Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt, Riverhead Books, 2020
In September 1695 off the western coast of India an English pirate ship attacked the trading vessel Ganj-i-Sawai ("Exceeding Treasure"), which was laden with gold, silver, jewels, luxury goods, and dozens of pilgrims returning from Mecca to the Mughal court. The Ganj-i-Sawai (which the British called the Gunsway) was a formidable target: it carried 80 guns and 400 soldiers to defend the cargo and the 600 crew and passengers. The pirates were outgunned and outmanned by large margins. But they had surprise, speed, terror, and accident on their side.
The Ganj-i-Sawai was a luckless ship. The pirates' first volley brought down its mainmast, one of its cannon exploded and caused a fire on the gun deck, and its captain fled down into the hold rather than encouraging his men to fight. Despite the long odds the pirates were able to capture and plunder the ship ("plunder" included the torture of members of the crew and the gang rape of the female pilgrims). This act set off an international crisis that nearly resulted in the expulsion of the British from India.
The pirate captain, Henry Every, and the bulk of his crew were mutineers. Two years before the attack on the Ganj-i-Sawai a four-ship expedition had set sail from England bound for the Caribbean to salvage treasure from sunken Spanish ships. However, after making port in Corunna in the northwest corner of Spain the expedition was held up for months waiting for its authorization to sail. Unpaid since the start of the expedition and sick of waiting in port, Every, the charismatic first mate on the expedition's flagship Charles II, ultimately led a mutiny, seized the ship and sailed out of port. Renaming the ship the Fancy, Every navigated not west towards the Caribbean but south down the coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and then northeast into the Indian Ocean.
His goal was the mouth of the Red Sea, a waterway less than 20 miles wide that would funnel Arabian and Indian traders right towards where his ship was waiting to intercept them. And although a convoy of trading vessels managed to slip past the Fancy by sailing through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at night, afterwards the convoy separated. The Fancy, a ship that had been stripped down for speed, was able to catch up to and capture two of its ships, the Fath Mahmamadi and the Ganj-i-Sawai.
Anonymous 18th-century engraving of Henry Every, with the Fancy engaging with another vessel in the background. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The haul was immense. Pirate ships were floating collectives, and the Fancy's crew had decided to divide any captured loot equally (with the captain getting a double share). Most members of the crew wound up with money and goods worth hundreds of pounds, and Every's share was at least £2000. In comparison, the annual wages of an ordinary seaman in the Royal Navy might have been £10. It's no wonder that piracy held such attractions.
When word of the loss of the ships to the English pirate reached Dehli, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb assumed that Every, like many other privateers, was operating under a letter of marque issued by the British government. He ordered the arrest of the British factors in the port city of Surat, the seizure of their goods, and for his armies to prepare to assault the East India Company fort at Bombay. Cooler counsel ultimately prevailed, in part because Britain put a bounty on the heads of Every and his men, and in part because the East India Company agreed to provide armed escorts to accompany Indian merchant ships. Not only did this provide immediate income for services rendered, it placed the trade of the Mughal Empire under the protection, and ultimately the control, of the Company. It was a key shift, one of the many occurrences that over the succeeding decades would enable the Company to dominate most of the subcontinent.
Proclamation for apprehending Henry Every, alias Bridgeman, and sundry other pirates, 1696.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Johnson, a popular writer on business and technology, has hit on a fascinating story that, in retrospect, is an inflection point in British relations with India and in the development of global trade. Along the way he discusses the brutal and dangerous lives of seventeenth-century seamen; press-gangs and the slave trade; the history of piracy; the violent succession of Mughal Emperors; the rise of mercantilism and the creation of the joint stock company.
Johnson's tale is engagingly told, but he makes some mistakes, both minor and major, along the way. An example of the former: he writes of pirate Thomas Tew's Red Sea raid of 1693 (which probably inspired Henry Every's plans),
. . .most of the men on board took home roughly £2000 after the prizes had been fully allocated by the quartermaster. Recall the terms that James Houblon had offered the experienced crew of Spanish Expedition Shipping: £82 for the entire voyage. A midshipman on [Tew's ship] the Amity had earned fifty times that much in a six-month voyage. (p. 114)
More like 25 times that much, but still a handsome reward. Although his prize share had been between four and eight thousand pounds, enough money on which to live in peaceful retirement for the rest of his life, Tew unwisely returned to the Red Sea in 1695 and was briefly allied with Every. However, the Amity had its own encounter with the Fath Mahmamadi, during which Tew was struck in the abdomen by a cannonball and killed. If the rewards of piracy were great, so were the dangers.
