by Alison Bowler

Created on: April 01, 2009   Last Updated: April 23, 2010

Who was Captain John Avery? A very good question to which there are many answers. In 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote a book entitled - "The king of the pirates, being an account of the famous enterprises of Captain Avary". Before this, in 1709, another book had been written called "The Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery". This gives us two different spellings of the man's surname but the pirate himself appeared to be called Henry Every. At times, he also went by the names Benjamin Bridgeman and Long Ben.

Henry Every was born in Plymouth in the South West of Great Britain in the year 1653. There have been many stories told of his early career some may even be true. It appears he went to sea, serving in the British Royal Navy, as a youth. Some stories put him at the bombardment of Algiers in 1671 and other stories put him as the captain of a logwood freighter or being a buccaneer in the Caribbean. During the early 1690's he was working in the Atlantic slave trade buying slaves in Africa and transporting for sale in the Caribbean and America. A story told of him at this time was that in addition to loading the slaves onto his vessel he also took the slavers captive chaining them alongside the slaves and transporting them across the Atlantic for sale.

In June 1694, he was first mate on the privateer Charles II, which was under the command of Captain Gibson. While the ship was anchored, of the coast of Spain, Every led a successful mutiny. The mutineers put Captain Gibson ashore before re-naming the vessel the Fancy and setting sail for the Cape of Good Hope. Near the Cape Verde Islands, he led his first attack as a pirate captain when he successfully robbed three British merchant vessels. The sinking of two Danish ships, near the Portuguese controlled island of Sao Thome, followed this.

Early in 1695 at the island of Johanna, in the Comoro Islands, he careened the hull and modified the superstructure of the Fancy making her one of the fastest vessels serving in the Indian Ocean at the time. In addition, at this time, he wrote a letter addressed to all the captains of British vessels sailing the Indian Ocean. In this, he denied the earlier attack on British ships and gave them details of a recognition signal they could use to avoid attack by his ship.

His first action in the Indian Ocean was to attack a French pirate ship. Having looted the French vessel he recruited about several of the Frenchman's' crew into his own. At this time, the Fancy carried estimated crew

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