Pirate treasures found in the US have an unexpected story

Bailey is not a professional historian, but has a supernatural gift to unearth the past. After running a metal detector through the mud, he picked up a signal that led to the discovery of a rare coin tied to a famous New Yorker and legendary pirate.

The artifact was a 17th-century Arab coin once pocketed by English pirate captain Henry Avery, who is known to have escaped to the American colonies after a brutal robbery in the Red Sea.

James Bailey told The Associated Press that he was stunned when he unearthed a silver coin the size of a decicent on which Arabic letters were minted. He believes it was minted in Yemen in 1693 before Captain Evry transported it across the Atlantic.

Avery cemented the status of the “King of Pirates” after on September 7, 1695, he made one of the most profitable and infamous raids in history on the Indian merchant ship Gang-i-Savai belonging to the Great Mughal Aurangzeb. Production from the Indian vessel was estimated at between £325,000 and £600,000, including 500,000 gold and silver coins.

Five years after his first stunning discovery, Bailey discovered another tempting clue linking the coin to New York City.

Colonial-era documents show that Captain Avery was assisted by Thomas Jones, a local rich man named after New York's Jones Beach, the most visited state park in New York State outside Niagara Falls.

“Millions of visitors and generations of New Yorkers visit this beach,” Bailey said. “No one knew that he was actually a major participant in what was arguably the biggest heist in the history of piracy.”.

Since his great discovery, Bailey has been studying historical records to piece together the brutal attack on the Gang-i-Sawai in 1695 and unravel the mystery of Avery's last disappearance. The captain commanded the Fantasia, a pirate ship originally built as a Spanish warship called the Charles II. His ruthless crew killed and raped those on board during the raid.

Rich, Avery and his team 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 Avery's escape was funded and orchestrated by Thomas Jones, a prominent landowner who immortalized his name in Long Island's main beach resort.

Historical records discovered by Bailey indicate that after assisting Avery Jones briefly returned to Rhode Island before finally settling down on Long Island.

According to Bailey, Jones was apparently hired as a “helmsman” who helped the pirates escape the authorities after they escaped with tens of millions of dollars worth of gold and silver.

Other documents show that the British crown tasked the governor of New York with fighting piracy, and he investigated Jones years after Jones became a wealthy whaling owner on the barrier beach now called Jones Beach.

Bailey's research found that Jones owned thousands of acres of land on Long Island, which at the time was just a countryside east of fast-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 burglars searching for hidden treasure before it was moved to a family burial behind a nearby church. In 1906, one of Jones’ descendants published a family story in which stories about pirates were called “slander” and “incredible fictions.”.

“People tended to tarnish his memory either through mischief or malice,” Thomas Floyd-Jones wrote in his published Family History. These myths were cherished more than a hundred years after his death, and ignorance and superstition did not fail to aggravate them.