Mary Read - Famous Pirate - The Way of the Pirates The Way Of The Pirates Famous Pirate: Mary Read Unlucky Woman Pirate Mary Read was born in Devon County, England, in the late 17th century. She had a harsh childhood. Her father had died before she was born and her half-brother Mark passed away soon afterward. Mary's paternal grandmother supported Mary and her mother, only because she thought that her grandson Mark was still alive. To keep the death of Mary's brother as secret, from his grandmother, Mary was raised as a boy, pretending to be her older brother. When Mary Read was about thirteen years old, her grandmother died. Mary still dressed as a boy and with boyish habits, had to find a job. She became a footboy to a wealthy French woman, who lived in London. Unsatisfied with her current position, she escaped and boarded a man-o-war. Few years have passed, and she became bored again. This time she joined Army , where she met her future husband. After confessing love and true gender to him, they left the army, married and opened an Inn called Three Horseshoes near Castle Breda. Mary Read was always surrounded by death.

After just a few months of marriage, her husband got sick and died. Desperate, she just wanted to escape from everything and joined the army again. This time, she has boarded a Dutch ship that sailed to the Caribbean. Almost at the reach of its destination, Mary's ship was attacked and captured by the pirate, Calico Rackham Jack , who took all English captured sailors as part of his crew. Unwillingly she became a pirate. However, soon after, she started to like a pirate way of life . When she had a chance to leave Rackham's ship, Mary decided to stay. On Rackham's ship, she met Anne Bonny . Being only women on the ship and sharing a lot in common, they quickly became good friends. Some people believe that Mary Read was in a romantic relationship with Anne Bonny, Rackham or even one of the crewmembers. However, we cannot testify to any of that. Mary's pirate career ended, in October 1720. She was captured, by Captain Barnet in a desperate battle. In Port Royal , they stood trial. Rackam and his crew were found guilty of piracy, but Mary and Anne were spared because they claimed to be with child .

Mary Read died with her unborn child in prison from fever . She was buried at St. Catherine's parish in Jamaica. Name: Ten Facts About Anne Bonny and Mary Read Ten Facts About Anne Bonny and Mary Read Ten Facts About Anne Bonny and Mary Read Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Artist Unknown By Christopher Minster Ten Facts About Anne Bonny and Mary Read: During the Golden Age of Piracy (1700-1725), legendary pirates like Blackbeard , Bartholomew Roberts and Charles Vane commanded mighty ships, terrorizing any merchant unfortunate enough to cross their path. Yet two of the most famous pirates from this age served on a third-rate pirate ship under a second-rate captain, and they never held an important position on board such as quartermaster or boatswain. They were Anne Bonny and Mary Read : bold women who left behind the stereotypical domestic chores of women at the time in favor of a life of adventure on the high seas! Here, we separate fact from myth in regards to two of history's greatest swashbucklerettes. They were both Raised as Boys: Mary Read was born into complicated circumstances. Her mother married a sailor and they had a son.

The sailor was lost at sea about the time Mary’s mother found herself pregnant by another man. The son, Mary’s half-brother, died when Mary was very little. continue reading below our video 10 Best Universities in the United States The sailor’s family did not know about Mary, so her mother dressed her as a boy and passed her off as her dead half-brother in order to get financial support from her mother-in-law. Apparently, the scheme worked, at least for a while. Anne Bonny was born out of wedlock to a lawyer and his maid. He grew fond of the girl and wished to bring her into his home, but everyone in town knew he had an illegitimate daughter. Therefore, he dressed her as a boy and passed her off as the son of some distant relations. They were Tough and knew how to Defend Themselves: Bonny and Read may have been in a somewhat precarious situation – two women on board a pirate ship – but pity the fool who tried to take advantage of them. Before turning pirate, Read, dressed as a man, served as a soldier in an infantry regiment and as a pirate was not afraid of accepting (and winning) duels with other pirates.

Bonny was described as “robust” and once badly beat a would-be rapist: “…once, when a young Fellow would have lain with her, against her Will, she beat him so, that he lay ill of it a considerable Time.” (Johnson, 164). They Weren’t the only Women Pirates: Although they’re arguably the most famous real-life female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read are far from being the only women ever to take up piracy. The most notorious is Ching Shih (1775-1844), a one-time Chinese prostitute who became a pirate. At the height of her power, she commanded 1,800 ships and 80,000 pirates! Her rule of the seas off of China was nearly absolute. Grace O’Malley (1530?-1603) was a semi-legendary Irish chieftain and pirate.They were good at being pirates They were good at being Pirates: If Bonny and Read are any indication, the pirate captains of the golden age were missing out by sticking to all-male crews.

The two were every bit as good at fighting, manning the ship, drinking and cursing as any other member of the crew, and maybe better. One captive said of them that they “were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do any Thing on board.” They both chose Piracy as a Career: Like most of the pirates of the era, Bonny and Read made the conscious decision to become pirates. Bonny, who was married and living in the Caribbean, decided to run off with Calico Jack Rackham and join his pirate crew. Read was captured by pirates and served with them for a while before accepting a pardon. She then joined an anti-pirate privateering expedition: the would-be pirate hunters, most of whom were former pirates themselves, soon mutinied and returned to their old ways. Read was one of those who actively convinced the others to take up piracy again. They had a Complicated Relationship with one another: According to Captain Charles Johnson , a contemporary of Read and Bonny, the two met while both were serving on Calico Jack’s pirate ship. Both were disguised as men.

Bonny became attracted to Read and revealed that she was really a woman: Read then also revealed herself to be a woman, much to Bonny’s disappointment. Calico Jack, Bonny’s lover, was allegedly very jealous of Bonny’s attraction to Read until he learned the truth, at which point he helped both of them cover up their real gender. They didn’t Fool Anyone: Rackham may have been in on the ruse, but it apparently wasn’t much of a secret. At the trials of Rackham and his pirates, several witnesses came forth to testify against them. One such witness was Dorothy Thomas, who had been captured by Rackham’s crew and held prisoner for a time. According to Thomas, Bonny and Read dressed as men, fought with pistols and machetes like any other pirate and were twice as ruthless: they wanted to murder Thomas to prevent her from eventually testifying against them (which so happened, as it turned out). Nevertheless, Thomas knew them at once to be women “by the largeness of their breasts.” Other captives said that although they dressed like men for battle, they dressed like women the rest of the time.

