Happy Saturday. We talked about the Mughal Empire and the British East India Company in our recent episodes on Dean Mohammad, and that reminded me of our previous episode on pirate Henry every who carried out a raid on a Mughal Empire convoy in sixteen ninety five. At the time, the Mughal emperor was Arnzeb, who also came up in our episodes on Dean Mohammad. So that is today's Saturday classic. This originally came out May ninth, twenty eighteen, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Pryne. Well. I don't think we've talked about pirates on the podcast in a while. It's been a little bit, you know, We've they've had passing mentions in maybe unearthed episodes or other random stuff, but we have not had an actual whole episode about pirates in more than a year and a half, which is a long time. I mean, I feel like if you look hard enough, any show could become about a pirate. Sure, So today we're going to talk about Henry Every. He was also known as Henry Avery, and as Benjamin Bridgeman and as long ben Avery. And he's been on my short list for a while. And it just said Henry Every and then in parentheses pirate. And I did not write any other indication of what prompted me to put it on there. So it's a mystery why why it caught my attention in the first place. It was not Uncharted four because I have not played that game, but I do know that he figures into that game. And in case folks are thinking of writing us to say he was in Uncharted four, that was not where He did, though, carry out what's been described as the most profitable pirate raid in history. And it was also, to be clear, a particularly brutal and horrifying raid in its treatment of the women and the men aboard the rated ship. But I did not know until I got into the research for this that it also became a massive international incident, with Britain later trying to repair its relationship with the Mughal Empire. It's the target of this raid in a highly publicized kind of weird series of trials. So we know very little about Henry Every's early life, except that he was probably English. He was born sometime in the sixteen fifties. He might have spent some time in the Royal Navy, but sources conflict on whether or not that's actually the case. But he did start working in the slave trade in the early sixteen nineties under a commission from the British Royal Governor of Bermuda. After at least a couple of years as a slave trader, Every was hired as first mate aboard the English vessel Charles the Second in sixteen ninety three. The Charles the Second was a privateering vessel, and it had been commissioned to attack French ships and colonies in the Caribbean. If you need a refresher on privateering, these were basically pirates, but pirate it's operating with government authority to do this piradical work. By May of sixteen ninety four, though the Charles the Second still had not left the coast of Europe and the crew had not been paid for any of their work so far. Naturally, the crew wasn't happy about this situation, and when the ship stopped for supplies at the Spanish port of La Carugna, every let a mutiny. Afterward, the remaining crew elected him their captain. Every renamed the Charles the second as the Fancy, which is often spelled with a pH and sometimes with an ie, and documents from the time they set a course for Madagascar, following a sailing route that was known as the Pirate Round, which was popular among English pirates starting in the sixteen nineties. Most pirates came into the Pirate Round from the Caribbean and headed southeast, so they were kind of joining in with it from the coast of Europe instead. Once it approached Africa, the route shifted south to pass the Cape of Good Hope, and then it took north again toward Madagascar before turning east to cross the Indian Ocean. The Fancy's first paradical encounter was with three English ships, which they caught near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. The Fancy continued down the African coast from there, capturing and plundering ships from France and Denmark. It was sixteen ninety five by the time Every and the Fancy reached Madagascar, and by then the Fancy had a crew of about one hundred and fifty men. A whole other collection of other mostly English pirates, were in the area. When they got there, they were looking for a fleet that was reported to be nearby. This fleet belonged to the Mughal Empire. Now the Mughal Empire ruled parts of the Indian subcontinent from the early sixteenth century into the mid eighteenth century. Sometimes the endpoint is marked a little later than that. By sixteen ninety five, its territory covered most of what's now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. The Mughal dynasty was wealthy, and its emperor in sixteen ninety five was arag Zeb, also known as Muhi al Din Muhammad or as Emperor Alamgir. It was during arg Zeb's reign that the Mughal Empire reached its peak in terms of size and power. Rang Zeb's rule of the empire and the role he played in its history is its own complicated story that we're not going to get into here, but in short, he had a reputation for ruthlessness and for religious persecution of non Muslims in the later part of his reign. The fleet that the pirates were looking for was a large one and included twenty five ships, and among them were merchant vessels and escort vessels. Several of the ships were carrying Muslim pilgrims who were returning from the haj and some of the ships in the fleet belonged to the Emperor himself. The fleet was far too large and powerful for any one pirate ship to take on the loan, which is why this collection of mostly English pirates was working together. One of the other parties involved was Thomas Two, who was from a prominent Newport, Rhode Island family. Two is often described as a pioneer of the pirate round, and like Henry every he had turned pirate after some time as a privateer. He had legitimately bought a share of a ship called the Amity in sixteen ninety one, and when it was tasked with taking a French factory in West Africa, he proposed to the crew that it would be a lot more profitable to turn to piracy than to attack a factory that had no booty to plunder. It was really that simple. He was like, you know what, this whole thing or we're supposed to be attacking this factory, it's not going to be it's not going to make so much money. We can make a lot more money. We attacked other ships instead. Let's stop working for the man was very much like and this hole, let's stop working for the man. Where this is going to come up later. It was one of the reasons that people had a lot of sympathy for pirates, not necessarily people being attacked by them, but other people had a lot of sympathy for pirates. So Two's turn to piracy did not stop officials from working with him, though when this raid on the Mughle fleet took place, he was sailing under a letter of mark from the governor of Bermuda. When the pirates finally spotted a ship from the Mughal fleet, they learned that the rest of the fleet was farther away than they had thought. The first ship they took turned out to be part of the rear guard, so the fastest pirate ships, which included every and the Fancy, raced ahead. Every encountered the Fath Mamamadi, which was part of the fleet's escort, and this ship surrendered after a brief firefight, and the Fancy came away with about fifty thousand British pounds worth of gold and silver. This didn't seem like that great of a haul once it was divided up among the fancy's entire crew, so every decided to keep going and to try to find a bigger prize among the rest of the fleet. He and two other pirate ships spotted the Ganji Sawai on September seventh. So you'll sometimes see the Ganja Zawi anglicized as the guns Way in documents from the time and also in uncharted four that historical I don't expect uncharted forur to be historically accurate, by the way, so when I make that joke, I'm not criticizing. No, it was the largest ship in the fleet. It was possibly the largest ship in the entire Mughal Empire, and it was owned by the emperor himself. The emperor also had at least one relative aboard. All those sources disagree about whether it was his daughter or his