199. Robbing the World’s Wealthiest Dynasty

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durimple. Now recently, we've been discussing pirates, haven't we? I've been having such fun with our pirates. I love the pirates. Great pirates. And, you know, we've taken you through the lives of Blackbeard and William Kidd. And today we're going to talk about another pirate whose end was very different from his pirate brethren and whose deeds leave little room for romanticising. They're not even grey areas here like they have been with some of our others. No, this is the story of a very naughty pirate indeed called Henry Avery, or at least that is one of his many names because he had a whole variety of aliases.

1:09And what is fascinating is that his story has got everything about not only the story of piracy, but also kind of the story of organized crime. It's the story of a man who initially has a career, veers off the rails, goes over to the dark side and pulls off the most extraordinary heist in piracy history. He gets a larger bag of goodies, of swag, than any other pirate in history. And he then kicks off the first global manhunt. The entire East India Company is mobilized to track him down. And they catch most of his gang, but they never catch him. But then there's a final fantastic twist at the end, which, of course, being a person that would never...

1:59Who you are, I'm jumping in right now before you give it away. I would never spoil a story. Did you see me leaping in? Saw you revving and I thought I'd rear up in my seat. But you're absolutely right. I mean, sort of think Brink's map robbery, the stealing of the Pink Panther. It was such a celebrated, huge deal. No one could understand how a man could get away with this. Also, it has in this story something that makes us look very, very closely at the whole business of piracy stories, movies, novels, and indeed podcasts. Because at the heart of this, as well as the biggest bag of swag ever produced by pirates, a proper atrocity.

2:42And it makes you think again about the whole thing. I mean, we're all used to thinking of pirates really as the kind of Johnny Depp character at some level, you know, the naughty rogue who maybe, you know, has a cutlass and maybe might take a purse or two, but who's basically a sort of good guy. A lovable rogue. A lovable rogue. And the atrocity, which we'll be talking about at the heart of this story today, reveals actually, of course, as with all serious crime, that it's not actually that great in reality. In fact, this one is a disgusting and terrible act that takes place. So there's both elements.

3:21I mean, you cannot help being drawn into this story, and it is so thrilling. And there's all the elements that you would want from a good crime caper, a diamond heist, or any of that. And yet there's also a dark side that needs to be slightly uncomfortable when I tell this story. Yeah, no, well, I mean, it should. That means you're a normal, decent human being. But the other thing, you know, we sort of talked about it a little bit with William Kidd, is that you have sometimes children's literature, to thank for the rewriting and the lovable rogue image. I mean, I don't know whether it makes it more palatable, but we talked about with William Kidd, you know, the children's illustrator gave us the Johnny Depp mode of his look and everything.

3:56And, you know, all of these sort of Dick Turpin tales as well, you know, where you have a highwayman who is genuinely good and trying to frustrate big government and terrible draconian rules and do a good thing. The one thing that actually it made me think of when I was reading this, the nearest parallel in our own time, I think, is the Great Train Robbery. Because in that too, you've got a story of sort of, you know, from one angle, lovable rogues pulling off an extraordinary heist. And on the other hand, you know, some bad stuff went up. For those who don't know what the Great Train Robbery was, this was from the 1960s.

4:29It was touted in many of the newspapers at the time as something of such an audacious bravery. But there was a man who was beaten, who died. And I actually, you know what, when I went to university, I went to King's and we used to take a bus route, which went near the Elephant and Castle. And there's a bridge there. And Buster, who was involved in that robbery, was a flower seller there. You know, he was a terribly affable man. And people used to come and want their photo taken with him and sort of be all, you know, sort of pally. But he wouldn't talk about the robbery because he had guilt as opposed to Ronnie Biggs who went off and sunned himself and sort of flaunted it around.

5:07And then eventually came and did time. Anyway, look, let's talk about the pirates that we're talking about because I want to sort of put them in a context because we have talked about William Kidd. We've talked about Blackbeard. and our man today, Henry Avery, he starts his career as a pirate while Blackbeard was growing up near Bristol. So you can imagine that Blackbeard will have heard of this man, Avery, and his exploits and he might have been something of an inspiration to him and other pirates because he was so successful. Well, I think there's no question that he was and that there was a whole world of sea shanties and ballads and things which got printed up and passed from hand to hand in London and in Plymouth and in all the ports.