They didn’t go out Without a Fight: Rackham and his crew had been active in piracy on and off since 1718. In October of 1720, Rackham was discovered by pirate hunters led by Captain Jonathan Barnet. Barnet cornered them off the coast of Jamaica and in an exchange of cannon fire, Rackham's ship was disabled. While Rackham and the other pirates cowered below decks, Read and Bonny remained on the decks, fighting. They verbally berated the men for their spinelessness and Mary Read even fired a shot in to the hold, killing one of the cowards. Later, in one of the most famous pirate quotes of all time, Bonny told Rackham in prison: "I'm sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man you need not have hanged like a dog." They escaped Hanging because of their “Condition”: Rackham and his pirates were swiftly tried and found guilty: most of them were hanged on November 18, 1720. Bonny and Read were sentenced to hang, but both of them declared they were pregnant.

A judge ordered their claim checked out and it was found to be true, a fact which automatically commuted their death sentence. Read died in prison shortly thereafter, but Bonny survived. No one knows for sure what became of her and her child: some say she reconciled with her rich father, some say she remarried and lived in Port Royal or Nassau. Their Tale has Proved Very Inspirational The story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read has captivated people ever since their arrest. Captain Charles Johnson made a big deal of them in his book , which certainly helped his sales. Later on, the notion of female pirates as romantic figures gained traction. In 1728 (less than ten years after Bonny and Read's arrest), noted playwright John Gay wrote the Opera Polly, a sequel to his acclaimed Beggar's Opera. In the opera, young Polly Peachum comes to the New World and takes up piracy as she searches for her husband. Ever since, female pirates have been part of romantic pirate lore. Even modern fictional she-pirates like Angelica, played by Penelope Cruz in Pirates of the Caribbean: on Stranger Tides (2011) owe their existence to Read and Bonny.

In fact, it's safe to say that Bonny and Read have had a far greater impact on popular culture than they ever had on eighteenth century shipping and commerce. Sources: Cawthorne, Nigel. A History of Pirates: Blood and Thunder on the High Seas. Edison: Chartwell Books, 2005. Cordingly, David. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1996 Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates. Edited by Manuel Schonhorn. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1972/1999. Konstam, Angus. The World Atlas of Pirates. Guilford: the Lyons Press, 2009 Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

ANNE BONNY (1698?-1782?) & MARY READ (1690?-1721) Pirates of the Caribbean | FORGOTTEN NEWSMAKERS ANNE BONNY (1698?-1782?) & MARY READ (1690?-1721) Pirates of the Caribbean In adventure , Biography , Feminists , History , People , Pirates , Trivia , Uncategorized , women on February 24, 2010 at 3:25 AM Anne Bonny Anne Bonny and Mary Read were feminists long before that word came into common usage. They established themselves as successful pirates, breaking through the biggest glass ceiling of their day. In fact, history has romanticized them so much that in recounting their lives, it’s difficult to separate fact from speculation. Anne Bonny was allegedly born sometime around 1700 in Ireland, the love child of attorney William Cormac and the maid. When Mrs. Cormac found out about the affair, she exposed her husband’s infidelity and ruined his reputation.

This forced Cormac and the maid out of town, and they moved way out of town to the United States, settling in Charleston, South Carolina. He reestablished himself as a lawyer, made a fortune, and bought a plantation. Stories differ about Bonny’s teenage years. One account says she stabbed a servant girl in the stomach with a table knife. Some claim that the source of her temper was the death of her mother. All agree that about age 16 she married James Bonny, a poor sailor, wanna-be pirate and opportunist. This charming fellow was not her father’s choice for a son-in-law, so he disinherited his daughter. Whether Bonny set the plantation on fire in revenge or not is disputed. We do know that at some point the Bonnys moved to Nassau in the Bahamas, a popular base for pirate operations. Bonny became restless while her husband was away perfecting his pillaging and plundering and beefing up his resume as a buccaneer. She met John “Calico Jack” Rackham in one of the local bars, and they had an affair. James Bonny discovered his wife’s indiscretion and dragged her in front of the governor for punishment.

Governor Rogers sentenced Bonny to flogging, but Rackham did the chivalrous thing and came to her rescue. Together they stole away on his ship, Revenge, and as a crewmember, Bonny began her career as a pirate. Mary Read was born about 1690 in England to an impoverished widow of a sea captain. When Read’s older brother died, her mom dressed her like a boy to trick her mother-in-law (who did not like girls) into providing financial support. Grandma was duped and gave them money until she died. Cross-dressing proved so successful for Read that she used it to get work as a footman, and then become a soldier. She fell in love with a fellow soldier, disclosed her true gender, and they got married. Together they ran The Three Horseshoes inn in the Netherlands. Read adapted herself to the role of the wife of an innkeeper and dressed like a woman until her husband’s sudden death. On her own, Read relied on previous experience and used her husband’s clothes to disguise herself again as a man. She eventually ended up on a merchant ship bound for the Caribbean. That ship was captured by pirates and Read was forced to join them.

This ended up being a dead end job, so the crew accepted the King’s Pardon around 1718, and continued operations as privateers. Bonny and Read met in Nassau. Even though they were the only two female pirates, they became friends instead of rivals. No less capable because of their gender, they quickly proved their worth to Rackham by helping him steal an armed sloop from the Nassau harbor. Onboard the ship both women donned the traditional male pirate attire for battle. Apparently they had the kickass, ‘take no prisoners” attitude to match as a fellow crewmate described them as being “very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board.” 1 Bonny and Read loved to fight, and they deserved much of the credit for the successful exploits of Rackham and his crew. In October 1720, the crew of the Revenge was caught unaware while anchored off the coast of Jamaica. After celebrating recent victories with extensive merrymaking, the male crewmembers were below deck sleeping off their drunken stupor when the ship was attacked.

Pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet, an emissary of Governor Lawes of Jamaica, attempted a takeover, and it was left to Bonny and Read to defend the ship. Despite their valiant efforts, the two women were no match for the attackers and eventually surrendered. Rackham and his entire crew, including Bonny and Read, were captured, tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Bonny visited Rackham in jail before his execution, but she wasn’t feeling very sympathetic. Her final words to him were, “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.” At their sentencing, Bonny and Read “pleaded their bellies.” By declaring themselves pregnant they received a stay of execution until after the birth of their babies. It is most widely believed that Read died in prison either of illness or in childbirth. There is no record of Bonny’s execution or her release. However, most speculation supports the story that she was ransomed by her father, gave birth to Rackham’s son and was buried in Charleston, South Carolina. One source gives her the benefit of a true Hollywood ending by marrying a fellow Carolinian and having eight more children. QUESTION: What career would you love to try?

© 2010 Debbie Foulkes All Rights Reserved Sources: Dancing wearing glitzy costumes like in Las Vegas will work for one of my career fantasies! Jude L. Klearman If There’s a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read | History | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use If There’s a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read Renowned for their ruthlessness, these two female pirates challenged the sailors’ adage that a woman’s presence on shipboard invites bad luck August 9, 2011 Anne Bonny (left) and Mary Read, as rendered in A General History of the Pyrates Last week Mike Dash told a tale of high seas adventure that put me in mind of another, somewhat earlier one. Not that Anne Bonny and Mary Read had much in common with kindly old David O’Keefe—they were pirates, for one thing, as renowned for their ruthlessness as for their gender, and during their short careers challenged the sailors’ adage that a woman’s presence on shipboard invites bad luck.

Indeed, were it not for Bonny and Read, John “Calico Jack” Rackam’s crew would’ve suffered indignity along with defeat during its final adventure in the Caribbean. But more on that in a moment… Much of what we know about the early lives of Bonny and Read comes from a 1724 account titled A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, by Captain Charles Johnson (which some historians argue is a nom de plume for Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe). A General History places Bonny’s birth in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, circa 1698. Her father, an attorney named William Cormac, had an affair with the family maid, prompting his wife to leave him. The maid, Mary Brennan, gave birth to Anne, and over time William grew so fond of the child he arranged for her to live with him. To avoid scandal, he dressed her as a boy and introduced her as the child of a relative entrusted to his care. When Anne’s true gender and parentage were discovered, William, Mary and their child emigrated to what is now Charleston, South Carolina.

Mary died in 1711, at which point the teenaged Anne began exhibiting a “fierce and courageous temper,” reportedly murdering a servant girl with a case knife and beating half to death a suitor who tried to rape her. William, a successful planter, disapproved of his daughter’s rebellious ways; the endless rumors about her carousing in local taverns and sleeping with fishermen and drunks damaged his business. He disowned her when, in 1718, she married a poor sailor by the name of James Bonny. Anne and her new husband set off for New Providence (now Nassau) in the Bahamas, where James is said to have embarked on a career as a snitch, turning in pirates to Governor Woodes Rogers and collecting the bounties on their heads. Woodes, a former pirate himself, composed a “most wanted” list of ten notorious outlaws, including Blackbeard, and vowed to bring them all to trial.

Anne, meanwhile, spent most of her time drinking at local saloons and seducing pirates; in A General History, Johnson contends that she was “not altogether so reserved in point of Chastity,” and that James Bonny once “surprised her lying in a hammock with another man.” Anne grew especially enamored of one paramour, John “Calico Jack” Rackam, so-called due to his affinity for garish clothing, and left Bonny to join Rackam’s crew. One legend holds that she launched her pirating career with an ingenious ploy, creating a “corpse” by mangling the limbs of a dressmaker’s mannequin and smearing it with fake blood. When the crew of a passing French merchant ship spotted Anne wielding an ax over her creation, they surrendered their cargo without a fight. John "Calico Jack" Rackam A surprising number of women ventured to sea, in many capacities: as servants, prostitutes, laundresses, cooks and—albeit less frequently—as sailors, naval officers, whaling merchants or pirates.

Anne herself was likely inspired by a 16th-century Irishwoman named Grace O’Malley , whose fierce visage (she claimed her face was scarred after an attack by an eagle) became infamous along the coast of the Emerald Isle. Still, female pirates remained an anomaly and perceived liability; Blackbeard, for one, banned women from his ship, and if his crew took one captive she was strangled and pitched over the side. Anne refused to be deterred by this sentiment. Upon joining Rackam’s crew, she was said to have silenced a disparaging shipmate by stabbing him in the heart. Most of the time Anne lived as a woman, acting the part of Rackam’s lover and helpmate, but during engagements with other ships she wore the attire of a man: loose tunic and wide, short trousers; a sword hitched by her side and a brace of pistols tucked in a sash; a small cap perched atop a thicket of dark hair.

Between sporadic bouts of marauding and pillaging, pirate life was fairly prosaic; our modern associations with the profession draw more from popular entertainment—Peter Pan, The Pirates of Penzance, a swashbuckling Johnny Depp—than from historical reality. The notion of “walking the plank” is a myth, as are secret stashes of gold. “Nice idea, buried plunder,” says maritime historian David Cordingly . “Too bad it isn’t true.” Pirates ate more turtles than they drank rum, and many were staunch family men; Captain Kidd , for instance, remained devoted to his wife and children back in New York. Another historian, Barry R. Burg, contends that the majority of sexual dalliances occurred not with women but with male shipmates. Accounts vary as to how Anne met Mary Read. According to Johnson, Rackam’s ship conquered Mary’s somewhere in the West Indies, and Mary was among those taken prisoner. After the engagement, Anne, dressed in female attire, tried to seduce the handsome new recruit. Mary, perhaps fearing repercussions from Rackam, informed Anne she was actually a woman—and bared her breasts to prove it.