granddaughter. These were all relatives who were traveling back from Mecca. And we're going to talk about every's encounter with this ship. After we first paused for a little sponsor break. The Ganji Sawai was well crewed and well armed, with about four hundred riflemen and several cannons. It had more soldiers and armaments than the three pirate ships that were after it, possibly even more than the entire pirate fleet did before. Every and the fastest ships out distanced the rest of them, but every got lucky. The Fancy fired on the Ganji Sawai and at the very start of the destroyed its main mast. When the Ganji Sai tried to return fire, one of its artillery pieces exploded. The resulting fire and chaos gave the Fancy time to move in and board the Ganji Sawai, which was captured after some intense hand to hand combat. So just this would have been enough to draw the ire of Emperor arn Zeb and the rest of the Mughal Empire. But after taking the ship, the crew of the Fancy also brutalized the people on board. I cannot exaggerate this is horrifying. They stayed with the ship for about a week as they searched for as much plunder as they could possibly holloway. During that week, the pirates tortured the men aboard to try to get information about where their valuables were. They also assaulted and raped many of the women aboard. A British colonial agent for the Mughal Emperor reported that several women aboard the ship took their own lives rather than be raped. Once the crew of the Fancy finally left the Ganji Sai, they had taken on an immense hall of gold, silver and jewels. It had an estimated worth of three hundred twenty five thousand to six hundred thousand British pounds at the time, which would be well into the millions today. And then they followed the pirate round back to the Caribbean, where they headed for New Providence Island in the Bahamas, which is home to the Bahamian capital of Nassau. They'd heard from other pirates that its governor, Cadwalader Jones would be sympathetic. When they got to New Providence Island in March of sixteen ninety six, though Jones was no longer the governor. The new governor was Nicholas Trot, and like its predecessor, fortunately for these pirates, he was very willing to look the other way if the price was right. So every bribed Trot to make them welcome on the island, and otherwise they didn't really advertise who they were, or what they had done. They masqueraded as slave traders, and they traded the fancy for a load of ivory. Trot might have been a little less willing to deal with every if he had known what the pirates had done, or if he had any idea that he was now caught up in an international incident, but he almost certainly didn't. Word reached the Mughal Empire long before it reached Britain or any of its colonies. What had happened. The Ganji Sawai struggled into harbor at Surret without most of its cargo and several of its former passengers about a week after the pirate attack. So people in the empire were outraged when they learned Whatevery and the other pirates had done. Riots spread throughout the city of Surret. Many of these riots targeted the offices of the East India Company. There. A mob tried to break in and kill the forty or so EICE agents who were working inside, but the governor, It's Himad Khan, intervened and stopped them. Although the East India Company employees' lives were spared, Khan had them all arrested. He also arrested at least three captains from East India Company ships and all the other British subjects that he could find in Surret. It's possible that he thought that the attack on the Ganji Sawai was a conspiracy and that the EIC was somehow behind it. He would not be the only person to think this, which we will talk about him a little bit more in a bit so. From prison, the British captives wrote to Sir John Gehar. Gayor was a representative of the East India Company and the governor of Bombay, which is now known as Bumbai. Bombay was south of Surret and had been captured by Portugal in fifteen thirty four. It came under British control in sixteen sixty two when Charles the Second of England married Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza. The East India Company was renting it from the monarch and had built its Indian headquarters there. That came up in our tea episode as well it did. He could do a little Venn diagram of the overlapping stuff of this episode. In that one, Geyor wrote to the Lords of Trade saying that British subjects had been clapped in irons and were being imprisoned in rooms with boarded up windows. He also reported that one english Man had died of injuries he sustained in the initial melee. So it took a long time for messages to get anywhere at this point in history, and it would be months before Heyer's communication actually got to London. In the meantime, Emperor Auringzeb shut down four East India Company factories. He ordered an attack on Bombay. Now, if he had done this, an attack probably would have been disastrous for Bombay and for the East India Company as a whole. The IC and the Mughal Empire had been at war just a few years before, in a conflict known as Child's War, and during that time Bombay had been under siege and partly destroyed. Fortunately for the EIC, an official named Samuel Annesley was able to negotiate a ceasefire. But it was obvious that the Emperor would be more than happy to force the British completely out of India, which would have been catastrophic for British colonies and trading relationships in Asia and the Pacific. So Annesley made the Emperor several promises. He promised that Britain would compensate the Emperor for all his lost property, and that the East India Company would begin providing escorts for all Indian ships headed toward Mecca for the Hajj, and most importantly, he promised that Henry Every would be brought to justice. So this is enough for the Emperor to agree not to attack Bombay, but he also said that he would not allow trade with Britain by the Mughal Empire to resume until Every was captured, which is a serious economic situation. Extremely Sir John Gayer's letter detailing Henry Every's attack on the Mughal fleets, the riots, and the arrests of British subjects in surret finally reached London in December of sixteen ninety five. Other letters from Gayer, Annesley and others arrived even later in January and May of sixteen ninety six. By the time those last letters arrived, Every had already gotten to New Providence Island and unloaded the fancy. The Lords of Trade had also been succeeded by the Lord's Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, also known as the Board of Trade. They were faced with what to do about every in the situation with the Mughal Empire at their very first meeting in May of sixteen ninety six. So as Holly just said, this was a serious problem. It was more than just the fact that Henry every had attacked a ship belonging to the Mughal Emperor, or that he and his men had plundered the ship and brutalized its passengers and the crew. It was also that Emperor Aurangzeb was well convinced that England was a nation of pirates, and histories from the time reflect that belief. In the early eighteenth century, Persian historian Kafi Khan wrote that the East India Company's holdings in Bombay were insignificant and that quote the source of the remaining unstable income of the English is the plunder and capture of the ships going to the House of God at intervals of one to two years. They attacked these ships, not at the time when loaded with grains they proceed to Mecca and Jetta, but when they return bringing gold, silver, ibraheim and rials. And there was some truth to the Emperor's belief that England was a nation of pirates. Although the British Empire wasn't plundering the Mughal Empire's ships in an official capacity. A lot of the pirates that were plundering in the Caribbean and along the Pirate round were English and for the most part, those pirates left English ships alone. On top of that, multiple British colonial governors had made a habit of either tolerating pirates or actively working with them. So authorities in Britain needed to figure out not only how to repair their relationship with the Mughal Empire, but also how