Nassau, The Bahamas
April 1, 1696
For the generation of pirates that came to prominence in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the town of Nassau would serve as both safe harbor and a tropical pleasure dome of unchecked debauchery. But in 1696, the capital of New Providence island was a village fighting for survival. Originally called Charles Town, the village had been burned to the ground by the Spanish in 1684. The year before Every arrived, the Bahamas’ proprietor governor Nicholas Trott renamed the settlement Nassau, after William III’s original title, Prince of Orange-Nassau. Trott’s rebuilding efforts had been hindered by the long war with the French, which had severely reduced the influx of trade to the islands. The village was so starved of resources that it had not yet been able to construct a proper pier in its harbor. The French had just taken the nearby island of Exuma; rumors circulated that the Bahamas were next in line. Trott did have at his disposal a newly constructed fort, with twenty-eight guns. But Trott had no warships to fend off a French naval assault, and with only sixty residents on the island, he barely had enough men to operate the cannons in the fort.
Those bleak circumstances must have weighed heavily on the proprietor governor’s mind when a mysterious longboat rowed into the harbor on the first day of April in 1696, bearing an unusual offer from a slave trader named Benjamin Bridgeman.
Henry Every had enjoyed the luxury of many months to ruminate on what his eventual strategy would be once the Fancy finally reached the Bahamas. He had been entirely isolated from any form of human communication, beyond the two hundred or so men on board the ship, for almost the entire year. With no access to news reports—or even the word-of-mouth gossip exchanged while provisioning at friendly harbors—Every had no way of determining his status as a fugitive from justice. Seven months had passed since the Gunsway attack. Perhaps the outrage had subsided back in India; perhaps the authorities in Nassau had heard nothing of his exploits. Even before its heyday as a pirate’s den, Nassau had had a reputation as a town that operated at the blurred edges of British law, usually turning a blind eye to pirates or slave interlopers. It was even possible that Every and his men would be greeted as heroes. But it was equally possible that they would be greeted as wanted men, enemies of all mankind.
With his characteristic prudence, Every decided to test the waters first. He anchored the Fancy north of the deserted Hog Island, out of sight of the New Providence harbor. (Hog Island was rebranded in the 1960s as Paradise Island, and now houses the sprawling Atlantis vacation resort.) Every called the men on deck and outlined his plan. The crew of the Fancy would attempt to buy the protection of the Nassau governor by offering him a bribe. All the sailors would contribute a portion of their holdings to the fund: twenty pieces of eight and two pieces of gold. Respecting the pirate’s tradition of equitable profit sharing, Captain Every contributed twice what the other men donated to Trott’s payoff. As always, whether the pirates were plundering or bribing, the articles of agreement were sacrosanct.
Every wrote a letter to Trott, adopting his old slave-trading persona. (The fact that he was carrying ninety slaves on board the Fancy made the alias even more persuasive.) Philip Middleton later claimed to have read the letter with his own eyes. The terms proposed to Trott involved a simple quid pro quo: “Provided he would give them liberty to come on shore and depart when they pleased,” Middleton recalled, “they promised to give the said Governor twenty pieces of eight and two pieces of gold a man, and [the Fancy] and all that was in her.”
The Fancy had served Every and his men spectacularly over the nearly two years that had passed since the mutiny at A Coruña. Now she was a liability. She had once been so snug that Every “feared not who would follow her.” But he had different kinds of fears now. He no longer needed to outrun his enemies. Now it was time to disperse.
One of Every’s top officers, Henry Adams, boarded the longboat with a handful of other sailors, and bearing the note from Benjamin Bridgeman, they rowed their way into the New Providence harbor. The proposal must have sounded suspicious when Trott first laid eyes on it. Why would a British captain give up so much—including his ship—simply for the opportunity to enter the harbor? Trott must have assumed that the gold and pieces of eight being offered to him in tribute had not been acquired through legal means. The Fancy—“and all that was in her”—were undoubtably stolen goods. In Trott’s defense, however, the proclamation announcing the global manhunt for Every would not be issued for another three months. Situated eight thousand miles from Surat, with the usual communication channels with Europe compromised by the French Navy, it is entirely possible that Trott had heard nothing of the Gunsway controversy. He must have known that agreeing to Benjamin Bridgeman’s terms would entail going into business with a pirate. But he most likely had no idea that the pirate in question happened to be the most notorious one on the planet.
Bridgeman’s offer had an appeal that went beyond the economic reward of the bribe itself. He had no way of knowing, from reading Bridgeman’s letter, just how “snugg” the Fancy was, but having a warship with forty-six guns to defend his fledgling colony would give him a significant new resource if the French did attack the island. And the influx of men would, overnight, triple the town’s population. Even if only a fraction of Bridgeman’s crew remained at Nassau, Trott might well have enough manpower, with a warship and the new fort, to put up a legitimate fight against the French. Surely the authorities back home would prefer that he negotiate a deal with an Englishman—however shady his past—if it meant holding on to a promising new outpost in the West Indies.
Whatever his moral calculations, Trott sent a response back, writing in “very civil terms,” Middleton later reported, “assuring Captain Every that he and his company should be welcome.” They had a deal: the crew of the Fancy could come ashore at their liberty, and in return, Trott would get a warship, forty-six cannon, and a small fortune in stolen goods.
More than a year later, when it became apparent that the governor had not only given sanctuary to the world’s most wanted man but also taken possession of a stolen ship, the original investors in the Spanish Expedition sued Trott, attempting to recover in damages some of the losses from their catastrophic venture. In his deposition, Trott claimed that the town had no choice but to welcome Every to the island. “Even if the people of Providence had been stronger,” he testified under oath, “it would have been necessary to have invited the ship in, for on the 4th of April the French had taken the [nearest] of the salt ponds and were meditating an attack on Providence, had they not heard of the arrival of this ship, which had 46 guns.” Asked whether he realized at the time that the men were pirates, Trott professed his innocence: “How could I know? Supposition is not proof.”
“Not long thereafter, a great ship rounded Hog Island,” the historian Colin Woodard writes, “her decks crowded with sailors, her sides pierced with gun ports, and her hull sunk low in the water under the weight of her cargo. Adams and his party were the first to come ashore, their longboat filled with bags and chests. The promised loot was there: a fortune in silver pieces of eight and golden coins minted in Arabia and beyond.” According to Middleton, the crew of the Fancy left behind “fifty Tons of Elephants [tusks], forty six Guns mounted, one hundred Barrells of Gunpowder or thereabouts, [and] severall Chests of Buccanneer Guns.”
As the crew finished unloading their goods, Henry Every rowed ashore in the longboat and was greeted by Nicholas Trott. The two men then retired for a private conversation.
Henry Every would not set foot on the decks of the Fancy again.