Sometimes Johnson gets the math right, but calculates from the wrong assumptions. He writes that immediately after the mutiny,
Every's most pressing need was not for food or armaments, but rather men. The eighty pirates aboard the ship would not give Every enough manpower to exploit the Fancy's full potential in an exchange with another vessel. Each of the great guns on deck required at a minimum six men to man them in the heat of battle; with forty-six guns on board, Every knew he needed at least three times his current crew to fire a full broadside. More would be needed to fire the muskets, man the sails, and storm enemy ships if the Fancy were able to overpower them. (p. 111)
So by Johnson's calculation of six men per gun, during an encounter the Fancy would need 280 men to fire a broadside, plus more to "fire the muskets, man the sails, and storm enemy ships." Only, sailing ships didn't generally carry enough crew to man every gun onboard because ships fought side-by-side and during an engagement could usually at any time bring only half of their guns to bear. If the ship maneuvered during battle to change the side facing the enemy, the gun crews simply moved across the deck.
This can be confirmed by examining the crew complements of British 46-gun ships launched or acquired between 1680 and 1700, which range between 128 and 230 men and average about 170. For her armament the Fancy was undermanned at the start; Every probably wanted to double the size of the crew, but not (as Johnson has it) increase it by a multiple of three or four. Sailing ships were small and crowded and men needed food and water, which had to be stored onboard; any crew beyond the minimum necessary were burdens on a long voyage. In the event Every was able to recruit additional crew from the English, French and Dutch prizes the Fancy took on the way to the Red Sea. [1]
This is not the only error in the book that could have been corrected by a quick internet search. Johnson approvingly quotes historian John Keay's description of the Mughal Empire's use of some of the gold and silver paid for Indian spices and fabrics as "'nullifying its economic potential by melting and spinning the precious metals into bracelets, brocades and other ostentatious heirlooms.'" Johnson then adds his own description of the process as "the equivalent of winning the lottery and decorating your house with wallpaper made of hundred-dollar bills" (p. 50).
Jigha turban ornament, 18th century. White jade (nephrite), diamond, spinel and emerald in 22K gold. 14 cm. Photo by Robert & Orasa Weldon/GIA. Image source: GIA.edu
This seems like a false comparison. For one, the value of metals, gems, and other materials is not destroyed by their incorporation into jewelry; if anything the reverse. For another, jewelry, brocaded fabrics, and other luxuries possessed symbolic value: they were worn by rulers (not only in India, as portraits of English kings and queens attest) as highly visible manifestations of power and status; they could be given as gifts to reward the loyalty of subjects and reinforce networks of influence and patronage. Finally, even if you want to make the case that the manufacture of jewelry was not the most productive use of India's huge trade surpluses, the reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) is probably not illustrative of the point: he was highly devout and enforced the prohibition in Islamic law against men wearing gold. [2]
So what happened to Every and his men? After the spoils were divided up, Every sailed the Fancy back around the Cape. Reprovisioning only at Ascension Island, an uninhabited six-mile-wide volcanic speck in the middle of the South Atlantic, he sailed on to Nassau in the British Bahamas. [3] There the Fancy, all the goods in her, and a large sum of money were offered to the governor, who (probably for reasons both of prudence and profit) accepted the deal. The crew dispersed, with many heading to the American colonies.
Every and twenty companions acquired a single-masted boat, the Sea Flower, and sailed northeast across the Atlantic to Ireland, where they split up. [4] Returning to the British Isles seems like a highly risky choice, and so it turned out to be: eventually eight crewmen were identified, arrested and put on trial in London for piracy (a fascinating story in itself, which Johnson tells well).
But Every was not among those arrested. One of the captured crewmen who claimed to have traveled with him on the Sea Flower, Joseph Dann, testified that Every was headed for Scotland but had said his ultimate destination was Exeter in southwestern England, near where he'd been born. (Although, given the consequences of being found, how likely is it that Every would reveal his true destination?)
Tantalizingly, Dann also reported an encounter just a few days before his arrest with the wife of the Fancy's quartermaster, Henry Adams, at St Albans, a stagecoach stop northwest of London. Mrs. Adams and Dann knew one another well, as she had met and married Adams in Nassau and had been one of the voyagers (and the only woman) on board the Sea Flower. Mrs. Adams was boarding a coach, traveling alone, and told Dann she was going to see Every. Interestingly, although Johnson doesn't mention it, St Albans was on the Great North Road, and a traveler boarding there was probably heading towards Yorkshire or Scotland and not towards Devonshire.
But Mrs. Adams' reference to him, if true on both her part and Dann's, is the last known trace of Henry Every. After this moment he vanishes. His ultimate fate remains unknown.
- See the website Three Decks, which compiles known information about ships in the Age of Sail: https://threedecks.org/index.php
- See Dona Mary Dirlam, Chris L. Rogers, and Robert Weldon, "Gemstones in the Era of the Taj Mahal and the Mughals," Gems & Gemology, Fall 2019, Vol. 55, No. 3, https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2019-era-of-the-taj-mahal-and-mughals, and Alice Keller and Terri Ottaway, "Centuries of Opulence: Jewels of India," October 11, 2017, https://www.gia.edu/jewels-of-india
- That the Fancy could navigate to a six-mile-wide island in the middle of a 2400-mile-wide ocean says a great deal about the skill of the men on board. Amazingly, 17 members of the crew elected to stay on Ascension rather than risk capture and execution in British territories.
- Another remarkable feat of sailing and navigation.
