BACKGROUND

Modern scholarship suggests Henry Every was born on 20 August 1659 in the village of Newton Ferrers, about 9.7 kilometres (6 mi) southeast of Plymouth, Devon, England.^[1][2] Parish records suggest that he was the son of John Every and his wife, Anne (maiden name unknown); the Every family of Devon was quite established at the time, and it is likely he was a kinsman of the Every family of Wycroft Castle.^[3] According to the deposition of William Phillips, a member of Every’s crew who gave a “voluntary confession” after his capture, in August 1696 Every was “aged about 40 years,” his mother lived “near Plymouth,” and his wife was a periwig seller who lived “in Ratcliffe Highway.”^[4] Every was married and records suggest that he wed one Dorothy Arther at St James Duke’s Place in London on 11 September 1690,^[5] though there is no evidence that he had any children.

The earliest biographical account of the man, The Life and Adventures of Capt. John Avery (London: J. Baker, 1709), states that he was born in 1653 in Cattedown, Plymouth. Although this location and date are now known to be incorrect, they have been frequently cited in earlier literature. (Another suggested year for Every’s birth is 1665,^[6] though this too is in error.) The memoir’s Dutch author, who wrote his account a little over a decade after the pirate had vanished, uses the name Adrian van Broeck, but this is probably a pseudonym. The account tells of Van Broeck’s short captivity by Every’s crew aboard Fancy, and claims that Every’s father was a trading captain who had served in the Royal Navy under Admiral Robert Blake. Several later accounts of Every’s life, most prominently Daniel Defoe’s The King of Pirates (1720), have made reference to the earlier work, but it is of questionable veracity and has been described by the Dictionary of National Biography as “fiction, with scarcely a substratum of fact.”^[7]

Although a theory existed that Every’s birth name was actually Benjamin Bridgeman (especially in light of his nickname “Long Ben”), and that “Henry Every” was in fact an alias,^[8] modern scholarship has debunked it.^[9] It is accepted by historians that “Henry Every” was the pirate’s real name, given that he used this name when he entered the Royal Navy. As this was prior to the onset of his piratical career, he would have had no need for an alias; he used the name “Bridgeman” only after committing piracy. Every may have been a cousin of the well-known Every baronets, though this has not been proven conclusively.^[16]

ROYAL NAVY SERVICE

Every was probably a sailor from youth, serving on various Royal Navy ships. Popular accounts state that Every served aboard the English fleet bombarding Algiers in 1671, buccaneered in the Caribbean Sea, and even captained a logwood freighter in the Bay of Campeche, although these stories come from Van Broeck’s fictional memoir.^[10] The substantiated record picks up in March 1689, shortly after the breakout of the Nine Years’ War.

England and its allies—the Grand Alliance—Bavaria, the Dutch Republic, the Palatinate, Saxony, and Spain—were waging war against Louis XIV of France in an attempt to stop his expansions, and it was against this background that Every, now in his early thirties, was working as a midshipman aboard the sixty-four gun battleship HMS Rupert, then under the command of Sir Francis Wheeler.^[11] Every’s naval records suggest he was something of a family man, who spent “little of his wages on extras such as tobacco and regularly consigned his pay to his family.”^[12]

In mid-1689, HMS Rupert helped capture a large enemy French convoy off Brest, France. This victory gave Every an opportunity to better his fortunes and by the end of July he was promoted to Master’s mate, although he was probably the most junior of HMS Rupert‘s three Master’s mates.^[13] In late June 1690, he was invited to join Captain Wheeler on a new ship, the ninety-gun HMS Albemarle. He likely participated in the Battle of Beachy Head against the French two weeks later, an engagement which ended disastrously for the English.^[12][14] On 29 August of that year, Every was discharged from the Royal Navy.^[15][16]

AVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE

After discharge from the Royal Navy, Avery entered the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1660 and 1698, the Royal African Company (RAC) maintained a monopoly over all English slave trade, making it illegal to sell slaves without a license. To ensure compliance, the navy protected the company’s interests along the West African coast. Although illegal, unlicensed slaving could be a highly lucrative enterprise, as Avery was certainly aware; the prospect of profits ensured that violations of the company’s monopoly by “interlopers” (unlicensed slavers) remained a fairly common crime.

In 1693, Avery is identified in a journal prepared by an agent of the RAC, Captain Thomas Phillips of Hannibal, then on a slaving mission on the Guinea coast, who writes: “I have no where upon the coast met the negroes so shy as here, which makes me fancy they have had tricks play’d them by such blades as Long Ben, alias Avery, who have seiz’d them and carry’d them away.”^[17][18] (Avery was known to lure potential slave traders onto his ship by flying friendly English colours, then seize the slave traders themselves and chain them in his ship’s hold alongside their former captives.)^[19] Captain Phillips, who according to his own writings had come across Avery on more than one occasion—and may have even known him personally^[8]—also alluded to Avery as slave trading under a commission from Issac Richier, the unpopular Bermudian governor who was later removed from his post for his carousing behavior. However, Avery’s slave trading employment is relatively undocumented.^[20]

Sourced from: Wikipedia

REFERENCES:

1.  Baer 2005, p. 91
2. ^ Marley 2010, p. 589
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Rogoziński 2000
4. ^ The National Archives SP 63/358 fols. 127–32
5. ^ Fox 2008, p. 29
6. ^ Gosse 1924, p. 23
7.  Laughton 1908, p. 747
8.  Grey 1933, p. 167
9. ^ Baer 1994, p. 3
10. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Baer 1994, p. 4
11. ^ Fox 2008, p. 22
12. ^ Marley 2010, p. 590
13. ^ Fox 2008, pp. 19–29
14. ^ Marley 2010, pp. 589–590
15. ^ Botting 1978, p. 80
16. ^ Phillips 1744, pp. 197
17.  Woodard 2007, p. 19
18.  Burgess 2009a, p. 132

MUTINY AND ASCENSION TO CAPTAINCY

On Monday, 7 May 1694, O’Byrne was scheduled to sleep ashore, which gave the men the opportunity they were looking for.^[1] At approximately 9:00 p.m., Every and about twenty-five other men rushed aboard Charles II and surprised the crew on board. Captain Gibson was bedridden at the time, so the mutiny ended bloodlessly.^[2][e] One account states that the extra men from James pulled up in a longboat beside the ship and gave the password, saying, “Is the drunken boatswain on board?” before joining in the mutiny. Captain Humphreys of James is also said to have called out to Every that the men were deserting, to which Every calmly replied that he knew perfectly well.^[3] James then fired on Charles II, alerting the Spanish Night Watch, and Every was forced to make a run to the open sea, quickly vanishing into the night.

After sailing far enough for safety, Every gave the non-conspirators a chance to go ashore, even deferentially offering to let Gibson command the ship if he would join their cause. According to Charles Ellms, Every’s words to Gibson were, “if you have a mind to make one of us, we will receive you; and if you turn sober, and attend to business, perhaps in time I may make you up of my lieutenants; if not, here’s a boat, and you shall be set on shore.”^[4] The captain declined and was set ashore with several other sailors.^[2] The only man who was prevented from voluntarily leaving was the ship’s surgeon, whose services were deemed too important to forgo. All of the men left on board Charles II unanimously elected Every captain of the ship.^[5] Some reports say that Every was much ruder in his dealings with Gibson, but agree that he at least offered him the position of second mate.^[6] In either case, Every exhibited an amount of gentility and generosity in his operation of the mutiny that indicates his motives were not mere adventure.

Every was easily able to convince the men to sail to the Indian Ocean as pirates, since their original mission had greatly resembled piracy and Every was renowned for his powers of persuasion. He may have mentioned Thomas Tew‘s success capturing an enormous prize in the Red Sea only a year earlier. The crew quickly settled the subject of payment by deciding that each member would get one share of the treasure, and the captain would get two. Every then renamed Charles II the Fancy—a name which reflected both the crew’s renewed hope in their journey and the quality of the ship—and set a course for the Cape of Good Hope.^[7]

AT PIRATE ROUND

At Maio, the easternmost of the Cape Verde‘s Sotavento islands, Every committed his first piracy, robbing three English merchantmen from Barbados of provisions and supplies.^[8] Nine of the men from these ships were quickly persuaded to join Every’s crew,^[5] who now numbered about ninety-four men.^[9] Every then sailed to the Guinea coast, where he tricked a local chieftain into boarding Fancy under the false pretense of trade, and forcibly took his and his men’s wealth, leaving them slaves.^[10] Continuing to hug the African coastline, Every then stopped at Bioko in the Bight of Benin, where Fancy was careened and razeed.^[9] Cutting away some of the superstructure to improve the ship’s speed made Fancy one of the fastest vessels then sailing in the Atlantic Ocean. In October 1694, Fancy captured two Danish privateers near the island of Príncipe, stripping the ships of ivory and gold and welcoming approximately seventeen defecting Danes aboard.^[11]

In early 1695, Fancy finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in Madagascar where the crew restocked supplies, likely in the area of St. Augustine’s Bay.^[f] The ship next stopped at the island of Johanna in the Comoros Islands. Here Every’s crew rested and took on provisions, later capturing a passing French pirate ship, looting the vessel and recruiting some forty of the crew to join their own company. Every’s total strength was now about 150 men.^[12]

At Johanna, Every wrote a letter addressed to the English ship commanders in the Indian Ocean, falsely stating that he had not attacked any English ships. His letter describes a signal English skippers could use to identify themselves so he could avoid them, and warns them that he might not be able to restrain his crew from plundering their ships if they failed to use the signal. It is unclear whether this document was true, but it may have been a ploy by Every to avoid the attention of the East India Company (EIC), whose large and powerful ships were the only threat Fancy faced in the Indian Ocean.^[13] Either way, the letter was unsuccessful in preventing the English from pursuing him.

Sourced From: Wikipedia

REFERENCES

1.  Fox 2008, pp. 45–50
2. Baer 1994, p. 14
3.  Burgess 2009, p. 131
4.  Ellms 1837, p.26
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b Rogoziński 2000, p. 83
6. ^ Burgess 2009a, p. 131
7. ^ Baer 1994, p. 15
8. ^ Burgess 2009a, p. 133
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b Baer 2005, p. 96
10. ^ Emlyn 1730, p. 10
11. ^ Baer 2005, p. 97
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b Fox 2008, pp. 58–60
13.  Baer 2005, p. 98