves. After cruising alone with little success, Bowen joined Thomas Howard, and the two captains seized a rich British merchantman in March 1703. Afterwards the pirates set in at Rajapora.
After separating for a time, Bowen and Howard again joined forces. In August 1703, two Indian vessels and more than £ 70,000 were captured in the Red Sea. The pirates divided their plunder at Rajapura, India, and judging their ships to be unsound they burned them and moved their crews to the prize, naming it the Defiance, mounted with 56 guns and mustering some 160 plus fighting men. Some stayed with Howard on the Indian coast. Bowen and 40 crewmen retired on Mauritius, where he died of intestinal ailment about six months later.
The need for accurate charts and maps or a pilot well acquainted with local waters was a necessity for pirates as can be seen from the above account. Lack of them could lead to the loss of a ship and worse. From the time of Francis Drake on one of the more valuable things that a pirate could take from a captured ship was the set of charts. The ability to read them and navigate were often enough to qualify a pirate for captain. While not famously successful Bowen was lucky and skillful enough to live long enough to retire from piracy.

Captain James Kelley

James Kelley was aboard a slave ship when he was captured off West Africa by John Williams in 1680. Kelley joined Williams and was with him when Williams rescued John Cook as well as other pirates in the Caribbean in early 1681.
Kelley left Williams and joined Cook after Williams and Cook had argued after capturing a Spanish prize. Kelley in the company of Cook aboard the ship Bachelor's Delight plundered along the South American Pacific coast from 1684 to 1688. Cook died during this time and Edward Davis came into command of the ship. While the ship was at Jamaica, Kelley left Davis' company, accepted a pardon and became a privateer.
A few months passed and Kelley helped seize a sloop which he was elected captain of. Kelley set sail for the Indian Ocean. While in the East Indies, Kelley (using the alias James Gilliam) reunited with his old ship, the Bachelor's Delight. Kelley chose to join his old ship as quartermaster. Near Bombay in January 1692, the pirates captured the Unity. The defeated crew of the Unity joined with the pirates, put their officers out to sea, and elected Kelley as their captain.
Kelley next took his crew to northwest India where they put in for water. While in harbor, Kelley and 20 others were arrested. The charges against them were that they hadn't paid for supplies during an earlier stop while still onboard the Bachelor's Delight. The prisoners were forcibly converted to the Muslim faith and several of them died while undergoing circumcision. Kelley remained there for several years.
Around 1696, Kelley with the aid of others was able to steal a boat and reach Bombay. Kelley joined the ship Mocha, an East Indiaman ship. Eight days after leaving port the crew mutinied and Ralph Stout was elected captain. The pirates were very successful in their plundering, taking very rich prizes. In May 1698, the Mocha anchored at Saint Mary's Island. Kelley having much booty decided to join William Kidd who was heading home. This decision cost him his life, as unknown to Kelley, the authorities were hunting for Kidd. When Kidd landed at Boston, he was arrested as was Kelley.
Kelley was taken to England to be tried for his crimes. Kelley was found guilty and hanged in 1701. While awaiting his fate, Kelley wrote his memoirs which were later published as..."A Full and True Discovery of all the Robberies, Pyracies and Other Notorious Actions of James Kelley".

Were they pirates, or were they warriors for Islam

For centuries, historians have debated the significance of one of the most stirring episodes in the history of Britain’s Muslim minority. Men such as Captain John Ward of Kent astounded their compatriots by proudly adopting Islam to fight the Inquisition and the expansionist powers of Europe. Contemporaries called such men ‘corsairs’; they themselves considered themselves mujahidin. Some were among the most pious Muslims this country has yet produced. Others were famous drunkards and lechers.
Ward and his likes were described by the adventurer John Smith. Later to be Disneyfied thanks to his romance with Princess Pocahontas, Smith was one English traveller who saw these Muslims at first hand, having spent some years in the Ottoman army before sailing to New England. He wrote a book, the True Travels and Adventures, to describe the European Muslims who were fighting for the Crescent against the Cross. Leading the list were men of Holland and England, who, disgusted by religious wars in their own countries, and unpersuaded by Trinities and Vicarious Atonements, ‘took the Turbant of the Turke’. ‘Because they grew hateful to all Christian princes,’ Smith observed, ‘they retired to Barbary.’
Smith was firmly of the opinion that the pirating lifestyle was introduced to the Barbary States by these Europeans, ‘who first taught the Moors to be men of war.’ His compatriots were well aware of the names of the seaborne mujahidin, particularly Captain Danseker and Captain Ward, among the most skilled seamen in the annals of English history, who placed their gifts at the disposal of emirs and sultans, and whose swashbuckling exploits Smith was able to retell in hair-raising detail.
Until the arrival of these European adventurers, the coastal ports of North Africa had been unused to war. They had, however, found new prosperity as the home of Spanish Muslims expelled by King Phillip III in 1610, an event that was perhaps the greatest act of racial brutality seen in Europe prior to the Nazi Holocaust. Most Moors knew little of the sea, and still less of the infernal arts of gunpowder; but they welcomed Muslims from the Mediterranean lands, and from the seafaring nations of the North, who were willing to accept Islam in exchange for military service with the Spanish exiles. By the middle of the sixteenth century, English Muslims were at the forefront of this movement, ranging the seas to capture first Spanish, and then any Christian ship, enslaving the crew, and selling the cargo as spoils of war.
Horrified priests regularly emerged from the churches of Algiers, Tunis and Sale, to witness the regular conversion celebrations in the streets. They report that slaves who converted would accept Islam in a simple ceremony in a mosque; but free men and women would do so at the tomb of a local saint, to which they would be led in a great public procession, preceded by a military band. Riding a horse, and holding an arrow in his hand to symbolise commitment to the Jihad, a newly-circumcised Englishman would then learn the basics of the Qur’an, and apply himself to his new vocation. Only a minority took to the sea; others are known to have made a living as tailors, or butchers, or even as imams of mosques. To this day there is a building in the Moroccan town of Sale known as the ‘Englishman’s Mosque.’
Most of these individuals took the secret of their lives with them to the grave. Thanks to the Spanish Inquisition, however, historians have access to information about a good number of them. Those who returned to a seafaring life ran the risk of recapture and interrogation by the Inquisition’s priests, and it is from the Inquisition’s meticulously-kept records that we know the details of their conversion, and, often, their tragic fate.
One Inquisition court, in the year 1610, investigated no fewer than thirty-nine Britons. Twelve of them were from the ports of the West Country. Ten were Londoners; six were from Plymouth, and others originated in Middlesbrough, Lyme, and the Channel Islands. In 1631, the Inquisition in the Spanish city of Murcia tried one Alexander Harris, who as Reis Murad had become a prominent Muslim seafarer. He was convicted, forced to convert to Catholicism, and sentenced to seven years as a galley-slave. Another unfortunate Englishman was Francis Barnes, who admitted to the inquisitors that he had faithfully prayed and fasted ‘in the Mahometan manner’ while working as a ship’s pilot at Tunis, where he was captured by Spanish raiders. In 1626, Robin Locar of Plymouth, also known as Ibrahim, was captured by Tuscan galleys and convicted of practising Islam. Captain Jonas of Dartmouth, known as Mami al-Inglizi, was yet another victim of these dreaded Spanish raiders.
An interrogation by the Inquisition was meant to be terrifying. One survivor, the Plymouth Muslim Lewis Crew, described how the priests, after using various forms of torture, would ask the Muslim captive whether they would accept papal teaching on six issues. Firstly came the Trinity, as the main point at issue between Islam and Christianity. Second was the perpetual virginity of Mary. Third was the Immaculate Conception. Fourthly, questions would be asked about the doctrine of Purgatory. Fifthly, the accused would be required to demonstrate his orthodoxy on the doctrine of papal supremacy. Finally, the Sacraments of the Catholic Church would be the subject of a complex investigation, which no doubt confused the simple sailors who made up the majority of the Inquisition’s convicts. Like many others, Crew had steeled himself for a religious debate of the kind held in public between converts and Christians in Algiers; he found, however, that the Inquisition was interested only in enforcing orthodoxy, not in justifying it.
The Inquisition’s writ counted for nothing in Protestant England; but even here, those Muslim sailors who returned to their homes could face interrogation and martyrdom. Sir Walter Raleigh, commenting on the gravity of the problem, recorded that ‘Renegadoes, that turn Turke, are impaled’, and this seems to have been the usual punishment for such men. Three English martyrs are known in the year 1620, while in 1671, a Welshman was put to death by impalement after refusing to reconvert to Christianity. Archbishop Laud was so concerned by the Muslim presence that he instituted a miniature English version of the Inquisition. His ‘Form of Penance’, enforced in 1637, laid down strict rules to ensure the sincerity of reconversions to Christianity, including the use of penitential robes and white wands borrowed directly from Catholic practice.
Despite the best efforts of the inquisitors, the corsair cities continued to thrive. By the end of the sixteenth century, the number of Englishmen and other Europeans who had joined this adventure had become enormous. Diego de Haedo, a Benedictine priest, estimated that by 1600, half of the population of Algiers was made up of European converts and their descendents. Later, Voltaire was to remark on ‘the singular fact that there are so many Spanish, French and English renegades, whom one may find in all the cities of Morocco.’
Most of the corsairs were of humble origins. A few, however, were well-known in their own lands. One such was Sir Francis Verney (1584-1615), who ‘turned Turk in Tunneis’, and was later captured and served for two years as a galley slave as a punishment for his conversion.
But perhaps the two best-known English corsairs were the celebrated sea-dogs John Ward and Simon Danseker. A seventeenth-century ballad heard throughout the taverns of England sang that

