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On 1 May, as the fleet was finally preparing to leave Corunna, the men demanded their six months of pay or threatened to strike. Houblon refused to acquiesce to these demands, but Admiral O'Byrne, seeing the seriousness of the situation, wrote to England asking for the money owed to his men. However, on 6 May some of the sailors were involved in an argument with O'Byrne, and it was probably around this time that they conceived of a plan to mutiny and began recruiting others.[37][38] One of the men recruiting others was Every. As William Phillips, a mariner on Dove, would later testify, Every went "up & down from Ship to Ship & persuaded the men to come on board him, & he would carry them where they should get money enough."[7] Since Every had a great deal of experience and was also born in a lower social rank, he was the natural choice to command the mutiny, as the crew believed he would have their best interests at heart.[39]

Dolphin proved to be far too slow, lagging behind the rest of the pirate ships, so it was burned and the crew joined Every aboard Fancy. Amity and Susanna also proved to be poor ships: Amity fell behind and never again rejoined the pirate flotilla (Tew having been killed in a battle with a Mughal ship), while the straggling Susanna eventually rejoined the group. The pirates caught up with Fateh Muhammed four or five days later.[54] Perhaps intimidated by Fancy's forty-six guns or weakened by an earlier battle with Tew, Fateh Muhammed's crew put up little resistance; Every's pirates then sacked the ship, which had belonged to one Abdul Ghaffar, reportedly Surat's wealthiest merchant.[i][55] While Fateh Muhammed's treasure of some 50,000 to 60,000 was enough to buy Fancy fifty times over,[56] once the treasure was shared out among the pirate fleet, Every's crew received only small shares.[57]

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Every now sailed in pursuit of the second Mughal ship, Ganj-i-Sawai[58] (meaning "Exceeding Treasure," and often Anglicized as Gunsway),[59] overtaking it a few days after the attack on Fateh Muhammed.[54][60] With Amity and Dolphin left behind, only Fancy, Pearl, and Portsmouth Adventure were present for the actual battle.[61]

Ganj-i-sawai, captained by one Muhammad Ibrahim, was a fearsome opponent, mounting eighty guns and a musket-armed guard of four hundred, as well as six hundred other passengers. But the opening volley evened the odds, as Every's lucky broadside shot his enemy's mainmast by the board.[62] With Ganj-i-sawai unable to escape, Fancy drew alongside. For a moment, a volley of Indian musket fire prevented the pirates from clambering aboard, but one of Ganj-i-sawai's powerful cannons exploded, instantly killing many and demoralizing the Indian crew, who ran below deck or fought to put out the spreading fires.[63] Every's men took advantage of the confusion, quickly scaling Ganj-i-sawai's steep sides. The crew of Pearl, initially fearful of attacking Ganj-i-sawai, now took heart and joined Every's crew on Indian ship's deck. A ferocious hand-to-hand battle then ensued, lasting two to three hours.[64]

Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, a contemporary Indian historian who was in Surat at the time, wrote that, as Every's men boarded the ship, Ganj-i-sawai's captain ran below decks where he armed the slave girls and sent them up to fight the pirates.[65][66] Khafi Khan's account of the battle, appearing in his multivolume work The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, places blame squarely on Captain Ibrahim for the failure, writing: "The Christians are not bold in the use of the sword, and there were so many weapons on board the royal vessel that if the captain had made any resistance, they must have been defeated."[65] In any case, after several hours of stubborn but leaderless resistance, the ship surrendered. In his defense, Captain Ibrahim would later report that "many of the enemy were sent to hell."[67] Indeed, Every's outnumbered crew may have suffered anywhere from several to over a hundred casualties, although these figures are uncertain.[68][67]

According to Khafi Khan, the victorious pirates subjected their captives to an orgy of horror that lasted several days, raping and killing their terrified prisoners deck by deck. The pirates reportedly utilized torture to extract information from their prisoners, who had hidden the treasure in the ship's holds. Some of the Muslim women apparently committed suicide to avoid violation, while those women who did not kill themselves or die from the pirates' brutality were taken aboard Fancy.[69]

Although stories of brutality by the pirates have been dismissed by sympathizers as sensationalism, they are corroborated by the depositions Every's men provided following their capture. John Sparkes testified in his "Last Dying Words and Confession" that the "inhuman treatment and merciless tortures inflicted on the poor Indians and their women still affected his soul," and that, while apparently unremorseful for his acts of piracy, which were of "lesser concern," he was nevertheless repentant for the "horrid barbarities he had committed, though only on the bodies of the heathen."[70] Philip Middleton testified that several of the Indian men were murdered, while they also "put several to the torture" and Every's men "lay with the women aboard, and there were several that, from their jewels and habits, seemed to be of better quality than the rest."[70] Furthermore, on 12 October 1695, Sir John Gayer, then-governor of Bombay and president of the EIC, sent a letter to the Lords of Trade, writing:

Later accounts would tell of how Every himself had found "something more pleasing than jewels" aboard, usually reported to be Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's daughter or granddaughter. (According to contemporary EIC sources, Ganj-i-sawai was carrying a "relative" of the Emperor, though there is no evidence to suggest that it was his daughter and her retinue.[72]) However, this is at odds with the deposition of Philip Middleton, who testified that "all of the Charles's men, except Every, boarded [Fateh Muhammed and Ganj-i-sawai] by Turns."[67] At any rate, the survivors were left aboard their emptied ships, which the pirates set free to continue on their voyage back to India. The loot from Ganj-i-sawai, the greatest ship in the Mughal fleet, totaled somewhere between 200,000 and 600,000, including 500,000 gold and silver pieces. All told, it may have been the richest ship ever taken by pirates (see Career wealth below).

Every's pirates now busied themselves dividing their treasure. Although it is sometimes reported that Every used his phenomenal skills of persuasion to convince the other captains to leave the Mughal loot in his care, quickly slipping away into the night with the entire haul, this comes from Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, an unreliable account. More reliable sources indicate that there was an exchange of clipped coins between the crews of Pearl and Fancy, with Every's outraged men confiscating Pearl's treasure. (Portsmouth Adventure observed but did not participate in the battle with Ganj-i-sawai, so Faro's crew received none of its treasure.) Every's men then gave Mayes 2,000 pieces of eight (presumably an approximate sum as the treasure captured would have been in Indian and Arabian coins of a different denomination) to buy supplies, and soon parted company.[75]

Fancy sailed for Bourbon, arriving in November 1695.[7] Here the crew shared out 1,000 (roughly 93,300 to 128,000 today)[j] per man, more money than most sailors made in their lifetime. On top of this, each man received an additional share of gemstones. As Every had promised, his men now found themselves glutted with "gold enough to dazzle the eyes." However, this enormous victory had essentially made Every and his crew marked men, and there was a great deal of dispute among the crew about the best place to sail. The French and Danes decided to leave Every's crew, preferring to stay in Bourbon. The remaining men set course, after some dissension, for Nassau in the Bahamas, Every purchasing some ninety slaves shortly before sailing. Along the way, the slaves would be used for the ship's most difficult labor and, being "the most consistent item of trade," could later be traded for whatever the pirates wanted. In this way, Every's men avoided using their foreign currency, which might reveal their identities.[12]

To appease Aurangzeb, the EIC promised to pay all financial reparations, while Parliament declared the pirates hostis humani generis ("the enemy of humanity"). In mid-1696, the government issued a 500 bounty (approximately 92294.70 sterling as of November 2023, adjusted for inflation[73][74]) on Every's head and offered a free pardon to any informer who disclosed his whereabouts. When the EIC later doubled that reward (to 1000), the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history was underway.[10] The Crown also promised to exempt Every from all of the Acts of Grace (pardons) and amnesties it would subsequently issue to other pirates (for instance in 1698). As it was by now known that Every was sheltering somewhere in the Atlantic colonies, where he would likely find safety among corrupt colonial governors, he was out of the jurisdiction of the EIC. This made him a national problem. Accordingly, the Board of Trade was tasked with coordinating the manhunt for Every and his crew.[82]

Douglas R. Burgess argues in his 2009 book The Pirates' Pact: The Secret Alliances Between History's Most Notorious Buccaneers and Colonial America that Fancy had reached St. Thomas, where the pirates sold some of their treasure. In March 1696, Fancy anchored at Royal Island off Eleuthera, some 50 miles (80 km) northeast of New Providence in the Bahamas.[83] Four of Every's men took a small boat to Nassau, the island's largest city and capital, with a letter addressed to the island's governor, Nicholas Trott. The letter explained that Fancy had just returned from the coast of Africa, and the ship's crew of 113 self-identified interlopers (unlicensed English traders east of the Cape of Good Hope)[84] now needed some shore time. In return for letting Fancy enter the harbor and for keeping the men's violation of the EIC's trading monopoly a secret, the crew would pay Trott a combined total of 860.[85] Their captain, a man named "Henry Bridgeman," also promised the ship to the governor as a gift once his crew unloaded the cargo. e24fc04721