5:48And what you see is this image that we have today of the pirates for the first time becoming this sort of jolly rogue, taking it out on the moors who were the object of many of his robberies. And you see the romanticization of pirates happening as he lives, in his time, even before he dies. He's very much part of the main line of this story. Yeah, the golden age of pirates that we talked about. Is it a good word, the golden age of pirates? Can you have a golden age of crime and robbery and rape? Anyway, yeah, that's what it's called. But he's also somebody who, like all the best criminals from the Pink Panther onwards, has a whole variety of aliases.

6:26Henry Avery seems to be the best scholarly shot at what his real name was. Scholars are by no means certain it was. There's also John Avery, Benjamin Bridgman. Long Ben. Long Ben. Let's call him Long Ben. So Long Ben makes me laugh because Long Ben is one that has a lot of popularity, but I don't think he was very tall. He wasn't very tall. And some sort of descriptions of him talk about him being rather sort of fat and jolly, a rather sort of Father Christmas-y figure, or even sort of Hugh Bonneville, who played him once in Doctor Who. Did you ever see that episode? I missed that iteration. But round and avuncular kind of creature he was in real life.

7:01But there's also, behind that sort of mixture of Bonomy, there's also real menace and violence. There's a contemporary description of him that calls him daring and good-humoured, but insolent, uneasy and unforgiving to the last degree if at any time imposed upon. But where was he born? Give us some nuts and bolts of this story. I think he was born on the south coast. I thought it was sort of Newton Ferrer's Plymouth kind of way. But we do know that he was married and we know the name of his wife, Dorothy Arthur, another long-suffering pirate wife. I don't know what her life was like. And that's where some of the scholarship that's produced this real name, Benjamin Ridgeman, comes from.

7:40Henry Avery was an alias that he took on sometime, maybe escaping the law, who knows. But again, every new generation of historian that sort of researches this man comes up with a new real name for him. It's like sort of Russian dolls. You dispose of one alias and another one turns up, which is why he was so good at getting away from the law. One thing that we do know is he was known as the King of Pirates. People really thought he was terrible and terribly good at his job. So that was a moniker that he would have worn with pride. And as we'll see, it wasn't just that he was good at his job. He actually creates a sort of extraordinary pirate confederation in the Red Sea.

8:16And what he does is he makes a massive fleet of pirates, takes on the biggest prize of them all. But again, I won't spoil the story quite yet. No, you're trying to. You're edging towards it and I'm going to jump in again. So again, the stories of some of these pirates is very, very similar. As we discussed with William Kidd, his father died when he was very young. His father was a mariner and Kidd didn't get on with his mum's new fella. Well, as with that, we've got Avery who has lost his father at a young age. He's looked after by an uncle, but his uncle is an absolute brute and is not very kind to him and robs him of the estates that have been left to him.

8:53and then apprentices him, which is basically sells him off to a sadistic shipmaster. And just as a kid, he experienced brutality on the open seas. That would have been his school, would have been, you know, the cudgel and the whip and the screams of senior sailors or privateers on a ship. That's where he grew up. It was a rough place to find yourself. We're talking the 1670s, the 1680s. And there are various early accounts of his life and they often contradict each other. But the stories sort of get solider and there are more accounts which echo each other around March 1689, soon after the breakout of the Nine Years' War.

9:34Let's say what the Nine Years' War is, because some people may have forgotten. I know we have banged on about it before. But the Nine Years' War was this European conflict, you know, a huge conflagration of fighting between France and something known as the Grand Alliance, which was the Dutch Republic, England, Spain, Bavaria and Saxony. So, I mean, in those days, it's close to a world war as you would a God. Exactly. And Avery, at this point in his life, is on the side of the law. He's part of the Navy. He's in a sort of 64-gun ship of the line called HMS Rupert. You can't get sort of straighter than that.

10:07Who's going to be frightened of HMS Rupert? Sorry. Just to say. The dreadnought, the Black Death. Rupert nice but dim. And ahoy, on the horizon, it's Rupert. Oh, no. Sorry, just an observation. On you go. No, I agree. I agree. So it's quite a sort of straightforward and straight ship. And he is at this point the straightforward family man. One recent researcher has managed to get some of his sort of accounts from this period. And our future pirate is spending most of his wages on his family. He's coming back home. And he even participates in a battle against the French in June 1690, the Battle of Beachy Head.