All the world about has heard
Of Danseker and Captain Ward
And of their proud adventures every day.

Ward, in particular, rose in the public eye until he became the best-known English pirate since Sir Francis Drake. Born at Faversham, he spent his teenage years working the fisheries. Late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth he joined the Navy, where his rebellious temperament impelled him to the unofficial capture of a ship rumoured to be carrying the treasure of Catholic refugees. The ship turned out to be empty of treasure, but the enterprising Ward used her to capture a much larger French ship off the south coast of Ireland, and to vanish from the Navy for good.
It was in this ship, which he called the Little John to drive home his image as a kind of latter-day Robin Hood, that he sailed to Tunis, hoping to join the campaign against the Catholic nations of the Mediterranean. He found favour with Kara Osman, the commander of the local janissary garrison, and at some point joined Islam.
His maritime prowess soon put him, according to a French report of 1606, in command of over five hundred Muslim and Christian volunteers. Among these were Captain Samson, in charge of prizes, Richard Bishop of Yarmouth (Ward’s first lieutenant), and James Procter of Southampton, who served as his gunner. Perhaps his greatest seaborne achievement was the capture of the Venetian galleon Reinera e Soderina, displacing 1500 tons, whose treasure amounted to over two million ducats.
By the second decade of the seventeenth century, Ward was master of the central Mediterranean. Another ballad has him send the following message to James I:

Go tell the King of England, go tell him this from me,
If he reign king of all the land, I will reign king at sea.

Life in Tunis, as in the Muslim world generally, was more refined and comfortable than its equivalent in Europe, and despite several offers, Ward showed no sign of yearning for his home shores. He built a palace, described by William Lithgow, the Scottish raconteur who passed through Tunis in 1616, as ‘a fair palace beautified with rich marble and alabaster stones. With whom I found domestics, some fifteen circumcised English renegades, whose lives and countenances were both alike. Old Ward their master was placable and diverse times in my ten days staying there I dined and supped with him.’ Another visitor, Edward Coxere, reported that Ward ‘always had a Turkish habit on, he was to drink water and no wine, and wore little irons under his Turk’s shoes like horseshoes’.
When Ward died of the plague in 1622, England seemed to be in two minds about him. There were many who hailed him as the scourge of the Papist navies, or as a man of humble origins who rose to humble the rich and powerful. Others found it harder to accept him, because of his voluntary conversion to Islam, and his adoption of Turkish ways and values. He was ‘the great English pirate … it is said that he was the first that put the Turks in a way to turn pirates at sea like himself’. But he was not soon forgotten. Later generations of English Muslims, both at home and in North Africa, admired him as a superb mariner, fearless in battle, and a doughty warrior for the Crescent against those who expelled the Moriscos, and sought to impose their implacable and cruel customs on the free lands of the South, where church, mosque and synagogue coexisted for centuries, and where humble birth was no barrier to glory.

Sir Anthony Sherley

Anthony Sherley was a rogue in the strictest sense of the word. He was born into a wealthy but was forced to find his own way after his families property went into bankruptcy. He had an Oxford education, but had to take to soldiering, forgoing his education.
In 1591 he went to Normandy as one of the Earl of Essex's soldiers. While there he was knighted by the French. In 1593 he was imprisoned until he renounced his foreign title. Striving to rise in stature, he married a cousin of the earl, but soon found his wife intolerable. Seeing nothing for him to gain by staying in England, he left to seek his fortune elsewhere. Sherley used his relation to the earl to aquire funds for an expedition to capture Sβo Thomι, a Portuguese island off the coast of Africa.
In May 1596 Sherley assembled eight ships carrying about 400 soldiers. The expedition was struck by disease early in the voyage. Sherley was forced to change his course to the north. Sherley took Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands but the booty was very sparse. His force much depleted, Sherley then attacked and took Santa Marta, Colombia. In early 1597, they sacked the poor Jamaican settlement of Santiago de la Vega. Their main purpose in the attack was to replenish supplies. So far the sum total of booty for his raids was pretty sparse.
While in Jamaica, Sherley met Captains William Parker and Michael Geare. The two joined with Sherley in an attack upon Trujillo (Honduras), but were unsuccessful. Next they tried their luck in attacking Puerto Caballos, and after taking it, found it to be destitute. Geare left to seek his fortune. Sherley and Parker, decided to try to march across the Guatemala mountains to the Pacific. Once again they were daunted by the severity of the trip and chose to take their remaining men through the Strait of Magellan. By this time Sherley's men have lost faith in their captain and deserted him. With his remaining ship, Sherley went back to England and also to tremendous debts.
Toward the end of 1597, Sherley was sent to Ferrara, Italy in the company of English troops. By the time they arrived the differences between Italy and England were settled and Sherley was faced with unemployment. Sherley, once again using his relationship with the Earl of Essex, managed to raise enough money to sail to Persia. He planned to establish diplomatic relations (without the consent of the crown) with the new shah. The shah made Sherley his ambassador and enlisted him to gain allies against the Ottoman Empire. When Sherley returned to England his plan was condemned and he was forbade to return to Persia. Sherley then made his rounds from royal court to court and conned nobles out of funds.
In 1607, Sherley managed to become an agent of the Spanish. During this time he wrote to Simon Simonson and John Ward trying to sway them to make attacks upon the Ottoman Empire. Two years later, in 1609, the Spanish had Sherley assemble ships in Sicily to attack the Barbary corsairs. It was planned that Sherley would join in a Spanish attack on Tunis, but instead Sherley attacked European merchantmen and looted the Greek Islands. After Sherley's failure to support Spain's attack on Tunis, he lost all influence in the Spanish courts but stayed in Spain constantly trying to gain political stature. He died destitute in Spain circa 1637.

