While we don’t know the monetary value of this find, the coins dug up from a fruit orchard may solve one of the oldest cold cases in history.
In 2014, amateur historian and metal detectorist Jim Bailey discovered one of many intact 17th-century Arabian coins in a meadow that may have belong to Capt. Henry Every.
In 1695, Every commanded the pirate ship Fancy and ambushed and captured a royal vessel owned by an Indian emperor, Aurangzeb. Aboard were Muslim pilgrims on their way home from Mecca and millions in gold and silver.
The pirates tortured and killed the pilgrims, took the loot and disappeared somewhere in the Bahamas. King William III put a large bounty on their heads, but they were never found. The coin and others like it may be proof that Every made his way to the New World where he was said to pose as a slave trader.
