Every's most famous raid, on 7 September 1695, was on a 25-ship convoy of Grand Mughal vessels making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, including the treasure-laden Ghanjah dhow Ganj-i-Sawai and its escort, Fateh Muhammed.

[8] This caused considerable damage to England's fragile relations with the Mughals, and a combined bounty of £1,000—an immense sum at the time—was offered by the Privy Council and the East India Company for his capture, leading to the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history.

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".

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.

[3] During the conflict, 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 contain French expansion, and it was against this background that Every, now in his early thirties, was working as a midshipman aboard the sixty-four gun ship of the line HMS Rupert, then under the command of Sir Francis Wheeler.

He was employed by the royal governor of Bermuda, Isaac Richier, to transport enslaved Africans from West Africa to the Americas; during this period, Every operated primarily as a slave trader along the Guinea coast.

[19][28] In the spring of 1693, several London-based investors led by Sir James Houblon, a wealthy merchant hoping to reinvigorate the stagnating English economy, assembled an ambitious venture known as the Spanish Expedition Shipping.

The venture consisted of four warships: the pink Seventh Son, as well as the frigates Dove (of which famed navigator William Dampier was second mate),[29] James, and Charles II (sometimes erroneously given as Duke).

As months passed and the documents still did not arrive, the sailors found themselves in an unenviable position: with no money to send home to support their families and unable to find alternative sources of employment, they had become virtual prisoners in Corunna.

[40] 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.

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.

[54] Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, a contemporary Indian historian who was in Surat at the time, wrote that, as Every's men boarded the ship, Ganj-i-sawai's captain ran below decks where he armed the slave girls and sent them up to fight the pirates.

Although it is sometimes reported that Every used his phenomenal skills of persuasion to convince the other captains to leave the Mughal loot in his care, quickly slipping away into the night with the entire haul, this comes from Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, an unreliable account.

[61] The plunder of Emperor Aurangzeb's treasure ship had serious consequences for the English, coming at a time of crisis for the East India Company (EIC), whose profits were still recovering from the disastrous Child's War.

The letter explained that Fancy had just returned from the coast of Africa, and the ship's crew of 113 self-identified interlopers (unlicensed English traders east of the Cape of Good Hope)[66] now needed some shore time.

When word eventually reached that the Royal Navy and the EIC were hunting for Fancy and that "Captain Bridgeman" was Every himself, Trott denied ever knowing anything about the pirates' history other than what they told him, adamant that the island's population "saw no reason to disbelieve them".

It has been suggested that because Every was unable to buy a pardon from Trott or from the governor of Jamaica, his crew split up, some remaining in the West Indies, the majority heading to North America, and the rest, including Every himself, returning to England.

In October 1781 John Knill, the Collector of Customs at St Ives, Cornwall, held a meeting with a supposed descendant of Every[i] who stated that his "father had told him that Captain Every, after wandering about in great poverty and distress, had died in Barnstaple, and was buried as a pauper ..."[74] As the manhunt for Every continued in the decade following his disappearance, sightings were frequently reported, but none proved reliable.

A 2024 book alleges that Every survived to covertly enter service as a Royal spy with the assistance of Daniel Defoe, largely on the basis of a coded letter attributed to "Avery the Pirate.

[76] Although other local officials, notably magistrate Captain Robert Snead, tried to have the pirates arrested, the governor's protection ensured that they remained audacious enough to boast of their exploits "publicly over their cups".

[78] John Dann (Every's coxswain) born in East Hoathly, Sussex, was arrested on 30 July 1696 for suspected piracy at the Bull Hotel, a coaching inn on the High Street of Rochester, Kent.

Judge Hedges condemned the "dishonorable" former jury and instructed their successors to act with "a true English spirit" by passing a conviction, repeatedly reminding them to "support...the navigation, trade, wealth, strength, reputation, and glory of this nation.

Sparkes was the only pirate to publicly express some regret, but not for piracy, which was of "lesser concern"—instead, he was repentant for the "horrid barbarities he had committed, though only on the bodies of the heathen", implying that he had participated in the violation of the women aboard the Mughal ships.

[93] Reportedly carrying the retiring Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses, 1st Marquis of Louriçal, the galleon was laden with silver, gold, diamonds, gems, as well as pearls, silks, spices, works of art, and church regalia belonging to the Patriarch of the East Indies.

"[102] Every's exploits immediately captivated the public's imagination, and some considered him a sort of gallant maritime Robin Hood who exemplified the working class idea that rebellion and piracy were acceptable ways to fight back against unfair captains and societies.

[103][104] In particular, Every accomplished his feats while many infamous pirates of the post-Spanish-Succession period—Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, Calico Jack, Samuel Bellamy, Edward Low, Stede Bonnet, and others—were still children, and his exploits had become legendary by the time they were young men.

At one point, "English and Scottish officials at the highest level gave serious attention to the proposals of these 'pirate diplomats'," while Peter the Great "tried to hire the Saint Mary's pirates to help build a Russian colony on Madagascar.

[114] Arriving over a decade after Adrian van Broeck's memoir, Johnson's "historical" account revealed that Every was cheated of his wealth after attempting to sell his ill-gotten goods, in the end "not being worth as much as would buy him a coffin".

Titled "A Copy of Verses, Composed by Captain Henry Every, Lately Gone to Sea to seek his Fortune," it was first published as a broadside sometime between May and July 1694 by the London printer Theophilus Lewis, and was reportedly written by Every himself.