“After having remained engaged for a week, in searching for plunder, stripping the men of their clothes and dishonoring the old and young women, they left the ship and its passengers to their fate. “The whole of the ship came under their control and they carried away all the gold and silver,” the Indian historian Khafi Khan later wrote. The men were tortured and killed, and the women-including an elderly relative of the Grand Mughal-were repeatedly raped. Official document announcing that a bounty has been put on Henry Every.Īfter dispatching the leaderless Mughal resistance, the pirates sacked the Ganj-i-Sawai and brutalized its passengers. According to one account, the cowardly officer took refuge below deck and ordered a group of slave girls to fight in his place. A fierce hand-to-hand battle ensued, but the Indian soldiers were driven back after their captain abandoned them. Every brought the Fancy alongside the crippled Mughal ship and sent a boarding party scurrying onto its deck. The Indian defenders then fell into disarray after one of their artillery pieces malfunctioned and exploded.
It was the biggest ship in all of India, and boasted several dozen cannons and a complement of 400 riflemen-more than the entire pirate fleet combined.Įvery gambled on an attack, and immediately scored a devastating blow when one of his first cannon volleys cut down the Ganj-i-Sawai’s mainmast. Unlike the Fath Mahmamadi, the Ganj-i-Sawai was more than capable of defending itself.
The First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable Was a Bold, Short-Lived SuccessĮvery and his men resumed the hunt, and on September 7, their three remaining pirate ships caught up with the richest prize in the Indian fleet: the Grand Mughal flagship Ganj-i-Sawai.