Captain John Callice

Born in southeastern Wales, Callice moved to London as a youth, became a retailer and sailor, and joined the navy in about 1571. In early 1574, while commanding a royal ship, he seized an Italian merchantman and sold her cargo in Cardiff and Bristol. For the next four years, Callice plundered mercilessly, and other captains sailed under his leadership. Arrested in May 1577, Callice was imprisoned in London and charged with six major cases of piracy and many minor ones. He was sentenced to hang for the six important crimes, which occurred near Cornwall, off France and Denmark, and as far south as the Azores. Callice normally disposed of his booty in Wales, where he was intimate with local landowners and royal officials, including the Vice-Admiral. He apparently had friends of even higher status, for Queen Elizabeth pardoned him in November 1577 at the request of Scotland's king.
Callice was paroled in July 1578 but soon fled and became a pilot for Sir Henry Knollys in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition. Gilbert planned to plunder the Spanish Caribbean, but Knollys and Callice instead attacked ships in English waters. From 1580, Callice raided in the north (he captured two ships near Hamburg, Germany) but continued to visit Wales. In August 1582, he was appointed captain by William Fenner, who had a commission to arrest pirates at sea. In March 1583, Callice instead looted two Scottish merchantmen and took their cargo to Portsmouth. He kept one Scottish prize renamed the Golden Chalice but abandoned her soon after to avoid arrest. The ship passed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and formed part of his 1583 Newfoundland expedition.
In 1584, William Fenner was licensed to take Spanish and Portuguese prizes, and Callice served as his lieutenant. In December, Callice took command of a captured French warship and was separated from Fenner in foul weather. Although he was arrested in Ireland, he soon was released or escaped and captured several French vessels. By 1585, Callice apparently felt that Wales and Ireland no longer were safe havens. He henceforth operated from the Barbary States, and was killed in the Mediterranean in 1586 or 1587.

Guillaume Le Testu

Guillaume Le Testu was born at Le Havre in Normandy. Nationality being French and was active between 1551-1572 in the Caribbean. His exact birthdate is unknown, but is believed to be circa 1509. At Dieppe he studied navigation and was pilot of a French ship during an exploration mission of Brazil in 1551.
Le Testu participated in an expedition which founded a colony near Rio de Janeiro in 1555 and in 1556 he was appointed royal pilot and presented to King Henry II a world atlas which consisted of 56 maps, which he drew. Le Testu's atlas included a southern continent which didn't exist, stating: "not imaginary even though no one has found it."
During the 1500's France was in turmoil over religion. France had been catholic for centuries and in the 1520's Lutheranism entered the country. By 1534 Lutheranism threatened Catholicism and the crown adopted a policy of rooting it out, by force if necessary. Calvin (also a Frenchman), an outspoken man of protestant ideas whose ideas were expressed as Calvinism and by 1540 he had gained quite a bit of support for his cause. In the 1550's many of the Noblemen, being on the side of the Protesants fought against the the local churches and established the church. By this time France had effectively been split into two religious parties, the Catholics and the Calvinist (who were, by this time called the Huguenots). The tensions between the parties escalated until fighting broke out in the spring of 1562.
The war was temporarily ended in 1563 when the Edict of Amboise was issued. It gave limited right of worship to the Huguenots. This was a deversion set up by the crown while they tried to gain support from the people. This was only temporary for the Catholics were about to enlist the aid of Spain in their cause. In 1567 warfare broke out again due to the fear of an alliance with Spain. It was during this time that Le Testu raided for the Huguenot side. He raided throughout 1567 and 1568 until he was captured by the Catholics. He was imprisoned for the next four years when King Charles IX, after being subjected to many pleas, allowed his release. The religious wars would continue long after Le Testu's death.
Le Testu became captain of an 80 ton warship with about 70 men in his crew. Sir Francis Drake encountered Le Testu in April 1573 off Panama. Just why Le Testu was cruising around Panama is anyones guess. Spanish reports of the time stated that the French were planning a large expedition for 1572 but it is more likely that he was cruising on his own. Whatever his reason, Le Testu joined Drake in an attack on a mule train carrying treasure to Nombre de Dios. The attack was a complete success and the pirates loaded themselves with as much gold as they could carry, burying the rest. Le Testu's booty was around £ 20,000.
Le Testu was wounded in the assault and choose to remain behind to regain his strength. Two of his men stayed with him. While resting, Spanish soldiers fell upon them and Le Testu was killed. Le Testu was beheaded and his head was put on prominent display in the marketplace at Nombre de Dios.

Elizabeth Shirland

Elizabeth Shirland was born around 1577 in Devonshire, England. Elizabeth and some of her family joined a group of settlers to live on a colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585. Elizabeth was known as a very beautiful yet vigorous and energetic girl, and maybe that is the reason for her career after the mysterious happenings on Roanoke Island. Some chapters of Elizabeth Shirland's life are suspected to be fictional, especially when it comes to the mystery of her lost booty. Hidden treasures always inspired the fantasies of story tellers who passed on the legends of secret wealths.


Historical background:

Although John Cabot (ca. 1450-1499) established an English claim to the North American continent as early as 1497-1498, more than half a century elapsed before Englishmen turned their attention to the new lands. The most well-known early colony was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh (ca. 1554-1618) on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. In 1585, Raleigh's men settled on the small island. Raleigh sent groups of settlers for three years, beginning in 1584. (Raleigh's initiative was successfully imitated by a group of London investors who founded Virginia in 1607.)

Relations with the Native American inhabitants were peaceful at first, but as the colonists' supplies dwindled, amity dwindled too. The colonists left in 1586 after beheading the local Indian chief, Wingina.

Raleigh arranged for Governor John White and a group of families to return to live in peace with the natives in 1587. Violence, however, is not easily forgotten. Within one month, hostilities resumed, and White was forced to return to England to ask Raleigh for reinforcements. Time was not on White's side. When the war with Spain erupted, White could not return to the colony for three years. When he set foot on Roanoke Island in August 1590, he searched frantically for the settlers, including his daughter and granddaughter, the first English New World baby, named Virginia Dare.

All that could be found was the remains of a village and a mysterious word, "CROATOAN," engraved on a tree. White concluded there must be a connection between the word and a nearby Indian tribe, but before he could investigate, a violent storm forced him out to sea and back to England.

Left for three years, the 117 men, women, and children had disappeared mysteriously. This lost colony remains one of the greatest mysteries of the colonial period. Although Raleigh sent an expedition to search for them, the colonists are never found and their fate remains unknown.


However, it is known that Elizabeth Shirland was amongst those settlers. It is rumored that after being left behind the colonists built a wall around their homes for protection from the Indians. This was the wall that John White found on his return to Roanoke Island in 1590. The men would leave the fort to hunt and fish as the colonist's food supply eventually ran out. The Indians ambushed and killed each man as they left the fort. In time all the men were killed and the Indians captured the women and children. The Indians took the hostages to their villages to live and work as slaves.

Elizabeth was raised by Indians and left the island 1589 on board of a Spanish ship after she was picked up by Spanish soldiers. It is said that she was held captive and raped several times by the soldiers before she killed her sentinel with his own knife during the turmoil of a pirate attack a few weeks later.

Disguised as a young man she had served under the command of Sir Francis Drake, before she returned to England and got married in 1595. However, she could not stand the life of a housewife and soon left her husband and went to sea again. Little is known about her life and destiny from that point forward. She returned to York, England again once or twice, where she gave birth to a little son. Soon afterwards she left her family for good.

Elizabeth had prepared her own career as a woman pirate. It is safe to assume that she was inspired by the criminal career of the famous woman pirate Grace O'Malley. When she was captain on her own ship, she disclosed her sex to her crew and she commanded and ruled them with her iron will and her strong ability to assert herself. She used men from the crew for her sexual pleasure, and some of them left the ship with a cut throat. Due to that fact and her ability to master the blade she was also known as the Cutlass Liz.

