Centuries-old loot linked to ‘King of the Pirates’ discovered — with a shocking NYC connection

An amateur metal detectorist’s discovery of a 17th-century Arabian coin in a Rhode Island orchard has been linked to pirate Captain Henry Every and to Thomas Jones, a colonial New York landowner. The connection matters because Jones, after allegedly helping Every evade authorities, later became wealthy on Long Island, where Jones Beach now bears his name.

The dime-sized silver coin is believed to have been minted in Yemen in 1693. Every captured the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai in 1695, in a raid that brought his crew tens of millions of dollars in gold and silver; records uncovered by James Bailey suggest Jones helped them escape. The pirate allegations were later dismissed as slander by one of Jones’s descendants, and the evidence described is based on Bailey’s historical research.