Avery Captures the Ganj-i-Sawai
Henry Every captured the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai in the Red Sea in September 1695, in what was probably the richest single act of piracy ever committed. Every had been first mate on a privateer whose crew mutinied over unpaid wages at Corunna in 1694; they elected him captain, renamed the ship Fancy, and went to the Indian Ocean. He joined forces with several other pirate vessels off the mouth of the Red Sea to wait for the annual pilgrim convoy returning from Mecca. The Ganj-i-Sawai belonged to the Emperor Aurangzeb, carried some four hundred soldiers and eighty guns, and was escorted by a smaller vessel. The Fancy took the escort first, and then in a running fight of two or three hours won when one of the Mughal ship's own cannon exploded and a lucky shot brought down its mainmast. The plunder was reckoned at £325,000 to £600,000 in coin, gold and jewels — perhaps a hundred million pounds today. Each ordinary crewman received around £1,000, roughly twenty years' wages for a seaman. What followed the capture was worse than the capture. Survivors described days of rape and torture aboard; several women killed themselves. Aurangzeb closed the English factories, imprisoned the East India Company's officers at Surat, and threatened to expel the English from India entirely. The Company mounted the first worldwide manhunt, with a bounty from the crown. Six of the crew were hanged in London. Every disappeared and was never found. The episode is one of the clearest cases of piracy producing a diplomatic crisis between states. It also made him the most famous pirate in England, the subject of a play and of ballads within two years.
- Year: 1695 CE
- Category: Military