Cutlass Liz was not too successful as a pirate captain, and hardly anything is known about her operations. The only successful strike reported was the capturing of a Spanish merchant in 1604, where Cutlass Liz looted silk and gold before burning the captured ship. A few weeks afterwards she was betrayed to the Spanish by two members of her crew and was arrested while making love to one of her traitors. As the Spaniards dragged the naked woman pirate from the bed, she was suddenly aware of the treason and managed to stab her lover with the dagger she had hidden beneath her pillows. She was instantly killed by the soldiers, what spared her from public humiliation and the painful death of hanging.

However, her only mentionable booty - gold and goods worth at least £ 30,000 - was not on board of her ship anymore and could never be retrieved.

Captain Hiram Breakes

Hiram Breakes was a Dutch pirate, second son to the Councillor of the Island of Saba. As pirates go, Breakes was notoriously violent, believing in the adage that "dead men tell no tales". In 1764, Breakes was nineteen years old, tall and handsome. He was appointed to a Dutch trading vessel that sailed between Sabo and Amsterdam.
He performed well in his services and eventually took command of a trading ship which operated between Schiedham, Holland and Lisbon, Portugal It was around this time he fell in love with a married woman named Mrs. Snyde. A little later, Mr. Snyde was poisoned. Breakes and the now Widow Snyde were acquitted of the murder and it was shortly after this that Breakes would tire of the life of a trading ship captain.
Wasting little time, he stole the ship and cargo of his employers and renamed it the vessel "The Adventurer" Almost immediately he came upon the Chilean vessel "Acapulco" which was carrying 200,000 small gold bars, about (about 1cm x 10cm). The hapless crew were all murdered in a most despicable manner, and being the Acapulco was better ship than the The Adventurer Breakes stole the ship and refitted it for piracy.
From there, Breakes bought a letter of marque from the governor of Gibraltar, no doubt with a portion of the stolen gold bars. Upon receiving his letter he turned to pillaging throughout the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean.
As with many pirates, Breakes held some strange religious convictions. He would pillage and plunder six days of the week and then on the Sabbath hold a service on board the ship asking for forgiveness. The service was mandatory for the whole crew.
One of his more ruthless acts was the plundering of a Convent in the Balearic Islands. Upon invading the convent he decided it was inappropriate for his men not to be married and order them all to take wives. Each man selected a nun, who was then promptly kidnapped and returned to the ship to perform the necessities that were expected of a wife.
This act apparently made Breakes somewhat homesick and he decided to return to Holland and marry his mistress, the former Mrs. Snyde. Upon returning home, he was greeted with the sad news that Mrs Snyde was hanged for attempting to poison her new born son (fathered by none other than Breakes).
According to most accounts the news of Mrs. Snyde's death drove Breakes "melancholy mad" and in a fit of depression he threw himself off a dyke and drowned to death.

Eustace the Monk

Eustace the Monk, sometimes known as the Black Monk, was a younger son of a lesser noble family in Boulogne. As a young man he spent some time in a Benedictine monastery, hence the 'monk' part of his name. Given his period of activity, he was probably born in the late 12th century. Initially, he served the Count of Boulogne, but was eventually outlawed and turned to piracy.
He and those he attracted soon came to control the Straits of Dover. Like many early pirates he turned mercenary and sold the services of his squadrons to the highest bidder. From 1205-1212, he served King John of England in his war with Philip II of France. He raided the French coastline and seized the Channel Islands as a base of operations.
King John outlawed Eustace for indiscriminant pillaging of English subjects, but soon forgave the pirate, as his services were too important. He is said to have built a palace in London and sent his daughter to school with the noble girls or England.
Ever the mercenary, Eustace and several other French pirates switched sides in 1212. Serving the French he attacked Folkestone to avenge the English seizure of his Channel Island bases. During the English civil war that broke out in 1215, he lent aid to the rebels and helped to transport and protect the troops of Prince Louis of France when they invaded southern England. The war continued after King John died in 1216 and many of the rebels deserted over to the side of King Henry III. In 1217, while transporting additional troops Eustace and his ships met an English fleet. Using powdered lime the English blinded the French and boarded.
The battle ended with the English being victorious. Several French nobles were ransomed, but Eustace was beheaded on the spot.
While it is true that the forces of Eustace the Monk were maritime in nature, there was little similarity with the pirates of the Golden Age. At the time ships were little more than transport and floating battlefields/castles. The primary strategy was to maneuver to board the enemy's ships and fight it out in a general melee. Perhaps the biggest fault one sees in Eustace is his mercenary nature, but then if it weren't for that he would have been little more than a naval commander and not a pirate.

