How the namesake of Jones Beach helped the 'King of the Pirates' get away with history's biggest heist
The man who gave his name to New York’s most visited state park after Niagara Falls may have helped a murderous pirate and his crew escape justice, according to an amateur historian’s reading of colonial-era documents.
Thomas Jones, the namesake of Jones Beach, is implicated by James Bailey’s research into the fate of Capt. Henry Every, the English pirate who led a raid on a royal Indian treasure ship in 1695.
Bailey made headlines five years ago when he unearthed ancient coins believed to be linked to Every.
He has since pored through documents to dig deeper into the bloody raid on the Ganj-i-Sawai on the Red Sea and the mystery of what became of the pirate.
“You have millions of visitors and generations of New Yorkers going to this beach,” Bailey said. “Nobody knew that he was actually a major player in arguably the biggest heist in the history of piracy.”
According to Bailey, documents including depositions from Every’s associates suggest Jones was recruited to serve as a “wheelman,” helping the pirates evade authorities after they made off with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver.
The pirate crew is said to have tortured, killed and raped those aboard the royal ship, sparking global outrage and what is considered the first worldwide manhunt.
Some crew members were caught and executed.
Many others, including Every, were never heard from again and are believed to have scattered to Europe and the American colonies.
Other documents show that New York’s governor, charged by the British crown to crack down on piracy, investigated Jones years later, by which time he had remade himself as the wealthy proprietor of a whaling operation on the barrier beach on Long Island that now bears his name.
Three years after the Ganj-i-Sawai heist, Richard Coote, New York’s colonial governor, described how one of his efforts to root out piracy had led him to Jones.
Citing witness depositions, the governor wrote in 1698 that a certain “barrel of money” traveled from the city to Long Island, where it ended up at Jones’ house.
But Jones, whom the governor described as “formerly a pirate,” testified that he knew nothing about the barrel.
Bailey’s research, which he hopes to publish, sheds light on a part of Jones’ checkered past long alluded to but never fully fleshed out in local history books, says John Hanc, author of “Jones Beach: An Illustrated History,” which includes a chapter on Jones.
