Iconic New York figure was likely ‘major player’ in deadly pirate’s 1695 heist, historian says

An amateur historian has stumbled upon a provocative clue to the enduring mystery of what became of a notorious pirate who attacked a royal Indian treasure ship centuries ago, implicating a co-conspirator whose name is familiar to many New Yorkers.

James Bailey, who made headlines five years ago after dig up ancient coins believed to be linked to the English pirate Captain Henry Every, now claims that colonial-era documents suggest the “pirate king” and his violent crew received help from Thomas Jones, the namesake of Jones Beachthe most visited state park in New York after Niagara Falls.

“Millions of visitors and generations of New Yorkers come to this beach,” Bailey said. “No one knew that he was actually a major player in arguably the greatest heist in the history of piracy.”

Since his big discovery, Bailey has scoured documents to dig even deeper into the bloody 1695 Ganj-i-Sawai raid on the Red Sea and the mystery of what happened to Every.

The pirate crew allegedly tortured, killed and raped those aboard the royal ship, sparking global outrage and what is considered the first global manhunt. Some were captured and executed, but many others, including Every, were never heard from again and are believed to have dispersed throughout Europe and the American colonies.

Documents, including depositions from Every’s associates, suggest that Jones was recruited to serve as a “helmsman,” helping the pirates evade authorities after they made off with tens of millions of dollars in gold and silver, according to Bailey.

Other documents show that the governor of New York, charged by the British crown with combating piracy, investigated Jones years later after he had transformed himself into the wealthy owner of a whaling operation on the Long Island barrier beach that today bears his name.

Ghost stories and fables after Jones’ death

Bailey’s research, which he hopes to publish, sheds light on some of Jones’ checkered past, long discussed but never really explored in local history books, says John Hanc, author of “Jones Beach: An Illustrated History,” which includes a chapter on Jones.

Jones was a major in the English army before moving to the American colonies, settling first in Rhode Island before becoming a prominent businessman and landowner in New York. Jones owned thousands of acres of land in early Long Island, then just a rural expanse well east of rapidly growing New York City.

But rumors about how he initially made his fortune persisted long after his death in 1713. Before its demolition in the early 1800s, his ruined mansion was believed to be haunted by ghosts and strange occurrences. Jones’ grave was repeatedly desecrated by thieves searching for buried treasure before being moved to a family burial plot behind a nearby church.

A family history published in 1906 by one of Jones’ descendants called pirate tales “slanders” and “improbable fictions.”

“People were inclined to cast aspersions on his memory, either out of malice or out of malice,” wrote Thomas Floyd-Jones. “These myths were cherished for more than a century after his death, which ignorance and superstition did not fail to magnify.”

Was Jones a privateer, a pirate, or both?

Hanc and other experts say it wasn’t a stretch for Jones to at least dabble in hacking.

After serving in the British Army, Jones made a career as a privateer, or sailor authorized by the English crown to attack rivals’ commercial ships in wartime, said Meagan Schulman, a doctoral student at Fordham University who specializes in 17th-century piracy and was not involved in Bailey’s research.

But when the conflict ended, privateers like Jones lost their special status, she explained. Those who continued the raids on the high seas were labeled pirates.

“The reality was that privateers were pirates, just sponsored by some government or patron,” said Schulman, who grew up in Jones Beach. “So maybe the short answer is yes. Jones may be called a pirate by some people, but he probably never considered himself one.”

After helping Every and his crew evade capture, documents cited by Bailey show Jones briefly returned to Rhode Island.

Then, in 1696, Jones’ father-in-law, Thomas Townsend, a wealthy New Yorker, gifted him and his wife a sizable tract of land on the south shore of Long Island, according to property records.

Bailey, who recently retired from the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, says it gave Jones a fresh start, as authorities continued to scour pirate-friendly New England in search of Every and his accomplices.

On Long Island, Bailey says Jones built a farm and raised a family, but his pirate past was never far behind.

Three years after the Ganj-i-Sawai heist, Richard Coote, colonial governor of New York, described how one of his efforts to stamp out piracy led him to Jones.

Citing witness testimony, the governor wrote in 1698 that a certain “barrel of silver” had traveled from the city to Long Island, where it ended up at Jones’s house. But Jones, whom the governor described as “a former pirate,” said he knew nothing about the barrel.

Piracy Created Wealth in Colonial America

Bailey’s findings are compelling but should not be taken as conclusive, cautions Richard Blakemore, a professor of maritime history at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, who was also not involved in Bailey’s work. After all, he says, Thomas Jones is a pretty common name.

If anything, the possible connections between Jones and Every underscore how piracy provided “fundamental, multigenerational wealth” to many prominent Northeast families, says Kevin McDonald, a history professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who wrote a book on piracy in the colonial era but was not involved in Bailey’s research.

“Popular images of pirates show them as outcasts, but many historians have argued otherwise, based on evidence like this,” Blakemore acknowledged. “It might surprise readers to discover the extent to which Britain’s early colonies were both socially and economically linked to piracy.”