The Rise of European Piracy in the East

From the first days of European enterprise in the East, the coasts of India were regarded as a favourable field for filibusters [=freebooters], the earliest we hear of being Vincente Sodre, a companion of Vasco da Gama in his second voyage. Intercourse with heathens and idolaters was regulated according to a different code of ethics from that applied to intercourse with Christians. The authority of the Old Testament upheld slavery, and Africans were regarded more as cattle than human beings; while Asiatics were classed higher, but still as immeasurably inferior to Europeans. To prey upon Mahommedan ships was simply to pursue in other waters the chronic warfare carried on against Moors and Turks in the Mediterranean. The same feelings that led the Spaniards to adopt the standard of the Cross in their conquest of Mexico and Peru were present, though less openly avowed, in the minds of the merchants and adventurers of all classes and nationalities who flocked into the Indian seas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With the decadence of buccaneering and the growth of Indian trade, there was a corresponding increase of piracy, and European traders ceased to enjoy immunity. In 1623 the depredations of the Dutch brought the English into disgrace. Their warehouses at Surat were seized, and the president and factors were placed in irons, in which condition they remained seven months. This grievance was the greater, as it happened at the time that the cruel torture and execution of Captain Towerson and his crew by the Dutch took place at Amboyna. It was bad enough to be made responsible for the doings of their own countrymen, but to be punished for the misdeeds of their enemies was a bitter pill to swallow. In 1630, just as peace was being concluded with France and Spain, Charles I., who was beginning his experiment of absolute government, despatched the Seahorse, Captain Quail, to the Red Sea to capture the ships and goods of Spanish subjects, as well as of any other nations not in league and amity with England.
There were no Spaniards in the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean, but international arrangements in Europe were not regarded when the equator had been crossed. Quail captured a Malabar vessel, for which the Company's servants at Surat were forced to pay full compensation. The Seahorse returned to England in 1633, but in view of the new field of enterprise opened up, Endymion Porter, Gentleman of the King's bedchamber, embarked on a piratical speculation, in partnership with two London merchants, Bonnell and Kynaston, with a licence under the privy seal to visit any part of the world and capture ships and goods of any state not in league and amity with England. Two ships, the Samaritan and Roebuck, were fitted out with such secrecy that the East India Company were kept in ignorance, and sailed in April 1635, for the Red Sea, under Captain Cobb.
The Samaritan was wrecked in the Comoro Islands; but Cobb, continuing his cruise with the Roebuck, captured two Mogul vessels at the mouth of the Red Sea, from one of which he took a large sum of money and a quantity of goods, though the vessel had a pass from the Surat factory. Again the Company's servants at Surat were imprisoned, and not released till they had paid full compensation. Some small satisfaction was experienced when it became known that John Proud, master of the Swan, one of the Company's ships, had encountered the Roebuck in the Comoro Islands, and had attacked the freebooter. He was unable to capture it, but succeeded in procuring restitution of the captured goods; the treasure, however, was carried off to London, where it must have seemed as if the days of Drake and Hawkins had come again.
The Company laid their grievance before the King, who expressed much concern, promising to write to the Great Mogul and explain matters; so the Company commenced an action against Bonnell and Kynaston in the Admiralty Court. Porter was too highly placed to be struck at. Bonnell evaded arrest and escaped to France, but Kynaston was arrested and lodged in gaol; upon which Charles ordered his release on bail, saying he would try the case himself at his leisure.
But Porter's views went beyond a single piratical voyage. Hardly had Cobb started on his cruise, when he entered into partnership with Sir William Courten for an association to establish a separate trade to the East Indies. A royal grant was obtained, and the King himself was credited with a share to the nominal extent of £10,000. The grant was a flagrant breach of faith, and was the inauguration of the system of interlopers that in after years caused so much loss and trouble to the Company. Four ships were equipped and sent out, and before long it became known that two vessels from Surat and Diu had been plundered by Courten's ships, and their crews tortured. Again the Company's servants at Surat were seized and thrown into prison, where they were kept for two months, being only released on payment of Rs.1,70,000, and on solemnly swearing to respect Mogul ships.
The Civil War brought these courtly piracies to an end, and the decay of the Spanish power drew the more turbulent spirits of Europe and America to the Spanish main, so that for a time there was a diminution of European piracy in Indian waters. As buccaneering became more dangerous, or less lucrative, adventurers of all nations again appeared in Eastern waters, and the old trouble reappeared in an aggravated form. The Indian Red Sea fleet offered an especially tempting booty to the rovers. Lobo, a Jesuit priest writing in the seventeenth century, tells us that so vast was the commerce of Jeddah, and so great the value of the ships trading to that place, that when in India it was wished to describe a thing of inestimable price, it was customary to say, 'It is of more value than a Jeddah ship.' Every year during the winter months, Indian traders, and pilgrims for Mecca, found their way in single ships to the Red Sea. On the setting in of the monsoon, they collected at Mocha, and made their way back in a single body. All Indian trade with the Red Sea was paid for in gold and silver, so that the returning ships offered many tempting prizes to freebooters.
In 1683 John Hand, master of the Bristol, interloper, cleared his ship with papers made out for Lisbon and Brazil, and sailed for Madeira. There he called his crew together, and told them he intended to take his ship to the East Indies. Those who were unwilling were overawed, Hand being a mighty 'passionate' man. He appears to have been half pirate and half trader; equally ready to attack other traders, or to trade himself in spices and drugs. On the Sumatra coast, finding the natives unwilling to do business with him, he went ashore with a pistol in his pocket to bring the 'black dogs' to reason. The pistol went off in his pocket and shattered his thigh, and that was the end of John Hand.
In the same year six men, of whom four were English and two Dutch, while on passage in a native merchant's ship from the Persian Gulf to Surat, seized the ship, killing the owner and his two wives. The lascars were thrown overboard, six being retained to work the ship. Their cruise did not last long. Making for Honore, they threw the six lascars overboard when nearing the port. The men managed to get to land, and reaching Honore, gave information of the would-be pirates to the local authorities, who seized the ship, and soon disposed of the rogues.
Three years later, two ships under English colours, mounting respectively forty-four and twenty guns, were reported to have captured vessels in the Red Sea, to the value of Rs.600,000. The Seedee of Jinjeera, who styled himself the Mogul's Admiral, received a yearly subsidy of four lakhs for convoying the fleet, a duty that he was quite unable to perform against European desperadoes. Public opinion at Surat was at once excited against the English, and further inflamed by the Dutch and French, who were only too anxious to see a rival excluded from the trade. Sir John Child, to pacify the Governor, offered to send a man-of-war to look for the pirates; but the Dutch and French factors continued to 'spitt their venom' till the Governor laughed in their faces and asked why they did not join in sending vessels to look for the rogues, since the matter seemed to them so serious.
In the same season a gallant engagement was fought against pirates, though not in Indian waters. The Company's ship Caesar, Captain Wright, bound from England for Bombay, was chased off the coast of Gambia by five ships, carrying each from twenty to thirty guns, under French colours. Wright had no intention of yielding without a struggle, so put his ship before the wind, to gain time for getting into fighting trim. The Caesar was carrying soldiers, and there were plenty of men to fight the ship. The boats were cut away, the decks cleared, ammunition and arms served out, three thousand pounds of bread which cumbered the gun-room were thrown overboard, and the tops were filled with marksmen. As soon as all was ready, the mainsail was furled, and the ship kept under easy sail. Before long the two smaller ships came up, hoisted the red flag, and began firing, one on the Caesar's quarter and one astern. Soon the three other ships, two of which Wright styled the Admiral and Vice-Admiral, came up.
The Admiral ranged up on the quarter and tried to board, but was obliged to sheer off, with the loss of many men and a bowsprit shot away. The Vice-Admiral tried to board at the bow, but with no better success, losing a foreyard and mizzen-mast. For five hours the engagement lasted, but the small-arm men in the Caesar's tops fired so well that the pirates could hardly serve their guns. The crew showed a wonderful spirit, cheering loudly at every successful shot, till the discomfited pirates bore up, leaving the Caesar to pursue her way to Bombay, much knocked about as to hull, but having lost only one man killed and eight wounded.
In the following year came news to Surat of two vessels, under Danish colours, that had stopped English ships and seized native ones between Surat and Bombay. The Phoenix, a British man-of-war, was at Surat at the time, so, together with the Kent, East Indiaman, it was despatched to look after the marauders, taking with them also two small boys, sent to represent the French and the Dutch. In due time Captain Tyrrell returned, and reported that he had found a squadron of four vessels; that after a two days' chase he had brought them to, when they turned out to be two Danish ships, with two prizes they had taken. They showed him their commission, authorizing them to make reprisals on the Mogul's subjects for affronts offered to Danish traders; so he left them alone. A few months later the Portuguese factory at Cong, in the Persian Gulf, was plundered by an English pirate; another was heard of in the Red Sea, while Philip Babington an Irish pirate, was cruising off Tellichery in the Charming Mary.
By 1689 a number of sea rovers from the West Indies had made their appearance, and the factory at Fort St. George reported that the sea trade was 'pestered with pirates.' The first comers had contented themselves with plundering native ships. Now their operations were extended to European vessels not of their own nationality. In time this restriction ceased to be observed; they hoisted the red or black flag, with or without the colours of the nationality they affected, and spared no vessel they were strong enough to capture.
The Armenian merchants were loud in their complaints. An Armenian ship bound from Goa to Madras, with twenty thousand pagodas on board, was taken by a pirate ship of two hundred tons, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of sixty men. Another Armenian ship, with fifty thousand xeraphims, was taken near Bombay, on its voyage from Goa to Surat. Besides those that beset the Malabar coast, there were pirates in the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and in the Mozambique Channel, while five pirate vessels were cruising off Acheen. During the next ten years the losses caused by the pirates were prodigious.
Ovington mentions that at St. Helena (1689) they were told, by a slaver, of three pirates, two English and the other Dutch, so richly laden with booty that they could hardly navigate their ships, which had become weather-beaten and unseaworthy from their long cruises off the Red Sea mouth. Their worn-out canvas sails were replaced with double silk.

    "They were prodigal in the expences of their unjust gain, and quenched their thirst with Europe liquor at any rate this Commander (the slaver) would put upon it; and were so frank both in distributing their goods, and guzzling down the noble wine, as if they were both wearied with the possession of their rapine, and willing to stifle all the melancholy reflections concerning it."