to send a signal to the rest of the world that the nation would not tolerate piracy. So and then all of this was tied together in the dire economic consequence of the Emperor not allowing the East India Company to operate in his territory anymore. So Britain couldn't do anything as dramatic as, for example, summarily executing people suspected of piracy. That probably would have satisfied some of the criticism, but that would also violate British law. So they started with a proclamation issued by the Lord Justices of England on July seventeenth, sixteen ninety six. This proclamation stated that they had received information that Henry every Quote, under English colors, acted as a common pirate and robber upon the high seas, and hath presumed under such colors to commit several acts of piracy upon the seas of India or Persia, which may occasion great damage to the merchants of England trading into these parts. That's the end of the quote. This proclamation went on to say that every had stolen the ship known as the Charles from the port in Spain, and the proclamation commanded admirals, captain's governors and the like to capture him, offering a reward of five hundred pounds. Another proclamation followed on August tenth, which included a lot of the same information and also said that every may now be going under the name Henry Bridgeman. The second proclamation named a number of other alleged pirates as well, and it said that the men may have left the Caribbean and come to Ireland. Yet another proclamation followed on August eighteenth, sixteen ninety six, this one from the monarch William the Third, also known as William of Orange. It was a proclamation quote for apprehending Henry every alias Bridgeman and sundry other pirates. It called Every and those sundry other pirates quote open and villainous transgressors, and it ordered essentially every sort of law enforcement and military in existence to seek out and apprehend them. The bounty offered for Every was still five hundred pounds sterling, and for the other pirates named it was fifty pounds. This proclamation also indemnified all royal subjects from any quote hazard of slaughter, mutilation, or other acts of violence that they might commit against Avery and his accomplices, and it advised to anyone sheltering or assisting any of the pirates was doing so upon their highest peril. These proclamations made it a point of naming colonial governors among the people compelled to seek out and capture Every, because although it was well known among pirates that a number of colonial governors could be bribed or would otherwise work with them, authorities in London were only starting to become fully aware of how extensive this problem was. The proclamations did, not, however, name Thomas tu As one of the wanted pirates. Apart from the amity being too slow to keep up with the ships, that assaulted the Ganji Sawai, meaning he was not involved with that. He had been shot and killed while trying to take a different ship in that same Mughal convoy. A handful of men from Every's crew were captured in Ireland, and even though every wasn't among them, this at least gave the Crown someone to put on trial. We're going to talk about that trial after we pause for a sponsor break. Henry Every's captured crew members were tried at the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey in October of sixteen ninety six, and this trial was weird Number one. Even though it was being tried at the Old Bailey, which is the place that has come up before when we've been talking about criminal activity and written during this point, it wasn't being tried under English common law. It was being tried under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty and this is because common law didn't really cover nautical piracy. Number two. The reason they decided to hold a trial under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty at the Old Bailey rather than through the Admiralty Court was so that the British citizenry would have the same access to the proceedings as they would for any other criminal matter. Since part of the purpose was to send a message that the British Empire would not tolerate piracy, they needed public proceedings and public interest, not a closed door session of the Admiralty Court. They also needed the Mughal Emperor to hear all of the details of the conviction and execution of the pirates. Even with the Admiralty's involvement, though, everything was operating a lot like any other trial at the Old Bailey. The prosecutors were all legal professionals, but the defendants were all on their own in terms of representation. The trial opened on October nineteenth, and Henry Every was named in the indictment, even though he was still at large. Two witnesses, who were former members of Every's crew, provided extensive detail about the incident, but the questioning also went well beyond just what had happened with the Mughal fleet. This trial was an opportunity for authorities to learn more about the practice of piracy, and a lot of the testimony was more about that than about the Ganji Sawai. It was basically like they said, Okay, you know what would be great is if we could get a better handle on what all's going on with these pirates. So let's try to establish a whole narrative of the pirate situation rather than just investigating this one thing. So this testimony demonstrated unequivocally that the men on trial had all committed piracy. But when the jury returned a verdict they acquitted all of them. That didn't go how they were hoping. Nope, not at all. This was a problem and it was a complete shock to the various authorities involved. On top of failing to deliver a guilty verdict to try to satisfy the Mughal Emperor, the proceedings also publicly aired a lot of evidence that multiple British colonial governors were actively working with and harboring pirates. So this whole, carefully choreographed trial at the Old Bailey just something of a pr move. Had done the opposite of what it was supposed to do. It did not send the message that Britain wouldn't tolerate pirates. It created a public record that in fact they did. It was also a good example of how the people were responsible for this proceeding were pretty out of touch with the ordinary British citizenry. Basically, people really liked pirates. Some of this was because of privateers like Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, who had official and unofficial support of the Crown and their harassment and plundering of Spanish ships and colonies. Spain considered both of these men to be pirates, but in Britain both of them had been knighted, Drake by Queen Elizabeth the First and Morgan by King Charles the Second. In the public eye, they had set an example of pirates as noble patriots who only targeted Britain's enemies. But it wasn't just about people like Drake and Morgan. Henry Every himself had also become a folk hero. Not long after he commandeered the Charles the Second, someone had written a broadside ballad about it, first published by Theophilis Lewis in sixteen ninety four. The ballad was framed as something that every had written himself and then sent back to shore with one of the mutineers. That is certainly a fanciful fabrication, but the details in the ballad are close enough to the historical record that it's likely that whoever wrote the ballad heard about the mutiny from someone who was actually therease ballad was not obscure. Some of the wives of sailors aboard the Charles A Second had filed a complaint against James Holblin, the merchant who owned the ship. This was way back before it was turned into a pirate ship. They claimed that he was traitorously enslaving their husbands, and in the case that came up before the Privy Council on August sixteenth of sixteen ninety four, Hobland submitted a copy of this broadside ballad as part of the documents in his defense. Like this was not a thing nobody had ever heard of, people were singing the song a lot. It was also a pretty clear sign of how popular opinion viewed Henry Every. In a sixteen ninety four printing, it's titled a copy of Verses composed by Captain Henry Every Lately gone to sea to seek his fortune, And it starts, Come, all