Anne vowed to keep Mary’s secret and the women became friends, confidantes and, depending on the source, lovers. Learn more about Anne and Mary after the jump… They had much in common; Mary was also an illegitimate child. Her mother’s first child (this one by her husband) was a boy, born shortly after her husband died at sea. Mary’s mother-in-law took pity on the widow and offered to support her grandson until he was grown, but he died as well. Mary’s mother quickly became pregnant again, gave birth to Mary, and, in order to keep receiving money from her husband’s family, dressed her daughter to resemble her dead son. But her grandmother soon caught on and terminated the arrangement. To make ends meet, Mary’s mother continued dressing her as a boy and occasionally rented her out as a servant. Mary excelled at living as a man. Around age 13, she served as a “powder monkey” on a British man-of-war during the War of the Grand Alliance , carrying bags of gunpowder from the ship’s hold to the gun crews. Next she joined the Army of Flanders, serving in both the infantry and cavalry.

She fell in love with her bunkmate and divulged her secret to him. Initially, the soldier suggested that Mary become his mistress—or, as Johnson put it, “he thought of nothing but gratifying his Passions with very little Ceremony”—but Mary replied, with no apparent irony, that she was a reserved and proper lady. After informing her entire regiment that she was a woman, she quit the army and married the solider, who died shortly before the turn of the 18th century. Mary resumed her life as a man and sailed for the West Indies on a Dutch ship, which was soon captured by English pirates. The crew, believing Mary to be a fellow Englishman, encouraged her to join them. Calico Jack Rackam served as the quartermaster of her new crew, and he, along with his shipmates, never suspected Mary’s true gender. She was aggressive and ruthless, always ready for a raid, and swore, well, like a drunken sailor.

She was “very profligate,” recalled one of her victims, “cursing and swearing much.” Loose clothing hid her breasts, and no one thought twice about her lack of facial hair; her mates, most of them in their teens or early twenties, were also smooth-faced. It’s also likely that Mary suffered from stress and poor diet while serving in the army, factors that could have interrupted or paused her menstrual cycle. Initially, Rackam was jealous of Anne’s relationship with Mary, and one day burst into her cabin intending to slit her throat. Mary sat up and opened her blouse. Rackam agreed to keep Mary’s secret from the rest of the crew and continued to treat her as an equal. (He was also somewhat mollified when she took up with a male crewmate.) During battles Anne and Mary fought side by side, wearing billowing jackets and long trousers and handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads, wielding a machete and pistol in either hand. “They were very active on board,” another victim later testified, “and wiling to do any Thing.” The summer and early fall of 1720 proved especially lucrative for Rackam’s crew. In September they took seven fishing boats and two sloops near Harbor Island.

A few weeks later, Anne and Mary led a raid against a schooner, shooting at the crew as they climbed aboard, cursing as they gathered their plunder: tackle, fifty rolls of tobacco and nine bags of pimento. They held their captives for two days before releasing them. Near midnight on October 22, Anne and Mary were on deck when they noticed a mysterious sloop gliding up alongside them. They realized it was one of the governor’s vessels, and they shouted for their crewmates to stand with them. A few obliged, Rackam included, but several had passed out from the night’s drinking. The sloop’s captain, Jonathan Barnett, ordered the pirates to surrender, but Rackam began firing his swivel gun. Barnett ordered a counterattack, and the barrage of fire disabled Rackam’s ship and sent the few men on deck to cowering in the hold. Outnumbered, Rackam signaled surrender and called for quarter. But Anne and Mary refused to surrender. They remained on deck and faced the governor’s men alone, firing their pistols and swinging their cutlasses.

Mary, the legend goes, was so disgusted she stopped fighting long enough to peer over the entrance of the hold and yell, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” When not a single comrade responded, she fired a shot down into the hold, killing one of them. Anne, Mary and the rest of Rackam’s crew were finally overpowered and taken prisoner. Calico Jack Rackam was scheduled to be executed by hanging on November 18, and his final request was to see Anne. She had but one thing to say to him: “If you had fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.” Ten days later, she and Mary stood trial at the Admiralty Court in St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, both of them pleading not guilty to all charges. The most convincing witness was one Dorothy Thomas, whose canoe had been robbed of during one of the pirates’ sprees.

She stated that Anne and Mary threatened to kill her for testifying against them, and that “the Reason of her knowing and believing them to be women then was by the largeness of their Breasts.” Anne and Mary were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but their executions were stayed—because, as lady luck would have it, they were both “quick with child.” Sources Books: Captain Charles Johnson. A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates. London: T. Warner, 1724. Barry R. Burg. Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean. New York: New York University Press, 1995. David Cordingly. Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors’ Wives. New York: Random House, 2007. _________. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Random House, 2006. _________. Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean: The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers.

New York: Random House, 2011. Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling. Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. Tamara J. Eastman and Constance Bond. The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Cambria Pines, CA: Fern Canyon Press, 2000. Angus Konstam and Roger Kean. Pirates: Predators of the Seas. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007. Elizabeth Kerri Mahon. Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. C.R. Pennell. Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England.

Articles: “Scholars Plunder Myths About Pirates, And It’s Such A Drag.” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1992; “West Indian Sketches.” New Hampshire Gazette, April 10, 1838; “How Blackbeard Met His Fate.” Washington Post, September 9, 1928; “Seafaring Women.” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1896; “Capt. Kidd and Others.” New York Times, January 1, 1899; “Female Pirates.” Boston Globe, August 9, 1903. Like this article? Biography of Mary Read, an English Pirate Biography of Mary Read Updated January 08, 2016. Biography of Mary Read: Mary Read (1690? -1721) was an English pirate who sailed with "Calico Jack" Rackham and Anne Bonny . Although little is known for sure about her former life, she was well-known as a pirate from 1718 to 1720. When captured, she was spared hanging because she was pregnant but died shortly thereafter due to illness.