Such an account was bound to fire the imagination of every seaman who heard it. The number of pirates was increased by the interlopers, merchant adventurers trading without a licence, who, like John Hand, when they failed to get cargoes, plundered native ships. Their proceedings were imitated by the permission ships, vessels that held the Company's licence for a single voyage. Not seldom the crews of interlopers and permission ships rose and seized the vessel against the will of their owners and commanders, and hoisted the Jolly Roger. Commissions were granted to the East India Company's commanders to seize interlopers; but the interlopers, as a rule, were remarkably well able to take care of themselves. As pirates and interlopers alike sailed under English colours, the whole odium fell on the English. In August 1691, a ship belonging to the wealthy merchant Abdul Guffoor was taken at the mouth of the Surat river, with nine lakhs in hard cash on board. A guard was placed on the factory at Surat, and an embargo laid on English trade. As the pirate had shown the colours of several nationalities, the authorities were loth to proceed to extremities. Fortunately for the English Company, a member of the pirate crew was captured, and proved to be a Dane; so the embargo on English trade was taken off.
Though they plied their calling at sea, almost with impunity, the pirates occasionally fell victims to Oriental treachery on shore. Thus James Gilliam, a rover, having put into Mungrole, on the Kattiawar coast, was made welcome and much praised for the noble lavishness with which he paid for supplies. Soon there came an invitation to a banquet, and Gilliam, with some of his officers and crew, twenty in all, were received by the representative of the Nawab of Junaghur with excessive ceremony. Much polite curiosity was evinced about the noble strangers. "Why did they always go armed? Were their muskets loaded? Would they discharge them to show their host the European method?" The muskets were discharged, and immediately the banquet was announced. "Delay to reload the muskets was inexpedient. It would be time to recharge their weapons after the feast."
And then, when seated and defenceless, there was an irruption of armed men, and Gilliam, with his followers, were seized and fettered. For a year they lay at Junaghur, where two of them died. In vain Gilliam contrived to send a letter to the Surat factory, asking that they might be claimed as British subjects. President Harris knew that the least interest shown in the fate of the rovers would be fatal to the interests of the Company, and was relieved when he heard that they had been sent to Aurungzeeb's camp; after which they are heard of no more.
In the beginning of 1692, authority was given to the Company's commanders to seize pirates and hold them till the King's pleasure was known, but the measure was of small effect. The pirates were prime seamen, who outsailed and outfought the Company's ships; while among the Company's crews they had numerous sympathizers. The prizes to be gained were so great, and the risks so small, that the Company could hardly restrain their own men from joining the sea rovers. Thus in 1694, John Steel/1/ ran away with the long boat of the Ruby frigate. Sixteen others who had plotted to join him were detected in time, and clapped in irons. The French and Dutch gave passes to all who applied for them, so Steel placed himself under French protection, and for two years 'that rogue Steel' finds frequent mention in the coast letters. Four years later Steel was arrested in England. But though the directors had been supplied with many accounts of his misdeeds, no sworn evidence could be produced against him, so Steel escaped scot-free.
All other pirates, however, were destined to be eclipsed in fame by Henry Every, alias Bridgman,/2/ who now made his appearance in the Indian seas. His exploits, the great wealth he amassed by piracy, and his reputed marriage with a Mogul princess, continued to excite the public mind long after he had disappeared from the scene. Several biographies of him were written, one of them attributed to Defoe, all of them containing great exaggerations; and a play, "The Successful Pirate," was written in his honour. His biographers generally give his name as John Avery, but it was as is here given. According to the account of Van Broeck, a Dutchman who was detained on board his ship for a time and was on good terms with him, he was born at Plymouth, the son of a trading captain who had served in the navy under Blake. Every himself served in the navy, in the Resolution and Edgar, before he got the command of a merchant ship, in which he made several voyages to the West Indies. In May 1694, he was first mate of the Charles the Second, one of the small squadron of English ships hired from Sir James Houblon by the Spanish Government, to act against French smugglers who were troubling their Peruvian trade./3/
The Spaniards were bad paymasters, and Houblon's squadron was detained at Corunna three or four months, while the crews became more and more discontented as their wages remained unpaid. As their sense of grievance increased, a plot was formed among the most turbulent spirits to seize a ship and turn rovers, under Every's command. On the night of the 30th May, the captain of the Charles the Second was made prisoner while in bed. A boat-load of men sent from the James to prevent the capture, joined the mutineers; the cables were cut, and the ship ran out of harbour. The captain and all who were unwilling to join were put into a boat, and the Charles, renamed the Fancy, was headed south for the coast of Africa. The only man detained against his will was the doctor, as he was a useful man.
Some months were spent on the Guinea coast, where some negroes were captured, and five ships-- three English and two Danish-- were plundered and burnt. Before the end of the year Every was east of the Cape, intent on the Red Sea traders. The first intelligence of him that reached Bombay was in May 1695, when three outward-bound merchantmen reported that they had seen him at Johanna.

     "Your Honor's ships going into that island gave him chase, but he was too nimble for them by much, having taken down a great deale of his upper works and made her exceeding snugg, which advantage being added to her well sailing before, causes her to sail so hard now, that she fears not who follows her. This ship will undoubtedly (go) into the Red Sea, which will procure infinite clamours at Surat."

Accompanying this report came the following characteristic letter from Every:--

"February y'e 28th, 1695/4.      To all English. Commanders lett this Satisfye that I was Riding here  att this Instant in y'e Ship fancy man of Warr formerly the Charles of y'e Spanish Expedition who departed from Croniae y'e 7th of May.  94: Being and am now in A Ship of 46 guns 150 Men & bound to Seek our fortunes I have Never as Yett Wronged any English or Dutch nor never Intend whilst I am Commander. Wherefore as I Commonly Speake w'th all Ships I Desire who ever Comes to y'e perusal of this to take this Signall that if you or aney whome you may informe are desirous to know w't wee are att a Distance then make your Antient Vp in a Ball or Bundle and hoyst him att y'e Mizon Peek y'e Mizon Being furled I shall answere w'th y'e same & Never Molest you: for my men are hungry Stout and Resolute: & should they Exceed my Desire I cannott help my selfe.
as Yett An Englishman's friend
HENRY EVERY.
Here is 160 od french Armed men now att Mohilla who waits for Opportunity of getting aney ship, take Care of your Selves."/4/

According to Van Broeck, he was a man of good natural disposition, who had been soured by the bad treatment he received at the hands of his relations. The letter shows him to have been a man of some education, and during his short but active career in the Indian seas he appears to have attacked native ships only. The Company's records do not mention the loss of a single English ship at Every's hands, a circumstance that no doubt told heavily against the English in native opinion at Surat. The same ships that brought Every's letter to Sir John Gayer brought intelligence of a well-known French pirate having got aground at Mohilla. The three Company's ships watering at Johanna heard of the occurrence, and proceeded to the spot, burnt the French ship after taking out what treasure was on board, and captured six of the Frenchmen, who were brought to Bombay. Every's friendly warning about the '160 od French armed men' evidently referred to the wrecked crew.
The value of Perim, or Bab's Key, as it was then called by mariners, to command the trade of the Red Sea, was at once perceived by Every, who attempted to make a settlement there. After some unprofitable digging for water, he abandoned the project, and established himself in Madagascar, which had before this become known as a pirate resort. During the next thirty years the only traders who dared show themselves on the Madagascar coast were those who did business with the pirates, owing to the number of pirate settlements that sprang up at different points; the best known being at St. Mary's Island, St. Augustine's, Port Dauphin, and Charnock's Point. They built themselves forts and established a reign of terror over the surrounding country, sometimes taking a part in native quarrels, and sometimes fighting among themselves; dubbing themselves kings, and living in squalid dignity with large seraglios of native women.
Captain Woodes Rogers, who touched at Madagascar for slaves, sixteen years after Every's time, described those he met as having been on the islands above twenty-five years, with a motley crowd of children and grandchildren.

