Justice by any Means

As mentioned in the earlier blog, Henry Every and his crew were now the target of the largest global manhunt in history. But there was a problem, writes Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind:

“It was… handicapped by the sluggish communication channels of the day.”

By the time word was out, Every already had a 10 month headstart!

 

By then, Every had dumped his ship. And he and his crew had started to launder their money, so that one day they could go back home to Britain as rich men. The easiest way to launder money then? Horrific while it may sound, the answer was in slave trading. Who could ever prove how much money anyone made that way?

 

Some of the crew made their way to the US, an area that was indifferent to piracy and thus a safe haven. Others went to Britain. Where some of them got arrested.

“At long last, the world – and Aurungzeb most of all – would have a chance to see England’s true position on piracy.”

The biggest problem was finding any witnesses to the crime. Not only were they far, far away, which British jury would ever be sympathetic to some random Muslim victims anyway? So the British authorities struck a deal with one of the pirates – turn on the others, and we’ll go light on you.

 

Those being tried were not given any lawyers, they had to defend themselves. The bench was stacked with judges who would do what the government wanted – a guilty verdict. The wildcard, however, was the jury. Who knew what they’d do?

 

As feared (expected?), the jury found the men not guilty. They were not going to hang Christian British men for some supposed crime against the infidel Muslims in some faraway land. The government was aghast and furious. But they couldn’t try the men again for the same crime.

 

The British government next did something sneaky – the men might have been found not guilty of looting the Ganj-i-Sawai, but they could still be tried for the act of mutiny in the first place! The (same) jury was sternly rebuked and told to get it right this time. The victims of the act of mutiny were British; and there were plenty of witnesses. All the men were found guilty and hanged. Henry Every, their leader, had vanished – nobody ever heard of him again.

 

Aurungzeb was told that the guilty had been found and punished. The East India Company was allowed to resume operations. The case proved to be a turning point in Britain’s stance on policy – the wink/nudge era of privateers was over.

 

Quite a tale of events, isn’t it? And yet, one I’d never heard of.