Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson

Author:Steven Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

19

EXCEEDING TREASURE

The Indian Ocean, west of Surat

September 11, 1695

Imagine taking a bird’s-eye view over the coastal waters of the Indian Ocean on that late summer day. To the east you can make out the shipyards and factories lining the Tapti River at Surat. Somewhere in those buildings, Samuel Annesley is reviewing inventories or writing reports to be sent back to London, with no knowledge of the catastrophe that is about to befall him and his colleagues. In the waters outside Surat, the advance guard of the Mecca convoy is making its way into the harbor, their passengers weary from the three-month journey, but relieved to have made it back home without any confrontations with the Red Sea Men. And then farther out at sea, maybe a hundred miles from the coastline, two ships stand out: one twice the size of anything else in the water, proceeding slowly toward the harbor at Surat; the other surging across the waves, sails unfurled, its crew scrambling on the decks to prepare the guns for the coming battle.

Ancient history is always colliding with the present in the most literal sense: our genes, our language, our culture all stamp the present moment with the imprint of the distant past. But this scene in the Indian Ocean in 1695 is a different kind of nexus, one of those rare moments where multiple long arcs collide in spectacular fashion: the Indian wealth that had first started to accumulate with those cotton fabrics invented in the centuries before the birth of Christ; the itinerary of the pilgrims defined by Muhammad’s own trek to Mecca a thousand years before (and perhaps by Abraham’s before that); the vast power of Aurangzeb, handed down through the generations of Muslims ruling the subcontinent; the faltering fortunes of the East India Company, struggling to maintain its footholds in Surat and Bombay; the long history of piracy and its radical egalitarianism. Tell any of those different stories on its own, and the events of September 1695 would still register prominently on each timeline.

What unites all those different threads? Two hundred men, six thousand miles from home, clustered together on a ship, low on supplies, intent on making their fortune.

There is general agreement about three things that transpire once the Fancy pulls close enough to the Gunsway to mount an attack. First, a cannon explodes on the decks of the Mughal ship, killing a half dozen men, gravely wounding others, and creating a general scene of chaos and destruction just as the Gunsway is preparing to fire back on Every’s ship. Second, one of Every’s first volleys turns out to be a spectacularly lucky one, striking the mainmast of the Gunsway and causing the mainsail and all of its rigging to collapse, crippling the ship and adding to the existing chaos triggered by the malfunctioning cannon.

The third undisputed fact is this: by the end of the encounter, Every and his men capture a fortune worthy of the Gunsway’s name—“exceeding treasure.” In the immense hull of

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