    "Having been so many years upon this Island, it may be imagined their Cloaths had long been worn out, so that their Majesties were extremely out at the Elbows: I cannot say they were ragged, since they had no Cloaths, they had nothing to cover them but the Skins of Beasts without any tanning, but with all the Hair on, nor a Shoe nor Stocking, so they looked like the Pictures of Hercules in the Lion's Skin; and being overgrown with Beard, and Hair upon their Bodies, they appeared the most savage Figures that a Man's Imagination can frame."/5/

One remarkable settlement was founded in the north, near Diego Suarez, by Misson, a Frenchman and the most humane of pirates, with whom was allied Tew, the English pirate. Misson's aim was to build a fortified town "that they might have some place to call their own; and a receptacle, when age and wounds had rendered them incapable of hardship, where they might enjoy the fruits of their labour and go to their graves in peace." The settlement was named Libertatia. Slavery was not permitted, and freed slaves were encouraged to settle there. The harbour was strongly fortified, as a Portuguese squadron that attacked them found to its cost. A dock was made; crops were sown; a Lord Conservator was appointed for three years, with a Parliament to make laws.
The colony was still in its infancy when it was surprised and destroyed by the natives, while Misson was away on a cruise; and so Libertatia came to an end. Tew succeeded in escaping to his sloop with a quantity of diamonds and gold in bars. On Misson rejoining him, they determined to go to America. Misson's ship foundered in a storm, while Tew made his way to Rhode Islands, and lived there for a time unquestioned. But the fascinations of a rover's life were too much for him. He fitted out a sloop and made again for the Red Sea, and was killed in action there with a Mogul ship.
From their Madagascar settlements the pirates scoured the east coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean as far as Sumatra, the mouth of the Red Sea where the Mocha ships offered many rich prizes, the Malabar coast, and the Gulf of Oman. From time to time, ships from New England and the West Indies brought supplies and recruits, taking back those who were tired of the life and who wished to enjoy their booty. European prisoners were seldom treated barbarously when there was no resistance, and the pirate crews found many recruits among captured merchantmen. Their worst cruelties were reserved for the native merchants of India who fell into their hands. They believed all native traders to be possessed of jewels, as was indeed often the case, and the cruellest tortures were inflicted on them to make them surrender their valuables.
One unhappy Englishman we hear of, Captain Sawbridge, who was taken by pirates while on a voyage to Surat with a ship-load of Arab horses from Bombay. His complaints and expostulations were so annoying to his captors that after repeatedly telling him to hold his tongue, they took a sail needle and twine and sewed his lips together. They kept him thus several hours, with his hands tied behind him, while they plundered his ship, which they afterwards set on fire, burning her and the horses in her. Sawbridge and his people were carried to Aden and set on shore, where he died soon after.
Before long. Every made some notable captures. Off Aden he found five pirate ships of English nationality, three of them from America, commanded by May, Farrell, and Wake. In the Gulf of Aden he burned the town of Mahet on the Somali coast because the people refused to trade with him. In September, while cruising off Socotra with the Fancy, two sloops, and a galley, he took the Futteh Mahmood with a valuable cargo, belonging to Abdool Guffoor, the wealthiest and most influential merchant in Surat. A few days later he took off Sanjan, north of Bombay, a ship belonging to the Emperor, called the Gunj Suwaie (Exceeding Treasure). 
This was the great capture that made Every famous. According to the legend, there was a granddaughter of Aurungzeeb on board, whom Every wedded by the help of a moollah, and carried off to Madagascar. But the story is only the most sensational of the many romantic inventions that have accumulated round Every's name. The native historian/6/ who relates the capture of the Gunj Suwaie, and who had friends on board, would certainly not have refrained from mentioning such an event if it had occurred; nor would the Mogul Emperor have failed to wreak vengeance on the English for such an insult to his family.
The Gunj Suwaie was the largest ship belonging to the port of Surat. It carried eighty guns and four hundred matchlocks, besides other warlike implements, and was deemed so strong that it disdained the help of a convoy. On this occasion it was returning from the Red Sea with the result of the season's trading, amounting to fifty-two lakhs of rupees/7/ in silver and gold, and having on board a number of Mahommedan ladies returning from pilgrimage to Mecca. In spite of the disparity of force, Every bore down and engaged.
The first gun fired by the Gunj Suwaie burst, killing three or four men and wounding others. The main mast was badly damaged by Every's broadsides, and the Fancy ran alongside and boarded. This was the moment when a decent defence should have been made. The sailor's cutlass was a poor match for the curved sword and shield, so much so that the English were notorious in the East for their want of boldness in sword-play. But Ibrahim Khan, the captain, was a coward, and ran below at the sight of the white faces. His crew followed his example, and the vessel was taken almost without resistance.
So rich a prize was not to be relinquished without a very complete search. For a whole week the Gunj Suwaie was rummaged from stem to stern, while the crew of the Fancy indulged in a horrible orgy, excited beyond measure by the immense booty that had fallen into their hands. Several of the women threw themselves into the sea or slew themselves with daggers; the last piece of silver was sought out and carried on board the Fancy, the last jewel torn from the passengers and crew, and then the Gunj Suwaie was left to find its way to Surat as it best could.
The vials of long-accumulated wrath were poured out on the English. Instigated by Abdul Guffoor, the populace of Surat flew to arms to wreak vengeance on the factory. The Governor, Itimad Khan, was well disposed to the English, but popular excitement ran so high that he found it difficult to protect them. Guards were placed on the factory to save it from plunder. A mufti urged that the English should be put to death in revenge for the death of so many true believers, and quoted an appropriate text from the Koran. Soon came an order from Aurungzeeb directing the Seedee to march on Bombay, and for all the English in Surat and Broach to be made prisoners. President Annesley and the rest, sixty-three in all, were placed in irons, and so remained eleven months.
To make matters worse, news arrived of Every having captured the Rampura, a Cambay ship with a cargo valued at Rs.1,70,000.

    "It is strange," wrote Sir John Gayer, "to see how almost all the merchants are incensed against our nation, reproaching the Governor extremely for taking our part, and as strange to see that notwithstanding all, he stems the stream against them more than well could be imagined, considering his extreme timorous nature."