10:48That one didn't go well for the English. No. Disastrously. in fact. This is when he's discharged, isn't it? Yeah, he does his time. He goes through all of that, you know, trial by fire, literally, and is discharged. And he is now a man in his 30s. So a man in his 30s, William, has to look to the future and has to look to his fortune. Without the Navy to support his family, where does Avery look? Well, this is, as we saw in our slavery series, this is when the slavery world is getting going. And there are many merchants out of Bristol who are involved in the Atlantic slave trade. And Avery edges towards that, transporting enslaved Africans from the West Coast to the Americas.

11:31This is the very beginning of the story. This goes on for 150 years after this. There's an English historian called Douglas Botting who's looked into his links with the slave trade. And he says, as a slaver, Avery seems to have been more devious than most other practitioners of that sordid craft. So what he did was to earn that accolade from Douglas Botting is he would lure slave traders onto his ship by flying friendly colours. We've seen that in other episodes before where pirates have a whole case full of different flags and different colours and different allegiances. And they put them up on their ships so they can get close enough.

12:06So he lures them onto his ship. He then seizes them, then takes the men and chains them in his own ship to hold alongside captives he's already got. So, you know, this is how he earns this devious moniker He is not a nice man He is not this idea that pirates set all slaves free And enslaved people could have a career privateering alongside them There was every bit as much sort of racism and cruelty And perhaps even more when it comes to Avery And then, like some of our previous pirates He becomes a privateer He joins a ship called the Charles II and this is part of an expedition into the Caribbean.

12:48Privateers, you may remember, are these government-sponsored raiders who get a little charter from the government to go and raid the Crown's enemies. And in this case, they're very unsuccessful. They've got a slightly sort of sleepyhead of a captain, and they're not actually paid until they take a ship. And so the fact that they haven't taken a ship means that the crew don't get paid. And so after several months of this, there's more and more discontent on the Charles II. And it is Avery who leads the mutiny. And I've got a rather lovely account of this. Oh, good. Okay. So, I mean, this all happens one night, just to paint the picture, one night when the sleepy-headed captain, as William described him, is pissed out of his head, basically, is drunk.

13:30And Avery's just not having it anymore. Take it away, William. They're in port and they're moored to the harbour in La Coruna. and the captain wakes up because he notices that the ship is beginning to move this is a contemporary account half asleep and in a kind of fright the captain asked what is the matter and avery who's in his bedroom comes towards him and says nothing at all the captain replies something must be the matter with the ship does she drive a storm what weather is it because he thinks they're moving because there's a storm or the ship has been driven from her anchors no no said avery we are at sea with a fair wind and good weather at sea said the captain how can that be come come said Avery don't be in a fright but put your clothes on and I will let you into a secret then he said you must know I am now the captain of this ship and this is my cabin it's a great story now I don't know whether your account says what happens to sleepy-headed captain but I don't think it's anything good no you're quite right I don't think they sort of let him sleep in another cabin do they?

14:35No, no, he is put out on a boat and cut adrift, poor captain. He's given the option of joining the crew, but he doesn't. Which is a death sentence, normally with people who are loyal to you, so the new captain doesn't have to put up with any of their shenanigans. But he also announces at this point, when he's sort of cast adrift the old captain, I am bound to Madagascar with the design of making my own fortune and that all of the brave fellows joined with me. So, you know, So he's, again, saying, this dude earned you nothing. Stick with me. We are going to take so many ships. You're going to be rolling in it.

15:08And he wasn't wrong. He didn't break that promise. So the first thing he does is he renames the ship from the kind of very royal Charles II. He turns it just to The Fancy. I think it's a lovely name for a ship. Again, not very terrifying. Oh, no, we're being boarded. Who by? Fancy. Fancy. I like fancy. Okay. All right. Okay. So they're headed for Madagascar, the new fancy, in the Indian Oceans. And what's fascinating is that from this point already, there comes to be a ballad about Avery. He's only kicked off and done a mutiny and setting off. And already there is verses. But what's interesting is that the verses are written by him.