you brave boys whose courage is bold? Will you venture with me? I'll glut you with gold. Make haste unto Corona. A ship you will find that's called the Fancy Pleasure. Your mind Captain Evrey is in her and calls her his own. He will box her about boys before he is done. French, Spaniard and Portuguese. The heathen likewise, he has made a war with them until that he dies after ten more, versus of very high spirited promises of all the far off places that every plans to see and plunder if necessary. It ends quote, Now this is the course I intend for to steer my false hearted nation to you. I declare I have done thee no wrong. Thou must meet forgive. The sword shall maintain me as long as I live. So with all that in mind, in hindsight, it is not really all that surprising that the jury acquitted Every's crew members. They were pirates, and in the public eye, pirates were somewhere on a spectrum between folk hero and noble patriot. There's also some romanticism in the whole thing I have. The jury also was not particularly sympathetic to the Mughal Emperor, who was a Muslim foreigner on the other side of the world. So the Admiralty, the British East India Company, and the British government were all terrified that the Emperor was going to learn about the pirate's acquittal and that it would just confirm his suspicion that England was a nation of pirates. So they turned to Sir Charles Hedges, chief Justice of the High Court of the Admiralty, to arrange another trial on a second set of charges, this time relating to the mutiny aboard the Charles the Second rather than the attack on the Mughal fleet. This was great because he would allow them to try the men again, but it was not ideal because the Emperor definitely wasn't going to be satisfied with a conviction for mere mutiny, of which he was not the victim. So in this second trial, the prosecution, again in a very carefully choreographed proceeding, tried to establish the legal idea that mutiny was theft, and that theft on the high seas was piracy, so therefore mutiny was piracy, but that the men were being tried for me utiny, not piracy, so this was not an issue of double jeopardy. This was some mental gymnastics, and it's even reflected in the official court record from this second trial, which ends the summation of the previous trial with quote the jury, contrary to the expectation of the court brought in all prisoners not guilty, whereupon the session was adjourned to Saturday, the thirty first of October, and the prisoners were committed upon a new warrant for several other piracies. In the second trial, the prosecution talked to the jury a lot about how bad piracy was and how Britain looked to the rest of the world. In that moment. Chief Justice Hedges also described what would happen if the pirates were acquitted once again. Quote, the barbarous nations will reproach us as being a harbor, receptacle and a nest of pirates, and our friends will wonder to hear that the enemies of merchants and of mankind should find a sanctuary in this ancient place of trade. Nay, we ourselves cannot but confess that all kingdoms and countries who have suffered by English pirates, may, for want of redress, in the ordinary course, have the pretense of justice and the color of the laws of nations to justify their making reprisals upon our merchants wheresoever they shall meet them upon the seas. In case you missed it, the Chief Justice just called the Mughal Empire a barbarous nation in court, And even after this whole speech that was clearly designed to sway the jury, he went on to say that he was in fact not trying to sway the jury. So this time the jury convicted all of the men and they were all hanged on November fifteen, sixteen ninety six. And with that done, and with a lot of reparations paid, the Emperor of the Mughal Empire reluctantly allowed the East India Company to resume its activities in its territory. The proceedings of the trials were collected and printed at seven Stars of Luodgar, which was owned by one of London's largest printers and booksellers, the Everinghams. There are still copies of it in more than forty libraries. Although it was very widely distributed and widely read, it did not really shift public opinion on Henry every or in fact of pirates in general. Having this thing printed and widely distributed was part of the plan from the beginning. They were like, Okay, we're gonna have this trial. It's gonna be very public trial. They're going to totally condemn all of these pirates, and then we're going to print all of the stuff from the trial so that everyone can read it whenever they want. It didn't really go quite as planned. Instead of everybody deciding that Henry every was a terrible, notorious pirate that had brutalized a whole lot of people on a ship that he had rated, he continued to be the hero in a number of works of fiction. There was The Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery by a pseudonymous Captain Adrian von Brooke in seventeen oh nine. Seventeen thirteen saw the play The Successful Pirate, written by Charles Johnson and performed in London for several years. The King of Pirates, being an account of famous enterprises of Captain Avery, the mock King of Madagascar with his Rambles and Piracies, wherein all the sham accounts formerly published of him are Detected, was written in seventeen nineteen. It's often attributed to Daniel Dafoe. Snappy title. Avery is also unsurprisingly a prominent feature in a General History of Pirates, which came out in seventeen twenty four under the name Captain Charles Johnson, but is also often attributed to either Daniel Dafoe or Nathaniel Misst. This colossally popular book on pirates is cited in many biographies and histories, but it is definitely not an authoritative work of nonfiction. We talk a little bit more about it in our past episode on Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid. Henry Avery is the first pirate that's discussed in it, and that ballad that we talked about and read parts of earlier survived through oral folks singing for more than two hundred years. I mean there were print copies of it still. You can still find very old copies of that original broadside. But the way that people were passing it was by singing for two hundred years. In spite of an international manhunt, Henry Every was never seen again. No one knows exactly what happened to him. Most of these works of fiction contend that he married the Mughal emperor's daughter and established his own kingdom in Madagascar. It's more likely that he made his way back to England to try to hide himself from that international manhunt and died there in poverty. And Britain's very public announcements of a crackdown on piracy didn't have that much of an effect on piracy either. The Golden age of piracy, which this incident happened kind of in the middle of, continued on for more than thirty years, and this was also a temporary blip in the East India Company's activities in what's now India. The EIC went on to seize huge amounts of territory on the Indian sub continent, and it operated until eighteen seventy four. A bunch of those later events have come up in other podcasts on the show, most recently and are one about the East India Company stealing tea secrets from China to then grow the tea in India. Oh, East India Company. Yeah, in the middle of a lot of problems, a lot a lot of problems. When I started this whole thing with the idea of litt we'll do a pirate. We haven't talked about a pirate in a while. I was not expecting a weird, convoluted legal pr move to be in the third act of the show. Yeah, that's kind of the best part of the story. I mean, the whole It's tragic because I want to acknowledge that horrible things were done, but I love the idea that they cooked up this whole thing, not thinking for a minute that people would behave counter to how they anticipated. Right, Like, there was no plan be there. They were totally away. We're going to believe we're going to convict these pirates, and the cherry was going to be like you guys, thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Indistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. 