Early Life of Mary Read: Most of the little that is known about Mary Read comes from Captain Charles Johnson (believed by many, but not all, pirate historians to be a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe ). Johnson was descriptive, but never mentioned his sources, so most of her background is in doubt. Read was supposedly born sometime around 1690 to the widow of a sea captain. Mary’s mother dressed her up as a boy to pass her off as her older brother, who had died, in order to get money out of Mary’s paternal grandmother. Mary found she liked dressing as a boy and as a young “man” found work as a soldier and sailor. Marriage in Holland: Mary was fighting for the British in Holland when she met and fell in love with a Flemish soldier. continue reading below our video 10 Facts About the Titanic That You Don't Know She revealed her secret to him and they married. They operated an inn named “the Three Horseshoes” not far from the castle at the town of Breda. When her husband died, Mary could not operate the inn alone so she went back to war, but a peace was soon signed and she was out of work.

She took a ship to the West Indies. Read Joins the Pirates: While en route to the West Indies, Read’s ship was attacked and captured by pirates. Read decided to join them and for a while lived the life of a pirate in the Caribbean before accepting the king’s pardon in 1718. Like many former pirates, she signed on board a privateer commissioned to hunt down those buccaneers who had not accepted the pardon. It didn’t last long, as the whole crew soon mutinied and took over the ship. By 1720 she had found her way on board the pirate ship of “Calico Jack” Rackham. Mary Read and Anne Bonny : Calico Jack already had a woman on board: his lover, Anne Bonny, who had left her husband for a life of piracy. According to legend, Anne developed an attraction for Mary, not knowing she was a woman. When Anne tried to seduce her, Mary revealed herself. According to some accounts, they became lovers anyway, with Rackham’s blessing (or participation). In any event, Anne and Mary were two of Rackham’s most bloodthirsty pirates. Tough Mary Read: Mary was a good fighter.

According to legend, she developed an attraction for a man who had been forced to join the pirate crew. The object of her affection managed to irritate a certain cutthroat on board who challenged him to a duel. Mary, fearing that her would-be lover might get killed, challenged the brute to a duel of her own, timing it for a couple of hours before the other duel was supposed to take place. She promptly killed the pirate, in the process saving the object of her attentions. Capture and Trial of Read, Bonny and Rackham: By late 1720, Rackham and his crew were well-known as dangerous pirates, and bounty hunters were sent out to capture or kill them. Captain Jonathan Barnet cornered Rackham's ship in late October of 1720. According to some accounts, Anne and Mary fought valiantly while the men hid below deck. Rackham and the other male pirates were quickly tried and hanged in Port Royal on November 18, 1720. Bonny and Read, at their trial, declared that they were pregnant, and it was soon determined to be true. They would be spared the gallows until such time as they had given birth.

Death and Legacy of Mary Read: Mary Read never got to taste freedom again: she developed a fever and died in prison not long after her trial, probably sometime in early 1721. Most of the information about Mary Read comes from Captain Johnson, who most likely embellished at least some of it. It is really impossible to say how much of what is commonly "known" about Mary Read is really true. It is certainly true that a woman by that name served with Rackham, and evidence is strong that both women were able, skilled pirates who were every bit as tough and ruthless as their male counterparts. As a pirate, Read didn't leave much of a mark. Rackham is famous for having female pirates on board (and for having a really cool pirate flag ) but he was strictly a small-time operator, never getting close to the levels of infamy of someone like Blackbeard or the success of someone like Edward Low or "Black Bart" Roberts.

Nevertheless, Read and Bonny have captured the public imagination as being the only two well-documented female pirates in the so-called " Golden Age of Piracy ." In an age and society where the freedom of women was greatly restricted, Read and Bonny lived a life at sea as full members of a pirate crew. As subsequent generations increasingly romanticize piracy and the likes of Rackham, Bonny and Read, their stature has grown even further. Sources: Cordingly, David. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1996 Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates. Edited by Manuel Schonhorn. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1972/1999. Konstam, Angus. The World Atlas of Pirates. Guilford: the Lyons Press, 2009 Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Mariner Books, 2008. Mary Read Biography - The Republic of Pirates Bonny, from an early 18th century engraving made by an artist who had never seen her.

Mary Read and fellow female pirate Anne Bonny have captivated the public imagination for three centuries, but much of what has been written about them is false. Most accounts can be traced back to a flawed description of their lives in The General History of the Pyrates (1724) which holds that they both had disguised themselves as men in order to secure jobs as sailors; they both supposedly wound up on Calico Jack Rackham 's pirate sloop where they took a fancy to one another - each thinking the other was a man - only to find that they were both women. As shown in The Republic of Pirates , if this encounter did take place, it happened not at sea, but in Nassau. We know this because by the time the two became pirates, both women -- and their genders -- were known not only to one another, but to Governor Woodes Rogers and other officials. Read enters the documentary record in August, 1720, when she helped Calico Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny steal an armed sloop from Nassau Harbor. Her identity and gender were known to Governor Rogers, who put out a continent wide Most Wanted notice that named her and Bonny.

Former captives report that Bonny and Read did indeed dress as men in battle and cursed, swore, and fought like any other member of the crew. One reported he only knew they were women "by the largeness of their breasts"; another noted "they were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board." The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man who Brought them Down by Colin Woodard. The Official Homepage. (c) 2008 Colin Woodard. R.L. Stevenson Pirates The Authorities According to the General History, Read had been a cross-dresser since early childhood. Her mother is said to have raised her as a boy in the hopes of passing her off as another man's son. She subsequently served as a sailor and foot soldier, according to this undocumented account, before being captured by pirates. Anne Bonny and Mary Read were both mentioned by name in a 1720 proclamation by Governor Woodes Rogers, which was published in The Boston Gazette. Rackham, however, was a reckless captain, and within two months had landed his entire party in a Jamaican prison.

