Original subtitles

Armed with a metal detector,

treasure hunter Jim Bailey hunts for hidden pieces of history, one step at a time.

And in May of 2014,

he makes a remarkable discovery.

He finds a peculiar object in the ground

that seems to have no business

being in a strawberry orchard in New England.

In 2014,

I recovered a-a very odd,

uh, silver coin.

I saw this-this bold, clear, crisp Arabic script

on the coin,

and I was amazed.

It turned out to be a 17th century coin,

and the coin predates direct trade

between the American colonies and the Red Sea,

the East Indies by over a century.

So, I knew the coin could've not come through trade.

Just how did such an exotic coin

make its way to a small town in New England?

Jim Bailey believes the silver piece he found

is connected to one of the most dangerous

and wily seafarers in maritime history,

an English captain named Henry Avery,

whose exploits in the Indian Ocean

earned him the nickname "The King of Pirates."

Captain Avery's legendary status can be traced back to 1695

and a bloody heist heard around the world.

Henry Avery sails north in the Indian Ocean

to the Strait of Aden,

which is part of the long-established pilgrim route

for Muslims from India traveling to Mecca.

And this is an extremely valuable trade route.

The ships traveling from Western India to Mecca and back

are carrying passengers of all kinds of social ranks

and lots of wealth.

So Henry Avery goes looking for the pilgrim fleet

sailing from Mecca to Western India,

known as the Mughal fleet.

The Mughal fleet was owned by the Mughal dynasty,

a powerful and wealthy empire

that ruled large portions of India

from the 16th to the 18th century.

Along with carrying pilgrims to and from Mecca,

this armada contained treasure ships

owned by the Grand Mughal of India himself.

And the crown jewel of this royal fleet

was a ship named the Ganj-i-Sawai.

So, Avery and his confederates pursue that ship,

and they find it.

A cannon explodes.

The mast is hit and collapses.

And so, Henry Avery and his fellows

sweep aboard the ship

and spend days plundering, torturing,

doing all kinds of horrible things to the crew

and the passengers.

And the cargo they have seized

is one of the most valuable

crossing the Indian Ocean at that time.

And so, Henry Avery became known

as the King of the Pirates, as a figure who appears

in ballads and plays and in books that appear

very, very quickly after his capture of the Ganj-i-Sawai.