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Happy Saturday. We talked about the Mughal Empire and the British East India Company in our recent episodes on Dean Mohammad, and that reminded me of our previous episode on pirate Henry every who carried out a raid on a Mughal Empire convoy in sixteen ninety five. At the time, the Mughal emperor was Arnzeb, who also came up in our episodes on Dean Mohammad. So that is today's Saturday classic. This originally came out May ninth, twenty eighteen, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Pryne. Well. I don't think we've talked about pirates on the podcast in a while. It's been a little bit, you know, We've they've had passing mentions in maybe unearthed episodes or other random stuff, but we have not had an actual whole episode about pirates in more than a year and a half, which is a long time. I mean, I feel like if you look hard enough, any show could become about a pirate. Sure, So today we're going to talk about Henry Every. He was also known as Henry Avery, and as Benjamin Bridgeman and as long ben Avery. And he's been on my short list for a while. And it just said Henry Every and then in parentheses pirate. And I did not write any other indication of what prompted me to put it on there. So it's a mystery why why it caught my attention in the first place. It was not Uncharted four because I have not played that game, but I do know that he figures into that game. And in case folks are thinking of writing us to say he was in Uncharted four, that was not where He did, though, carry out what's been described as the most profitable pirate raid in history. And it was also, to be clear, a particularly brutal and horrifying raid in its treatment of the women and the men aboard the rated ship. But I did not know until I got into the research for this that it also became a massive international incident, with Britain later trying to repair its relationship with the Mughal Empire. It's the target of this raid in a highly publicized kind of weird series of trials. So we know very little about Henry Every's early life, except that he was probably English. He was born sometime in the sixteen fifties. He might have spent some time in the Royal Navy, but sources conflict on whether or not that's actually the case. But he did start working in the slave trade in the early sixteen nineties under a commission from the British Royal Governor of Bermuda. After at least a couple of years as a slave trader, Every was hired as first mate aboard the English vessel Charles the Second in sixteen ninety three. The Charles the Second was a privateering vessel, and it had been commissioned to attack French ships and colonies in the Caribbean. If you need a refresher on privateering, these were basically pirates, but pirate it's operating with government authority to do this piradical work. By May of sixteen ninety four, though the Charles the Second still had not left the coast of Europe and the crew had not been paid for any of their work so far. Naturally, the crew wasn't happy about this situation, and when the ship stopped for supplies at the Spanish port of La Carugna, every let a mutiny. Afterward, the remaining crew elected him their captain. Every renamed the Charles the second as the Fancy, which is often spelled with a pH and sometimes with an ie, and documents from the time they set a course for Madagascar, following a sailing route that was known as the Pirate Round, which was popular among English pirates starting in the sixteen nineties. Most pirates came into the Pirate Round from the Caribbean and headed southeast, so they were kind of joining in with it from the coast of Europe instead. Once it approached Africa, the route shifted south to pass the Cape of Good Hope, and then it took north again toward Madagascar before turning east to cross the Indian Ocean. The Fancy's first paradical encounter was with three English ships, which they caught near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. The Fancy continued down the African coast from there, capturing and plundering ships from France and Denmark. It was sixteen ninety five by the time Every and the Fancy reached Madagascar, and by then the Fancy had a crew of about one hundred and fifty men. A whole other collection of other mostly English pirates, were in the area. When they got there, they were looking for a fleet that was reported to be nearby. This fleet belonged to the Mughal Empire. Now the Mughal Empire ruled parts of the Indian subcontinent from the early sixteenth century into the mid eighteenth century. Sometimes the endpoint is marked a little later than that. By sixteen ninety five, its territory covered most of what's now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. The Mughal dynasty was wealthy, and its emperor in sixteen ninety five was arag Zeb, also known as Muhi al Din Muhammad or as Emperor Alamgir. It was during arg Zeb's reign that the Mughal Empire reached its peak in terms of size and power. Rang Zeb's rule of the empire and the role he played in its history is its own complicated story that we're not going to get into here, but in short, he had a reputation for ruthlessness and for religious persecution of non Muslims in the later part of his reign. The fleet that the pirates were looking for was a large one and included twenty five ships, and among them were merchant vessels and escort vessels. Several of the ships were carrying Muslim pilgrims who were returning from the haj and some of the ships in the fleet belonged to the Emperor himself. The fleet was far too large and powerful for any one pirate ship to take on the loan, which is why this collection of mostly English pirates was working together. One of the other parties involved was Thomas Two, who was from a prominent Newport, Rhode Island family. Two is often described as a pioneer of the pirate round, and like Henry every he had turned pirate after some time as a privateer. He had legitimately bought a share of a ship called the Amity in sixteen ninety one, and when it was tasked with taking a French factory in West Africa, he proposed to the crew that it would be a lot more profitable to turn to piracy than to attack a factory that had no booty to plunder. It was really that simple. He was like, you know what, this whole thing or we're supposed to be attacking this factory, it's not going to be it's not going to make so much money. We can make a lot more money. We attacked other ships instead. Let's stop working for the man was very much like and this hole, let's stop working for the man. Where this is going to come up later. It was one of the reasons that people had a lot of sympathy for pirates, not necessarily people being attacked by them, but other people had a lot of sympathy for pirates. So Two's turn to piracy did not stop officials from working with him, though when this raid on the Mughle fleet took place, he was sailing under a letter of mark from the governor of Bermuda. When the pirates finally spotted a ship from the Mughal fleet, they learned that the rest of the fleet was farther away than they had thought. The first ship they took turned out to be part of the rear guard, so the fastest pirate ships, which included every and the Fancy, raced ahead. Every encountered the Fath Mamamadi, which was part of the fleet's escort, and this ship surrendered after a brief firefight, and the Fancy came away with about fifty thousand British pounds worth of gold and silver. This didn't seem like that great of a haul once it was divided up among the fancy's entire crew, so every decided to keep going and to try to find a bigger prize among the rest of the fleet. He and two other pirate ships spotted the Ganji Sawai on September seventh. So you'll sometimes see the Ganja Zawi anglicized as the guns Way in documents from the time and also in uncharted four that historical I don't expect uncharted forur to be historically accurate, by the way, so when I make that joke, I'm not criticizing. No, it was the largest ship in the fleet. It was possibly the largest ship in the entire Mughal Empire, and it was owned by the emperor himself. The emperor also had at least one relative aboard. All those sources disagree about whether it was his daughter or his