15:49He sort of composes his own ballad about his mutiny and sends it back to England. It's a bizarre story. What does he say about himself? Do we know? I am the captain of the fancy. I'm captain of the fancy. My crew is getting antsy. But also, you know, his fame is growing apart from, you know, his self-styled advertising and ballads. The two other pirate sloops decide they want part of this. They believe in Avery. They want to be part of this. So he finds a little pirate fleet growing almost immediately. And this is what distinguishes him because he does indeed build a pirate fleet. He's not just one ship or two ships.

16:22He becomes the biggest pirate confederation in history. and they take on the biggest prize in history too. It's such an extraordinary story. But among his crew, and this is a very nice little detail that I've got, and it's not at all certain, and some scholars say it's rubbish. So pitch salt. But nonetheless, according to one scholar who's written about this, among his crew is none other than Alexander Selkirk, who will become the true basis for the story of Robinson Crusoe, which is a very nice little detail. That is very nice. I mean, in this early 1930s book that I've got in front of me at the moment, certainly at that point, they seem to believe that it's true.

17:03And he is part of the crew right up to the big heist. He's another Scot. He's from Largo in Fife. Surprise, surprise. Surprise, surprise. And he is one of the others who gets away with it. So we've got Robinson Crusoe on board. As if you need more, it's a drama. I have a man who actually is the linchpin of hundreds of dramas and adaptations of that book. But he starts to be very successful with this sort of growing band of pirates. First, he ransacks three English merchant ships in the Cape Verde Islands. And they plunder their way along the African coastline for several months. And they are so unstoppable.

17:40They capture French ships, Danish ships. They pick up new recruits everywhere they go. And as time goes on, Fancy, which I say is very badly named, becomes a really terrifying mighty pirate vessel. And with 150 men, they have a formidable force on board. And they start adding bits to the ship, making it better, don't they? They keep doing improvements to the ship. Exactly. And then there's one of the nicest twists in the story. Avery, as we should call him, although it may well not be his real name, hears from gossip in the Camaro Islands that he's been described as someone who has attacked the English.

18:19And many historians think that he is responsible for some of the English ships which have been attacked at this point. But he will have none of this. And he turns out to be one of those sort of incredibly patriotic criminals. He's the kind of Noel Coward character with a picture of the Queen in his cell in the movie. Yeah, I would never do that. I would slit anyone's throat but not an Englishman. Exactly. Isn't it great? And he puts out this letter. I'll read the whole thing. I have never as yet wronged any English or Dutch, or I ever intend while I am commander. Wherefore, make your ancient flag up into a ball or bundle, and hoist him to the mizzen peak, and the mizzen being furled, I shall answer with the same, and never molest you if you are English.

19:00For I should warn you that my men are hungry, stout, and resolute, and if they should exceed my desire, I cannot help myself. As yet, I am an Englishman's friend, Henry Avery. It's a good point to take a break, but can I just point you in the direction of, as yet, I am an Englishman's friend, if there's an ominous way to sign a letter. That's it. As yet, we are in part one. Join us again in part two of the Henry Avery story.

19:30welcome back so we left you with henry avery assuring england look for now i'm your very best friend and if you don't want me and my men my 150 men and my very ferocious fancy to come aboard and cause chaos all you need to do is unfurl english colors and we will leave you alone for now. And I wonder, how much did England believe him, Henry Avery? Was he a man of his word, did they think? England didn't believe him, and nor do most modern historians who think that he'd definitely been plundering English ships before this. So it's complete nonsense. But it's a lovely touch, the fact that he likes to think of himself as a patriot.

20:07And he's sending these stories about himself back to Plymouth to be published. I mean, to you, it sounds like he thinks of himself as a patriot. To me, this sounds like archetypal bad behaviour of a naughty boy who He goes, who me, sir? No, sir. Not me, sir. It just sounds like that. Anyway, he is about to aim his sights at the richest prize in the world. He's collecting his fleet now and he is considering, where can I get the largest fortune? And he turns to the shipping of what is then not just the richest country in the world, but the ships of the richest man in the world. Who are they? Well, they are the Mughals, of course, aren't they?

20:48We talked about this before, the Mughals who drip with jewels, diamonds, rubies, spinels, the like of which the world has never seen before. And England at this time is trying very hard to get in with the Mughals. They are the powerbreakers. They are the financiers of anything that's worth doing. And so their ships are laden with goods and they do make a lot of voyages. Apart from anything else, they do the Hajj pilgrimage as well, which leaves them very vulnerable to piracy. We've talked about that before. And so what he does is he gets some intelligence from Surat. And we should talk a little about that because Surat, what I suppose Bombay is today, it's the big port of the west coast of India.

