23. The Pirate Who Got Away With It
Henry Every (circa 1655 – disappeared 1699), also known as John Avery, Captain Bridgeman, and Long Ben, might have been one of history’s luckiest pirates. Not only did he successfully pull off one of the most lucrative heists in the history of piracy, Every was one of the few major pirates who was not killed in battle or arrested and executed. Instead, he reportedly managed to escape clean, and retire with his loot. Daniel Defoe modeled the hero of his 1720 novel, Life, Adventures, and Piracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton, after Every.
His life also inspired a popular play, The Successful Pyrate, about a fortunate outlaw of the sea who manages to retire after one year of piracy and lives the rest of his life under an assumed name as a rich man. The real-life figure who inspired such fiction was born in Plymouth, England, and went to sea at an early age. By 1694, he was First Mate in the Charles II, a privateer that served the king of Spain, when he led its disgruntled crew in a mutiny that seized the ship.