granddaughter. These were all relatives who were traveling back from Mecca. And we're going to talk about every's encounter with this ship. After we first paused for a little sponsor break. The Ganji Sawai was well crewed and well armed, with about four hundred riflemen and several cannons. It had more soldiers and armaments than the three pirate ships that were after it, possibly even more than the entire pirate fleet did before. Every and the fastest ships out distanced the rest of them, but every got lucky. The Fancy fired on the Ganji Sawai and at the very start of the destroyed its main mast. When the Ganji Sai tried to return fire, one of its artillery pieces exploded. The resulting fire and chaos gave the Fancy time to move in and board the Ganji Sawai, which was captured after some intense hand to hand combat. So just this would have been enough to draw the ire of Emperor arn Zeb and the rest of the Mughal Empire. But after taking the ship, the crew of the Fancy also brutalized the people on board. I cannot exaggerate this is horrifying. They stayed with the ship for about a week as they searched for as much plunder as they could possibly holloway. During that week, the pirates tortured the men aboard to try to get information about where their valuables were. They also assaulted and raped many of the women aboard. A British colonial agent for the Mughal Emperor reported that several women aboard the ship took their own lives rather than be raped. Once the crew of the Fancy finally left the Ganji Sai, they had taken on an immense hall of gold, silver and jewels. It had an estimated worth of three hundred twenty five thousand to six hundred thousand British pounds at the time, which would be well into the millions today. And then they followed the pirate round back to the Caribbean, where they headed for New Providence Island in the Bahamas, which is home to the Bahamian capital of Nassau. They'd heard from other pirates that its governor, Cadwalader Jones would be sympathetic. When they got to New Providence Island in March of sixteen ninety six, though Jones was no longer the governor. The new governor was Nicholas Trot, and like its predecessor, fortunately for these pirates, he was very willing to look the other way if the price was right. So every bribed Trot to make them welcome on the island, and otherwise they didn't really advertise who they were, or what they had done. They masqueraded as slave traders, and they traded the fancy for a load of ivory. Trot might have been a little less willing to deal with every if he had known what the pirates had done, or if he had any idea that he was now caught up in an international incident, but he almost certainly didn't. Word reached the Mughal Empire long before it reached Britain or any of its colonies. What had happened. The Ganji Sawai struggled into harbor at Surret without most of its cargo and several of its former passengers about a week after the pirate attack. So people in the empire were outraged when they learned Whatevery and the other pirates had done. Riots spread throughout the city of Surret. Many of these riots targeted the offices of the East India Company. There. A mob tried to break in and kill the forty or so EICE agents who were working inside, but the governor, It's Himad Khan, intervened and stopped them. Although the East India Company employees' lives were spared, Khan had them all arrested. He also arrested at least three captains from East India Company ships and all the other British subjects that he could find in Surret. It's possible that he thought that the attack on the Ganji Sawai was a conspiracy and that the EIC was somehow behind it. He would not be the only person to think this, which we will talk about him a little bit more in a bit so. From prison, the British captives wrote to Sir John Gehar. Gayor was a representative of the East India Company and the governor of Bombay, which is now known as Bumbai. Bombay was south of Surret and had been captured by Portugal in fifteen thirty four. It came under British control in sixteen sixty two when Charles the Second of England married Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza. The East India Company was renting it from the monarch and had built its Indian headquarters there. That came up in our tea episode as well it did. He could do a little Venn diagram of the overlapping stuff of this episode. In that one, Geyor wrote to the Lords of Trade saying that British subjects had been clapped in irons and were being imprisoned in rooms with boarded up windows. He also reported that one english Man had died of injuries he sustained in the initial melee. So it took a long time for messages to get anywhere at this point in history, and it would be months before Heyer's communication actually got to London. In the meantime, Emperor Auringzeb shut down four East India Company factories. He ordered an attack on Bombay. Now, if he had done this, an attack probably would have been disastrous for Bombay and for the East India Company as a whole. The IC and the Mughal Empire had been at war just a few years before, in a conflict known as Child's War, and during that time Bombay had been under siege and partly destroyed. Fortunately for the EIC, an official named Samuel Annesley was able to negotiate a ceasefire. But it was obvious that the Emperor would be more than happy to force the British completely out of India, which would have been catastrophic for British colonies and trading relationships in Asia and the Pacific. So Annesley made the Emperor several promises. He promised that Britain would compensate the Emperor for all his lost property, and that the East India Company would begin providing escorts for all Indian ships headed toward Mecca for the Hajj, and most importantly, he promised that Henry Every would be brought to justice. So this is enough for the Emperor to agree not to attack Bombay, but he also said that he would not allow trade with Britain by the Mughal Empire to resume until Every was captured, which is a serious economic situation. Extremely Sir John Gayer's letter detailing Henry Every's attack on the Mughal fleets, the riots, and the arrests of British subjects in surret finally reached London in December of sixteen ninety five. Other letters from Gayer, Annesley and others arrived even later in January and May of sixteen ninety six. By the time those last letters arrived, Every had already gotten to New Providence Island and unloaded the fancy. The Lords of Trade had also been succeeded by the Lord's Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, also known as the Board of Trade. They were faced with what to do about every in the situation with the Mughal Empire at their very first meeting in May of sixteen ninety six. So as Holly just said, this was a serious problem. It was more than just the fact that Henry every had attacked a ship belonging to the Mughal Emperor, or that he and his men had plundered the ship and brutalized its passengers and the crew. It was also that Emperor Aurangzeb was well convinced that England was a nation of pirates, and histories from the time reflect that belief. In the early eighteenth century, Persian historian Kafi Khan wrote that the East India Company's holdings in Bombay were insignificant and that quote the source of the remaining unstable income of the English is the plunder and capture of the ships going to the House of God at intervals of one to two years. They attacked these ships, not at the time when loaded with grains they proceed to Mecca and Jetta, but when they return bringing gold, silver, ibraheim and rials. And there was some truth to the Emperor's belief that England was a nation of pirates. Although the British Empire wasn't plundering the Mughal Empire's ships in an official capacity. A lot of the pirates that were plundering in the Caribbean and along the Pirate round were English and for the most part, those pirates left English ships alone. On top of that, multiple British colonial governors had made a habit of either tolerating pirates or actively working with them. So authorities in Britain needed to figure out not only how to repair their relationship with the Mughal Empire, but also how