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

A newly unearthed treasure trove of pirate history has now been found to have New York roots.

A peaceful Rhode Island fruit orchard was secretly hiding a centuries-old piece of history — until amateur treasure hunter James Bailey unexpectedly struck gold.

Bailey isn’t a professional historian, but he has an uncanny knack for unearthing the past. Sweeping his metal detector across the dirt, he picked up a signal that led to a rare coin tied to a famous New Yorker — and a legendary pirate.

The artifact turned out to be a 17th-century Arabian coin once pocketed by English pirate Captain Henry Every, who famously escaped to the American colonies after pulling off a brutal high-seas heist in the Red Sea.

Bailey told the Associated Press he was stunned when he dug out the dime-sized silver coin stamped with Arabic lettering. He believes it was minted in Yemen in 1693 before Captain Every carried it across the Atlantic.

Every cemented his status as the “King of the Pirates” after sailing the royal Indian vessel Ganj-i-Sawai in one of history’s most lucrative and infamous raids on Sep. 7, 1695. 

Five years after his initial bombshell discovery, Bailey has now uncovered another tantalizing clue linking the coin to New York. 

Colonial-era documents reveal that Captain Every got a helping hand from Thomas Jones, a wealthy local figure who New York’s Jones Beach is named after — the most visited state park in New York outside of Niagara Falls.

“You have millions of visitors and generations of New Yorkers going to this beach,” Bailey said. “Nobody knew that he was actually a major player in arguably the biggest heist in the history of piracy.”

Ever since his big discovery, Bailey has been poring over historical records to piece together the violent 1695 raid on the Ganj-i-Sawai and unravel the mystery of Every’s final vanishing act.

Every commanded The Fancy, a pirate ship originally built as a Spanish warship named the Charles II. His ruthless crew slaughtered and raped those on board during the raid.

With fortunes in hand, Every and his crew fled to Europe and the American colonies, which explains how the rare coin ended up buried at Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown, Rhode Island. 

Bailey believes Every’s escape was bankrolled and organized by Thomas Jones, the prominent landowner who immortalized his name on Long Island’s premier beach destination.

Historical records uncovered by Bailey indicate that after aiding Every, Jones made a brief return to Rhode Island before permanently settling on Long Island.

Jones was apparently recruited to serve as a “wheelman,” helping the pirates evade authorities after they made off with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver, according to Bailey.

Other documents show that New York’s governor was charged by the British crown to crack down on piracy and investigated Jones years later, after Jones became the wealthy proprietor of a whaling operation on the barrier beach that is now Jones Beach. 

Bailey’s research found that Jones owned thousands of acres of land on early Long Island, then just a rural expanse east of the rapidly growing New York City. Before it was demolished in the early 1800s, his mansion was said to be haunted by ghosts and strange occurrences. 

Jones’ grave was desecrated by robbers searching for buried treasure before it was relocated to a family burial plot behind a nearby church. A family history published in 1906 by one of Jones’ descendants dismissed the pirate tales as “slander” and “improbable fictions.”

“People were disposed to cast slurs upon his memory, either for mischievousness, or a spirit of malice,” Thomas Floyd-Jones wrote in the published family history. “These myths were cherished for over a century after his death, which ignorance and superstition did not fail to magnify.”