Bonny and Read were also sentenced to be hung, but they received a stay of execution after revealing they were both pregnant. Read did not survive her pregnancy. She died from a violent fever and her April 28, 1721 burial was recorded in the records of St. Catherine's church in Jamaica. Anne Bonny | Irish American pirate | Britannica.com Irish American pirate Maureen O’Sullivan Anne Bonny, née Anne Cormac (born 1698?, near Cork, Ire.—died April 25, 1782?, Charles Towne [now Charleston], S.C., U.S.), Irish American pirate whose brief period of marauding the Caribbean during the 18th century enshrined her in legend as one of the few to have defied the proscription against female pirates. Most of what is known of Bonny’s life comes from the volume A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), written by a Capt. Charles Johnson (thought by some scholars to be a pseudonym of English writer Daniel Defoe ) and considered highly speculative.

Anne was thought to be the illegitimate daughter of Irish lawyer William Cormac and of a maid working in his household. Cormac separated from his wife following the discovery of his infidelity and later assumed custody of Anne. Following his cohabitation with her mother, he lost much of his clientele, and the trio emigrated to Charles Towne (now Charleston , S.C.). Anne’s mother died of typhoid fever when Anne was 13. Her father betrothed her to a local man, but Anne resisted. Instead, in 1718 she married sailor John Bonny, with whom she traveled to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. There her husband became an informant for the governor of the Bahamas, privateer Woodes Rogers . Disenchanted by her marriage, she became involved with pirate John (“Calico Jack”) Rackham. He offered to pay her husband to divorce her—a common practice at the time—but John Bonny refused. In August 1720 Anne Bonny abandoned her husband and assisted Rackham in commandeering the sloop William from Nassau Harbour on New Providence. Along with a dozen others, the pair began pirating merchant vessels along the coast of Jamaica.

Rackham’s decision to have Bonny accompany him was highly unusual, as women were considered bad luck aboard ship. He may have been swayed by her fierce disposition: apocryphal stories claimed that she had, in her youth, beaten an attempted rapist so badly that he was hospitalized. Bonny did not conceal her gender from her shipmates, though when pillaging she disguised herself as a man and participated in armed conflict. Accounts differ on when her female compatriot Mary Read joined the crew. Some state that Read—who had served as a mercenary while disguised as a man—was among the original hijackers of the William, while others claim that she was aboard a Dutch merchant ship that Rackham’s crew captured. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent The exploits of the crew aboard the William had not gone unnoticed by Rogers, who soon sent privateer Capt. Jonathan Barnet in pursuit. On Nov. 15, 1720, Barnet caught up with the William at Negril Point, Jamaica.

Save Bonny and Read, who fiercely battled their pursuers, the corsairs were too inebriated to resist, and the crew was captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jam., for trial. Rackham and the male crew members were immediately found guilty and hung. Bonny and Read were tried on November 28. Though they too were found guilty and sentenced to death, their recently discovered pregnancies won them stays of execution. Read died in prison the next year, but Bonny was released, likely due to her father’s influence. She returned to Charles Towne, where she married, had children, and lived out the remainder of her life. Anne Bonny Biography -- The Republic of Pirates Bonny, from an early 18th century engraving made by an artist who had never seen her.. Anne Bonny and fellow female pirate Mary Read have captivated the public imagination for three centuries, but much of what has been written about them is false.

Most accounts can be traced back to a flawed account of their lives in The General History of the Pyrates (1724) which holds that they both had disguised themselves as men in order to secure jobs as sailors; they both supposedly wound up on Calico Jack Rackham 's pirate sloop where they took a fancy to one another - each thinking the other was a man - only to find that they were both women. As shown in The Republic of Pirates , if this encounter did take place, it happened not at sea, but in Nassau. We know this because by the time the two became pirates, both women -- and their genders -- were known not only to one another, but to Governor Woodes Rogers and other officials. Anne Bonny came to Nassau from Charleston in 1716, the sixteen-year old bride of James Bonny, a rank-and-file member of the Flying Gang of pirates. While living in the pirate republic, she earned a reputation for libertine behavior, and her extramarital affairs were widely-known. She is believed to have been born to an influential family in South Carolina -- possibly the daughter of one William Cormac -- although no documentation has surfaced to substantiate such claims.

After the arrival of Woodes Rogers in 1718, James Bonny retired from piracy and became one of Rogers' trusted informants. The following year, Anne took up with Calico Jack Rackham, who Rogers had pardoned for his previous piracies. By the spring or early summer of 1719, the two were presumably in love, as they approached James Bonny, seeking an annulment of Anne's troubled marriage. When negotiations were subverted, the couple recruited a half dozen disgruntled pirates as well as Anne's friend, Mary Read and, on the night of August 22, 1720, stole an armed sloop from Nassau harbor and returned to piracy. Former captives report that Bonny and Read did indeed dress as men in battle and cursed, swore, and fought like any other member of the crew. One reported he only knew they were women "by the largeness of their breasts"; another noted "they were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board." Rackham, however, was a reckless captain, and within two months had landed his entire party in a Jamaican prison.

Anne was said to have been allowed to see Rackham on the day of his execution, and told him: "I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you need not have hanged like a dog." Bonny and Read were also sentenced to be hung, but they received a stay of execution after revealing they were both pregnant. Anne's ultimate fate is unclear; there is no reference to her death, burial, or execution in the Jamaican records, suggesting she may have escaped the hangman's noose. One theory -- also lacking evidence -- is that her father was able to use his influence to get her released. One author, Tamara Eastman, asserts that Bonny lived out her life in South Carolina, gave birth to Rackham's son, and was buried near Charleston, but has produced no documentation for this account. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man who Brought them Down by Colin Woodard. The Official Homepage. (c) 2008 Colin Woodard. R.L.

Stevenson Anne Bonny & Mary Read: The Golden Age of Piracy's Most Famous Women eBook by Charles River Editors - 9781475322965 | Kobo Or, get it for 2400 Kobo Super Points! See if you have enough points for this eBook.