to send a signal to the rest of the world that the nation would not tolerate piracy. So and then all of this was tied together in the dire economic consequence of the Emperor not allowing the East India Company to operate in his territory anymore. So Britain couldn't do anything as dramatic as, for example, summarily executing people suspected of piracy. That probably would have satisfied some of the criticism, but that would also violate British law. So they started with a proclamation issued by the Lord Justices of England on July seventeenth, sixteen ninety six. This proclamation stated that they had received information that Henry every Quote, under English colors, acted as a common pirate and robber upon the high seas, and hath presumed under such colors to commit several acts of piracy upon the seas of India or Persia, which may occasion great damage to the merchants of England trading into these parts. That's the end of the quote. This proclamation went on to say that every had stolen the ship known as the Charles from the port in Spain, and the proclamation commanded admirals, captain's governors and the like to capture him, offering a reward of five hundred pounds. Another proclamation followed on August tenth, which included a lot of the same information and also said that every may now be going under the name Henry Bridgeman. The second proclamation named a number of other alleged pirates as well, and it said that the men may have left the Caribbean and come to Ireland. Yet another proclamation followed on August eighteenth, sixteen ninety six, this one from the monarch William the Third, also known as William of Orange. It was a proclamation quote for apprehending Henry every alias Bridgeman and sundry other pirates. It called Every and those sundry other pirates quote open and villainous transgressors, and it ordered essentially every sort of law enforcement and military in existence to seek out and apprehend them. The bounty offered for Every was still five hundred pounds sterling, and for the other pirates named it was fifty pounds. This proclamation also indemnified all royal subjects from any quote hazard of slaughter, mutilation, or other acts of violence that they might commit against Avery and his accomplices, and it advised to anyone sheltering or assisting any of the pirates was doing so upon their highest peril. These proclamations made it a point of naming colonial governors among the people compelled to seek out and capture Every, because although it was well known among pirates that a number of colonial governors could be bribed or would otherwise work with them, authorities in London were only starting to become fully aware of how extensive this problem was. The proclamations did, not, however, name Thomas tu As one of the wanted pirates. Apart from the amity being too slow to keep up with the ships, that assaulted the Ganji Sawai, meaning he was not involved with that. He had been shot and killed while trying to take a different ship in that same Mughal convoy. A handful of men from Every's crew were captured in Ireland, and even though every wasn't among them, this at least gave the Crown someone to put on trial. We're going to talk about that trial after we pause for a sponsor break. Henry Every's captured crew members were tried at the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey in October of sixteen ninety six, and this trial was weird Number one. Even though it was being tried at the Old Bailey, which is the place that has come up before when we've been talking about criminal activity and written during this point, it wasn't being tried under English common law. It was being tried under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty and this is because common law didn't really cover nautical piracy. Number two. The reason they decided to hold a trial under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty at the Old Bailey rather than through the Admiralty Court was so that the British citizenry would have the same access to the proceedings as they would for any other criminal matter. Since part of the purpose was to send a message that the British Empire would not tolerate piracy, they needed public proceedings and public interest, not a closed door session of the Admiralty Court. They also needed the Mughal Emperor to hear all of the details of the conviction and execution of the pirates. Even with the Admiralty's involvement, though, everything was operating a lot like any other trial at the Old Bailey. The prosecutors were all legal professionals, but the defendants were all on their own in terms of representation. The trial opened on October nineteenth, and Henry Every was named in the indictment, even though he was still at large. Two witnesses, who were former members of Every's crew, provided extensive detail about the incident, but the questioning also went well beyond just what had happened with the Mughal fleet. This trial was an opportunity for authorities to learn more about the practice of piracy, and a lot of the testimony was more about that than about the Ganji Sawai. It was basically like they said, Okay, you know what would be great is if we could get a better handle on what all's going on with these pirates. So let's try to establish a whole narrative of the pirate situation rather than just investigating this one thing. So this testimony demonstrated unequivocally that the men on trial had all committed piracy. But when the jury returned a verdict they acquitted all of them. That didn't go how they were hoping. Nope, not at all. This was a problem and it was a complete shock to the various authorities involved. On top of failing to deliver a guilty verdict to try to satisfy the Mughal Emperor, the proceedings also publicly aired a lot of evidence that multiple British colonial governors were actively working with and harboring pirates. So this whole, carefully choreographed trial at the Old Bailey just something of a pr move. Had done the opposite of what it was supposed to do. It did not send the message that Britain wouldn't tolerate pirates. It created a public record that in fact they did. It was also a good example of how the people were responsible for this proceeding were pretty out of touch with the ordinary British citizenry. Basically, people really liked pirates. Some of this was because of privateers like Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, who had official and unofficial support of the Crown and their harassment and plundering of Spanish ships and colonies. Spain considered both of these men to be pirates, but in Britain both of them had been knighted, Drake by Queen Elizabeth the First and Morgan by King Charles the Second. In the public eye, they had set an example of pirates as noble patriots who only targeted Britain's enemies. But it wasn't just about people like Drake and Morgan. Henry Every himself had also become a folk hero. Not long after he commandeered the Charles the Second, someone had written a broadside ballad about it, first published by Theophilis Lewis in sixteen ninety four. The ballad was framed as something that every had written himself and then sent back to shore with one of the mutineers. That is certainly a fanciful fabrication, but the details in the ballad are close enough to the historical record that it's likely that whoever wrote the ballad heard about the mutiny from someone who was actually therease ballad was not obscure. Some of the wives of sailors aboard the Charles A Second had filed a complaint against James Holblin, the merchant who owned the ship. This was way back before it was turned into a pirate ship. They claimed that he was traitorously enslaving their husbands, and in the case that came up before the Privy Council on August sixteenth of sixteen ninety four, Hobland submitted a copy of this broadside ballad as part of the documents in his defense. Like this was not a thing nobody had ever heard of, people were singing the song a lot. It was also a pretty clear sign of how popular opinion viewed Henry Every. In a sixteen ninety four printing, it's titled a copy of Verses composed by Captain Henry Every Lately gone to sea to seek his fortune, And it starts, Come, all