21:32But it was also more importantly, the diamond cutting centre of the world. I mean, you know, to this day, I mean, you have people who cut diamonds in Surat, which is in Gujarat, who can trace their ancestry back hundreds and hundreds of years. And their forebears have all been diamond cutters as well. And Surat is the first place that an English expedition to the Mughals lands. Sometime just before this, about 30 years before this, the English have discovered Surat. They've discovered the importance of it. And initially, they're not taken at all seriously. They're considered to be sort of vassals of the Portuguese.

22:05And the Portuguese put it about that this is a thoroughly second-rate power that no one takes seriously and who else is English anyway. They're kind of from the furthest rim of Europe. And there's been a considerable English effort over the last few years to get in with the Mughals. And just before this, Sir Thomas Rowe, there's a wonderful book by Nandini Das all about this. Sir Thomas Rowe is sent by James I and VI, VI of Scotland, I of England, to try and patch up a relationship with Jahangir. He goes all the way to Agra. We talked about this in our Nur Jahan episode a few months ago. And he's quite successful in patching up relations, but he doesn't get the vital firman, which is the kind of free trade privileges that he's after.

22:50So in other words, the English have got their foot in the door of the Mughal Empire. The Portuguese are in disgrace at this very moment because exactly what Avery is thinking, they have attacked Hajj traffic and they've discovered how lucrative it is. So these Europeans are aware that a great deal of jewels are crossing over from Gujarat to the Red Sea and that they've only got to attack these Mughal ships. And the Mughals are not a naval part. They pay other people to do it. They've got the money to pay others to do it and others are better at it. And just to give you an idea of sort of the busy thoroughfare of this sort of Hajj pilgrimage, we're talking about, and this is a lot of people in the 17th century, around 15 ,000 pilgrims per year doing the Hajj pilgrimage.

23:35So what they will do is they will travel from India to the ports of Mokka. We've talked about Mokka before, a really very wealthy port city in Yemen, then to Jeddah and then on their way to Mecca. And so that is basically the robbery superhighway. Any pirate worth his salt just needs to hang around that thoroughfare. And then if they are lucky and these ships are not sufficiently guarded, they just seize them and they seize everything on them. And this is one of the few ways that if you are a Mughal princess, and remember the Mughals were very keen on educating their imperial women folk. So you've got in the palace all these highly educated women, almost the only way that they can go off on their own and escape their men and escape their imprisonment is if they opt to go on Hajj.

24:21And that's considered to be a very worthy thing to want to do. But it's also, I mean, if you're a woman and you're in a harem, it's the one way you can go off on a really great holiday. It's the only way to travel. Yeah, you're allowed out. And this has been the case for a while. And the Sir Thomas Rowe mission is on the back of the fact that in 1613, the Portuguese had seized the Queen Mother, Maria Makani's flagship, which was called the Rahimi, and the entire cargo with approximately 700 passengers and taken it to Goa. And it was the disgrace of the Portuguese after that and the punitive measures taken against Goa and the Portuguese, which allowed the British to get their foot in the door.

25:01The Portuguese had blocked them. So in other words, it's the most sensitive thing for the East India Company. They've got to preserve their open relations with the Mughals. They cannot have rogue Englishmen in any way damaging this relationship. And against the background of that, Avery forms the most enormous pirate fleet to take the biggest prize of all. Yeah. So we're talking about now the year 1695, and Avery and his fleet of ships, and some of them are sloops, so they're really quick vessels. They're all sorts of different vessels. There's his fancy that carries an enormous number of men, and then you've got these very quick sloops.

25:39And it's been souped up. It's got sort of go far stripes on now, the fancy. Exactly. That's exactly right. Turbocharged. And he sets sail for the island of Perim, which is the southern entrance of the Red Sea. And he's waiting for this Indian fleet that he knows, because it's not a secret. You have a big Indian fleet coming past, you will get to hear about it. They have to restock. They have to stop at different ports along the way. So he's waiting for them. The fancy reaches by August 1695, the Straits of Bal El Mandem. And that's where other pirate captains who've also heard Avery's plan sail in to join him.