For 2,000 years there have
been stories about female pirates. But were these stories just delusional tales
told by drunken sailors and aggrandized by poets? Well, some were legends, but
some were real.
During the 18th
Century, women usually faced a life of domestic servitude. For some, a chance
to sail away from poverty, oppression, bad marriages, or boredom was grasped as
their last hope for escape. But the world of piracy was a man’s world. If a
woman was to be a pirate, she had to dress like a man, drink like a man, and
fight like a man. Here is the true tale of two famous lady pirates who were
crew mates and comrades to the end.
ANNE
BONNY (depicted below) was the illegitimate daughter of
lawyer William Cormac and his serving maid. She was born in County Cork,
Ireland, sometime between 1697 and 1700. After leaving his wife, Cormac took
young red-headed Anne with him to the South Carolina colony where he prospered
as a plantation owner. Anne was a rowdy and troublesome young woman with a
quick and violent temper. One story says that she, at age 13, stabbed her maid
to death over a disagreement. Some years later, Anne met and married a
sometime-pirate named James Bonny. When her father found out that he was only
after the family’s wealth, he disinherited his daughter. The newly married
couple took off for Jamaica.
Anne became disgusted with
James, and spent her days socializing with pirates at local taverns. One day
she met John Rackham, a pirate captain also known as Calico Jack. She signed on as a crew member aboard his ship and
became his mistress. They had a child in Cuba. Meanwhile back in Jamaica, James
Bonny appealed to Governor Rogers to bring Anne back to finalize a divorce.
Calico Jack and Anne had an amnesty agreement with Rogers (as they had once saved
his life) but the Governor was duty-bound to return Anne to her husband. James
Bonny was terrified that Anne would kill him, which she was capable of doing,
and was relieved when she ran off again with Calico Jack.
At this point, our second
lady pirate, MARY READ, enters.
Although there is no agreed upon date, Mary was born in England near the end of
the 1690’s. She was the illegitimate child of a sea captain and a widow. In
order to continue to receive financial support from Mary’s paternal grandmother,
her mother represented Mary as her already deceased, but legitimate, older
brother. To accomplish this Mary was dressed as a boy. For the rest of her
life, Mary Read wore nothing but men’s clothing. In her teens she ran away to
join the British army still disguised as a male. Stationed in Holland, she fell
in love and married another soldier. Their close comrades knew she was a woman
but the army did not. Using their combined funds, Mary and her husband opened
an inn.
Her husband died
unexpectedly so Mary sold the inn and returned to the army. After peace with
France had been accomplished, there was no longer any place in the army for
her; so aboard ship, she headed for a fresh start in the West Indies. Then her
life took a dramatic turn. Her ship was captured by pirates and Mary, still
disguised as a man, joined the pirate crew.
In 1720, she joined anther
crew - captained by Calico Jack Rackham and his partner Anne Bonny. Anne took
an interest in Mary Read which infuriated Calico Jack. He intended to kill Mary
until Anne stepped in and revealed that Mary was actually a woman. It didn’t
take long for Calico Jack to decide to break tradition and allow both women to
remain on his ship. Rackham, Bonny, and Read stole another ship, the “Revenge,”
from the Nassau harbor and began terrorizing merchant ships across the
Caribbean. They very hugely successful and amassed a fortune in treasure. Both
Anne and Mary fought alongside the men, gaining the respect of the crew. 
But every pirate’s life
must come to an end sooner or later. Jonathan
Barnet, a noted “pirate hunter” was commissioned by the British to track
down and capture Calico Jack and his men. Supported by British soldiers, Barnet
found and boarded the Revenge in the middle of the night. Calico Jack and most
of the crew were below decks either drunk or sleeping when the soldiers
arrived. Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and one other pirate were on watch on deck.
They fought valiantly defending the ship but could not arouse their comrades
down below. The ladies were overwhelmed and the entire crew was captured.
In Jamaica, they were
tried for piracy and sentenced to be hanged. As Calico Jack was led to the
gallows, Anne’s final words to him were “If you had fought like a man, you
would not now be dying like a dog.” All the male crew members were executed,
but Anne Bonny and Mary Read were pregnant and “pleaded their bellies” which,
by English common law, would allow them to remain alive (at least until the
babies were born). The following year, Mary Read died in prison of a fever
before giving birth. Anne Bonny strangely disappeared without a trace and was
never seen again. Historians believe that her wealthy father had bribed guards
to “look the other way” while Anne escaped. Some think that she returned to
South Carolina and lived a long life on her father’s plantation.
In
the old Appalachian folk song “Jack-a-roe,” the lyrics read:
“She went down to a tailor
shop and dressed in man’s array,
She climbed on board a
vessel to convey herself away,
Before you step aboard sir,
your name I’d like to know,
She smiled in all her
countenance, they call me ‘Jack-a-roe’
Your waist is light and
slender, your fingers neat and small,
Your
cheeks too red and rosy, to face a cannonball.”
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