you brave boys whose courage is bold? Will you venture with me? I'll glut you with gold. Make haste unto Corona. A ship you will find that's called the Fancy Pleasure. Your mind Captain Evrey is in her and calls her his own. He will box her about boys before he is done. French, Spaniard and Portuguese. The heathen likewise, he has made a war with them until that he dies after ten more, versus of very high spirited promises of all the far off places that every plans to see and plunder if necessary. It ends quote, Now this is the course I intend for to steer my false hearted nation to you. I declare I have done thee no wrong. Thou must meet forgive. The sword shall maintain me as long as I live. So with all that in mind, in hindsight, it is not really all that surprising that the jury acquitted Every's crew members. They were pirates, and in the public eye, pirates were somewhere on a spectrum between folk hero and noble patriot. There's also some romanticism in the whole thing I have. The jury also was not particularly sympathetic to the Mughal Emperor, who was a Muslim foreigner on the other side of the world. So the Admiralty, the British East India Company, and the British government were all terrified that the Emperor was going to learn about the pirate's acquittal and that it would just confirm his suspicion that England was a nation of pirates. So they turned to Sir Charles Hedges, chief Justice of the High Court of the Admiralty, to arrange another trial on a second set of charges, this time relating to the mutiny aboard the Charles the Second rather than the attack on the Mughal fleet. This was great because he would allow them to try the men again, but it was not ideal because the Emperor definitely wasn't going to be satisfied with a conviction for mere mutiny, of which he was not the victim. So in this second trial, the prosecution, again in a very carefully choreographed proceeding, tried to establish the legal idea that mutiny was theft, and that theft on the high seas was piracy, so therefore mutiny was piracy, but that the men were being tried for me utiny, not piracy, so this was not an issue of double jeopardy. This was some mental gymnastics, and it's even reflected in the official court record from this second trial, which ends the summation of the previous trial with quote the jury, contrary to the expectation of the court brought in all prisoners not guilty, whereupon the session was adjourned to Saturday, the thirty first of October, and the prisoners were committed upon a new warrant for several other piracies. In the second trial, the prosecution talked to the jury a lot about how bad piracy was and how Britain looked to the rest of the world. In that moment. Chief Justice Hedges also described what would happen if the pirates were acquitted once again. Quote, the barbarous nations will reproach us as being a harbor, receptacle and a nest of pirates, and our friends will wonder to hear that the enemies of merchants and of mankind should find a sanctuary in this ancient place of trade. Nay, we ourselves cannot but confess that all kingdoms and countries who have suffered by English pirates, may, for want of redress, in the ordinary course, have the pretense of justice and the color of the laws of nations to justify their making reprisals upon our merchants wheresoever they shall meet them upon the seas. In case you missed it, the Chief Justice just called the Mughal Empire a barbarous nation in court, And even after this whole speech that was clearly designed to sway the jury, he went on to say that he was in fact not trying to sway the jury. So this time the jury convicted all of the men and they were all hanged on November fifteen, sixteen ninety six. And with that done, and with a lot of reparations paid, the Emperor of the Mughal Empire reluctantly allowed the East India Company to resume its activities in its territory. The proceedings of the trials were collected and printed at seven Stars of Luodgar, which was owned by one of London's largest printers and booksellers, the Everinghams. There are still copies of it in more than forty libraries. Although it was very widely distributed and widely read, it did not really shift public opinion on Henry every or in fact of pirates in general. Having this thing printed and widely distributed was part of the plan from the beginning. They were like, Okay, we're gonna have this trial. It's gonna be very public trial. They're going to totally condemn all of these pirates, and then we're going to print all of the stuff from the trial so that everyone can read it whenever they want. It didn't really go quite as planned. Instead of everybody deciding that Henry every was a terrible, notorious pirate that had brutalized a whole lot of people on a ship that he had rated, he continued to be the hero in a number of works of fiction. There was The Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery by a pseudonymous Captain Adrian von Brooke in seventeen oh nine. Seventeen thirteen saw the play The Successful Pirate, written by Charles Johnson and performed in London for several years. The King of Pirates, being an account of famous enterprises of Captain Avery, the mock King of Madagascar with his Rambles and Piracies, wherein all the sham accounts formerly published of him are Detected, was written in seventeen nineteen. It's often attributed to Daniel Dafoe. Snappy title. Avery is also unsurprisingly a prominent feature in a General History of Pirates, which came out in seventeen twenty four under the name Captain Charles Johnson, but is also often attributed to either Daniel Dafoe or Nathaniel Misst. This colossally popular book on pirates is cited in many biographies and histories, but it is definitely not an authoritative work of nonfiction. We talk a little bit more about it in our past episode on Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid. Henry Avery is the first pirate that's discussed in it, and that ballad that we talked about and read parts of earlier survived through oral folks singing for more than two hundred years. I mean there were print copies of it still. You can still find very old copies of that original broadside. But the way that people were passing it was by singing for two hundred years. In spite of an international manhunt, Henry Every was never seen again. No one knows exactly what happened to him. Most of these works of fiction contend that he married the Mughal emperor's daughter and established his own kingdom in Madagascar. It's more likely that he made his way back to England to try to hide himself from that international manhunt and died there in poverty. And Britain's very public announcements of a crackdown on piracy didn't have that much of an effect on piracy either. The Golden age of piracy, which this incident happened kind of in the middle of, continued on for more than thirty years, and this was also a temporary blip in the East India Company's activities in what's now India. The EIC went on to seize huge amounts of territory on the Indian sub continent, and it operated until eighteen seventy four. A bunch of those later events have come up in other podcasts on the show, most recently and are one about the East India Company stealing tea secrets from China to then grow the tea in India. Oh, East India Company. Yeah, in the middle of a lot of problems, a lot a lot of problems. When I started this whole thing with the idea of litt we'll do a pirate. We haven't talked about a pirate in a while. I was not expecting a weird, convoluted legal pr move to be in the third act of the show. Yeah, that's kind of the best part of the story. I mean, the whole It's tragic because I want to acknowledge that horrible things were done, but I love the idea that they cooked up this whole thing, not thinking for a minute that people would behave counter to how they anticipated. Right, Like, there was no plan be there. They were totally away. We're going to believe we're going to convict these pirates, and the cherry was going to be like you guys, thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Indistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. 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