Sign in Synopsis *Includes historic illustrations depicting Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and important people in their lives.*Includes a profile of Anne and Mary from the famous English pirate history "A General History of the Pyrates".*Discusses common legends about Anne and Mary, separating fact from fiction.*Includes a Bibliography for further reading.*Includes a Table of Contents.“NOW we are to begin a History full of surprizing Turns and Adventures; I mean, that of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, alias Bonn, which were the true Names of these two Pyrates; the odd Incidents of their rambling Lives are such, that some may be tempted to think the whole Story no better than a Novel or Romance; but since it is supported by many thousand Witnesses, I mean the People of Jamaica, who were present at their Tryals, and heard the Story of their Lives, upon the first discovery of their Sex; the Truth of it can be no more contested, than that there were such Men in the World, as Roberts and Black-beard...” - Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious PyratesOne of the most famous pirates of all time, and possibly the most famous woman to ever become one

, was Anne Bonny.

The Irish-born girl moved with her family to the Bahamas at a young age in the early 18th century, which at that time was a hotbed for piracy by the likes of Blackbeard, but the redhead with a fiery temper would go on to forge her own reputation. After marrying a poor sailor who accepted clemency to give up piracy, Anne began a legendary affair with Calico Jack Rackam and became pregnant with his child, but that did not stop them from plundering the high seas aboard his pirate ship Revenge, at least until they were captured by British authorities. Anne avoided execution by “pleading her belly”, getting a temporary stay of execution due to her pregnancy.Among all the pirates of the “Golden Age of Piracy”, none were as unique as Mary Read, who was one of just two known women to be tried as a pirate during the Golden Age, alongside her own crewmate (and possible lover) Anne Bonny. Like Anne, Mary Read was an illegitimate child who spent some of her childhood dressed up as and disguised as a little boy through incredibly strange circumstances.

But unlike her future shipmate, Mary ultimately took a liking to it, and she continued to disguise her gender to take on roles reserved for men, including in the British army. During that time, she fell in love with a Flemish soldier and eventually married him.Mary Read might have been content to live out her life with her husband in Holland, but after his death, she headed for the West Indies, only to have her ship commandeered by pirates. But Read, who had worked on a ship before, was only too happy to join the pirate crew and play the role of privateer. And in 1720, that crew was captured by Calico Jack, who already had his lover Anne Bonny as part of his crew and now unwittingly added a second female when Mary opted to join. Together the three played a legendary role as shipmates and possible lovers while continuing their piracy around the Bahamas, only to eventually be captured by authorities in October 1720. Most of the crew was executed, but Mary was able to successfully “plead the belly” and thereby receiving a stay of execution. This spared her the noose, but Mary would die of illness while still imprisoned in 1721.

Anne Bonny & Mary Read chronicles the mysterious lives and legends of the two famous female pirates, attempting to separate fact from fiction while analyzing her lasting legacy. Along with pictures depicting Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and other important people, you will learn about the famous pirates like you never have before, in no time at all. Ratings and Reviews Lesbian Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read Lesbian Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read Copyright © Rictor Norton. All rights reserved. Reproduction for sale or profit prohibited. This essay may not be archived, republished or redistributed without the permission of the author. Shredded Wheat On July 25th, 1978, Steve Gooch's play The Women- Pirates, Ann Bonney and Mary Read premiered at the Aldwych Theatre, London, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play (which won a Thames Television award) was an exciting mixture of feminist politics and swashbuckling adventure, based upon the rebellious exploits of its real-life heroines. (Incidentally, the most trustworthy documents use the spelling "Anne Bonny," not "Ann Bonney").

The play originated in 1969 when Steve Gooch was having breakfast with a radical feminist, and a tiny booklet called something like Famous Outlaws fell out of the Shredded Wheat packet. In it was a brief account of the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. The friend and I both found their story so rich in the variety of levels at which it exposed the superficiality of the legal system, particularly towards women in an even more patriarchal society than today's, that it seemed a good vehicle for the play. The Women-Pirates did indeed reflect feminist issuesas do several other works by this playwrightbut I was disappointed that it contained only the barest hint of something which I think is more than likely, and equally significant: that Anne Bonny and Mary Read were lesbian pirates. Our historical knowledge of these two women is based mainly upon the account written by Captain Charles Johnson (probably a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe) in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, published in 1724 shortly after Anne and Mary were brought to trial for piracy on the high seas.

We first hear of Anne Bonny, born Anne Cormac, in 1710as a thirteen-year-old tomboy in the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in the pre-Independence New World. Although the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and plantation owner, her red hair was cut short, her face was dirty, and her habits were rowdy. As one historian notes, Anne "grew up into a strapping, boisterous girl, of a `fierce and courageous temper' which more than once led her into sad scrapes, as when she slew her English servant-maid with a case knife. But apart from such occasional outbursts of temper she was a good and dutiful daughter." Anne Bonny About five years later we again hear of Anne, seen frequenting the taverns of the port, on the arms of various buccaneers, and there are stories that a would-be suitor was hospitalized for a month after she beat him with a chair. She once used her sword to publicly undress her fencing master, button by button.

Her father disinherited her when she eloped with James Bonny: in revenge, she burnt down the plantation, then fled to the British- controlled port of New Providence (on modern Nassau in the Bahamas), a haven for such pirates as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. Upon her arrival, she quickly established herself by shooting off the ear of an already one-eared drunken sailor who blocked her way when she disembarked. In a short while she discarded her husband and went to live with the pirate Captain Jennings and his mistress Meg. Advised to get some male protection, she became the mistress of Chidley Bayard, the wealthiest man on the island. But eventually she deserted Bayard for the pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham, so named because of the loud striped patchwork trousers which he wore. Although they had one child (mysteriously disposed of), it has been suggested that Calico Jack may have come to New Providence as the paramour as well as quartermaster to a Captain Vane.

