Trevor Collins

In the middle of Texas, we are a side... Okay, we have the Gulf Coast.

That's fair.

But there's a lot of landlocked states that would make me nervous to get some of that popcorn shrimp.

No hate.

I guess I haven't tried it, so I can't judge.

Maybe it's the best.

Now, funny enough, talking about this name of Long Ben or Long John, historian Dee Cordingly has noted that these names are notably ironic to the sense that he's not long in any way.

He's not tall.

In fact, I'm going to quote Dee Cordingly here.

Quote, Henry Avery did not conform to any of the popular images we have of pirates today.

He was of middle height, rather fat, with a dissolute appearance and what was described as a jolly complexion.

So in other words, he was relatively unfit and looked like someone who lived a wild, potentially unhealthy lifestyle and had maybe some rosacea of the cheeks, some like a red, cheerful appearance.

But otherwise...

isn't like some handsome muscle-bound swashbuckler Johnny Depp or something like that.

From here, his life gets a little vague for a few years leading up until the kind of main focus of what we're going to talk about today.

And we do have concrete evidence regarding a few of these major pieces that we're going to talk about, which is, like you said, awesome that it survived the test of time.

And so his historical record picks up again in 1693.

This time he has moved up the ladder, so to speak.

He is the first mate aboard a ship called Charles II.

Charles II was a privateering vessel tasked with pillaging French goods in the Caribbean.