The strangeness of the merchants' hostility is hardly apparent, but it is not too much to say that Itimad Khan's friendly behaviour alone saved English trade from extinction. The Dutch, always hostile in the East, whatever might be the relations between Holland and England in Europe, strove to improve the occasion by fomenting popular excitement, and tried to get the English permanently excluded from the Indian trade. In the words of Sir John Grayer, "they retained their Edomitish principles, and rejoice to see Jacob laid low." But Itimad Khan knew that the pirates were of all nationalities, and refused to hold the English alone responsible. To propitiate the Governor, Sir John Gayer made over to him the six French pirates taken at Mohilla, not without qualms at handing over Christians to Mahommedan mercies. He fully expected that the treasure taken out of the wreck would also be demanded of him; but Itimad Khan was not an avaricious man, and no such demand was made. "His contempt of money is not to be paralleled by any of the King's Umbraws or Governors," Sir John wrote, a year later, when Itimad Khan was dead.
To forestall the Dutch with the Emperor, Gayer sent an agent offering to convoy the Red Sea fleet for the future, in return for a yearly payment of four lakhs a year. The offer was refused, but it served to place the English in a more favourable light, and to procure the cancelling of orders that had been given for attacking Bombay and Madras. Had it been accepted, the Seedee would have been added to the number of the Company's enemies. The Dutch, not to be outdone, offered to perform the same service in return for a monopoly of trade in the Emperor's dominions. This brought all other Europeans into line against the Dutch proposal, and the intrigue was defeated.
The embargo on all European trade at Surat was maintained, while the Dutch, French, and English were directed to scour the seas and destroy the pirates. It was further ordered that Europeans on shore were not to carry arms or use palanquins, and their ships were forbidden to hoist their national flags. The Dutch and French hung back. They would not send a ship to sea without payment, except for their own affairs. Sir John Gayer, more wisely, sent armed ships to convoy the Mocha fleet, at the Company's charge, and so the storm passed off.
Meanwhile Every, glutted with booty, made up his mind to retire/8/ with his enormous gains. According to Johnson, he gave the slip, at night, to his consorts, sailed for Providence in the Bahamas, where his crew dispersed, and thence made his way to England, just at the time a royal proclamation offering £500 for his apprehension was published. The reward was doubled by an offer of four thousand rupees from the Company; eight rupees being the equivalent of a pound at that time. Several of his crew also straggled home and were captured; but before he left the Indian coast, twenty-five Frenchmen, fourteen Danes, and some English were put ashore, fearing to show themselves in Europe or America. This fact would seem to throw some doubt on the account of his having left his consorts by stealth.
On the 19th October, 1696, six of his crew were tried and sentenced at the Old Bailey, and a true bill was found and an indictment framed against Every himself, though he had not been apprehended. According to Johnson,/9/ Every changed his name and lived unostentatiously, while trying to sell the jewels he had amassed. The merchant in whose hands he had placed them, suspecting how they had been come by, threatened him. Every fled to Ireland, leaving his jewels in the merchant's hands, and finally died in Devonshire in extreme poverty.
But the authority for this, as for most of the popular accounts of Every, is extremely doubtful. That he was cheated out of some of his ill-gotten gains is probable enough, but it is in the highest degree improbable that he was known to be living in poverty, and yet that the large reward offered for his apprehension was not earned. What is alone certain is that he was never apprehended, and that in a few months he carried off an amount of plunder such as never before was taken out of the Indian seas by a single rover. For long he was the hero of every seaport town in England and North America; innumerable legends gathered round his name, and an immense impulse was given to piracy.
A few months after his departure, there were five pirate ships in the Red Sea, under English colours; two more, each mounting fourteen guns, were in the Persian Gulf; and another was cruising off Tellicherry. At Madagascar others were coming in fast. The news of Every's great booty had spread from port to port, and every restless spirit was intent on seeking his fortune in this new Eldorado, as men nowadays flock to a new goldfield. The Company's sailors were not proof against the temptation. While on the way from Bombay to China the crew of the Mocha frigate mutinied off the coast of Acheen, killed their captain, Edgecombe, and set afloat in the pinnace twenty-seven officers and men who refused to join them. The Mocha was then renamed the Defence, and for the next three years did an infinity of damage in the Indian Ocean.
At the same time, the crew of the Josiah ketch from Bombay, while at anchor in the Madras roads, took advantage of the commander being on shore to run away with the ship. The whole thing had been planned between the two crews before leaving Bombay; their intention being to meet off the coast of Sumatra, and cruise in company. The piratical career of the Josiah did not last long. Making first for the Nicobars, the crew flocked on shore, and were soon involved in quarrels with the natives; leaving on board only two men, one of whom was James Cruffe, the armourer, who had been forced to join them against his will. The other man was but a lukewarm pirate, and Cruffe prevailed on him to join in an attempt to carry off the ship. They cut the cable, and by great good fortune, without any knowledge of navigation, succeeded in carrying the ship into Acheen.
Stout's command of the Defence, once Mocha, quickly came to an end. According to one account, he was put to death by his comrades, at the Laccadives, for trying to desert them; according to another account, he was slain by some Malays. His place was taken by Culliford, who had been the leader of the mutineers of the Josiah. He changed the ship's name to the Resolution, and proved himself one of the most daring rovers of his day.
The untrustworthiness of his crews placed Sir John Gayer in an awkward dilemma. He had to report to the Directors that he dared not send ships to convoy pilgrims lest the crews should mutiny; that a boat could not be manned in Bombay harbour for fear of desertion; while on shore, he had not a soldier fit to be made a corporal. A powerful French squadron had appeared on the coast, and the Surat President calculated that the Company's recent losses on captured ships sailing from Surat amounted to a million sterling. The losses of the native merchants were even more serious; trade was almost at a standstill, while three more pirate ships from New York appeared in the Gulf of Cambay, and captured country ships to the value of four lakhs of rupees.
Every letter along the coast at this date speaks of the doings of the rovers: every ship coming into harbour told of pirates, of chases and narrow escapes, and of reported captures.

    "These pirates spare none but take all they meet, and take the Europe men into their own ships, with such goods as they like, and sink the ships, sending the lascars on rafts to find the shore."

So bold were the marauders that they cruised in sight of Bombay harbour, and careened their ships [=turned them on their sides for maintenance] in sight of factories along the coast. To avenge their losses, the Muscat Arabs, in April, 1697, seized the London, belonging to Mr. Affleck, a private merchant. The Arabs were engaged in hostilities with the Portuguese at the time, and forced the crew of the London to fight for them. Those who were unwilling were lashed to masts exposed to Portuguese fire, from which they did not escape scatheless. In vain the commanders of two of the Company's vessels assured the Imaum that the London was not a pirate.

    "You have sent me a letter," he wrote, "about my people taking one of your ships. It is true that I have done so, in return for one you English took from me, so now we are even and have ship for ship; for this one I will not surrender. If you wish to be friends, I am willing to be so; if not, I will fight you and take all the ships I can."

One pirate ship was reported to have chased two Cong ships, capturing one and forcing the other ashore, where it became a total wreck. "What influence this may have on the Rt. Hon. Company's affairs, God alone knows," wrote the Surat President, mournfully. Soon he was in better spirits. The same pirates had landed and plundered Cong; but, allowing themselves to be surprised, fifty-six of the crew had been set upon and killed. With few exceptions, the English pirates came from the American colonies. Every year, from New York, Boston, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, ships were fitted out, nominally for the slave trade, though it was no secret that they were intended for piracy in the Eastern seas. Whatever compunction might be felt at attacking European ships, there was none about plundering Asiatic merchants, where great booty was to be gained with little risk. Sometimes the Governors were in league with the pirates, who paid them to wink at their doings.
Those who were more honest had insufficient power to check the evil practices that were leniently, if not favourably, regarded by the colonial community, while their time was fully occupied in combating the factious opposition of the colonial legislatures, and in protective measures against the French and Indians. The English Government, absorbed in the French war, had no ships in the Indian seas; but the straits to which English trade in the East had been reduced, and the enormous losses caused by the pirates, at last forced some measures to be adopted for coping with the evil that had assumed such gigantic proportions.
 
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/1/ It appears likely that this was the John Steel mentioned by Drury as his uncle in Bengal. There is very little doubt that much of Drury's alleged slavery in Madagascar was spent among the pirates.
/2/ It would appear that he assumed the name of Every on taking to piracy.
/3/ Sir James Houblon was an Alderman of London, and a Governor of the Bank of England at the time.
/4/ The letter appears to have been left by Every with the natives of Johanna, who gave it to the merchant captains who brought it to Bombay.
/5/ The quotation is taken from Johnson's General History of the Pyrates, 1724. In his cruising voyage round the world Woodes Rogers did not touch at Madagascar. On that occasion (1711) he met two ex-pirates at the Cape, who had received pardons, and told him that the Madagascar settlements had dwindled to sixty or seventy men, "most of them very poor and despicable, even to the natives," and possessed of only one ship and a sloop. But, he adds, "if care be not taken, after a peace, to clear that island of them, and hinder others from joining them, it may be a temptation for loose straggling fellows to resort thither, and make it once more a troublesome nest of freebooters."
/6/ Elliot's History of India as told by its own historians: Muntakhabu-l Lubab of Khafi Khan.
/7/ Equal to £534,000 at that day.
/8/ According to the statement of a lascar, taken in the Futteh Mahmood and carried to Madagascar, Every sailed for the Bahamas in the autumn of 1695, so that his career in the Indian seas lasted only six months. On reaching Providence, Every presented the Governor with forty pieces of eight and four pieces of gold for allowing them to come and go in safety.
/9/ Johnson's General History of the Pyrates, 1724.