Another of Anne's menfriends was much more certainly gayPierre Bouspeut (sometimes called Pierre Delvin or Peter Bosket, or simply "Pierre the Pansy Pirate")who ran a coffee shop, hairdressing and dress-making shop, for he was a designer of fine velvet and silk clothing. Anne and Pierre got word that a French Merchantman richly laden with costly materials would be sailing by, and together they organized their first "privateering" raid. With the aid of some of Pierre's friends they stole a boat from the abandoned wrecks in the harbor, and liberally covered the topsail, deck and themselves with turtle blood. In the bow they placed one of Pierre's dress- maker's dummies, dressed in women's clothing and similarly splashed with blood. Anne stood over this nightmare figure with a blood-soaked axe, and they sailed out to the Merchantman. When its crew caught sight of this demonic ship by the light of the full moon, they were so horrified by the impending mayhem that they turned over the cargo of their vessel without a fight.

Less theatrical acts of piracy were of course commonplace in the port, and Captain Woodes Rogers in due course attempted to secure the power and jurisdiction of the British government by offering the King's Pardon to all pirates who would turn themselves in and offer to reform. But Anne refused, knowing that she could not be pardoned for the attempted murder of her father. She and Calico Jack and Pierre broke through a blockade that Rogers had positioned in the harbor: for this incident, Anne was stripped to the waist like an Amazon, and dressed in black velvet trousers designed by Pierre; with one hand resting on the hilt of her sword, and the other waving a long silk scarf at the astonished governor, she sailed past "as daintily as any fine lady being seen off on a long ocean voyage." Soon she established her position aboard this ship by shooting a sailor whose attentions were becoming obnoxious to her. Though officially she was second in command, after Calico, she had thrown him out of the Captain's quarters and resided there alone. "Mark" Read But eventually her crew decided to accept the pardon, which was made easier by Rogers' having obtained a special pardon for Anne, and they returned to New Providence peacefully.

there it was that Anne met Mary Readalias "Mark" Read. Mary's mother long ago, in England, had dressed her daughter as a boy and had pretended that she was her dead son Mark, in order to ensure an inheritance from Mary's grandmothersuch inheritances, like so much else, were reserved for the male. Mary eventually came to prefer her masculine role so much that her mother disinherited her. She was apprenticed as a footboy, then ran away to join the army as a soldier. She married a soldier and together they opened the Three Horseshoes Inn. But after three years her husband died and the public house failed, so she again donned men's clothes and signed on a Dutch Merchantman as Mark Read. This ship was captured by English pirates, whom she was persuaded to join, and thus it was that she eventually found herself finding pardon in New Providence and joining up with Anne. At about this timethough Anne and Mary were already fast friendsAnne's husband James Bonny reappeared to reclaim his wife, i.e. his property. He kidnapped her and brought her bound and naked before the governor, charged with the felony of deserting her husband.

He suggested "divorce by sale," a more "lenient" punishment, hoping to profit by the proceeds of such an auction. But Anne refused to be, as she said, "bought and sold like a hog or cattle"; in fact she expressed herself so vehemently that no buyers dared step forward to claim such a "hellcat." The governor was forced to release her on condition that she return to her rightful master,but James, who only wanted the money, fled in terror from the storm he had raised. Mary had to persuade Anne not to shoot the governor. Instead, together they set out in a sloop in pursuit of James; he escaped after a merry chase, but they burnt his turtle business to the ground. In due course the pirate crew was re-formed, with Anne and "Mark" constantly together aboard ship. This intimacy aroused the jealousy of Calico Jack, who threatened to slit "Mark's" throat, but bursting into the cabin one day with just this in mind, he discovered Mary stretched out on the bed before Anne, not entirely clothed and visibly a woman.

Some (male) historians would have us believe that only minutes before, Anne had ripped off Mary's clothing, and herself had only just discovered "Mark's" true gender. This is highly unlikely. The two women had already been intimate far too longand shared such a rough lifestyle at thatnot to have been fully acquainted with one another's gender. (And even if Mary had pretended to be a boy, surely Pierre would have discovered the truth long ago.) The bowdlerization of this episode and attempts to "explain it away" are typical of how this adventuresome pair is treated; Anne Bonny frequently appears in children's literatureand in boxes of Shredded Wheatwhere she is similarly conventionalized and "normalized" by being portrayed as merely a pirate captain's mistress, rather than the leader she actually was. "Infamous Women" Despite this supposed discovery of "Mark's" true gender, Anne and Mary (who stopped calling herself "Mark"), remained inseparable, and both alternately donned male and female clothing. In due course they took command of another ship, and Men-of-War were sent out to capture "those infamous women." They abandoned all caution and raided numerous other ships.

One of the victims of their piracy happened to be the Royal queen, a vessel owned by Anne's former "lover" Chidley Bayard, and commanded by one Captain Hudson. On this occasion Anne seduced Hudson into bringing her aboard, then drugged his wine instead of sleeping with him, and secretly doused the firing pins of the cannons with water. She left the next morning, then returned with her pirates. The Royal Queen's gunmen were unable to open fire and they were easily captured. Only Captain Hudson was killed in this otherwise bloodless battleby a jealous Mary. Eventually Anne and Mary were captured by a Captain Barnet. In the heat of this final battle their crew deserted them, staying below deck and refusing to fight. So Mary shot two of their own men, and wounded Calico. But it took an hour for Barnet's entire crew to subdue the two women. They and their pirate crew were taken to trial in St Jaga de la Vega, Jamaica, convicted of piracy on November 28, 1720, and sentenced to be hanged. Anne and Mary promptly "pleaded their bellies" and were pardoned.

This was a common plea amongst women sentenced to death, the point being that no court would hang an innocent albeit unborn life  though neither of them in fact bore a child, and almost certainly neither was pregnant. Anne visited Calico before he was hanged, and said "I am sorry to see you in this predicament, but had you fought like a man you would not now have to die like a dog." Mary herself died of a fever contracted in prison, and Anne just disappeared. One unlikely story is that she got married and returned to Charlestonwhere she would still have been wanted for arson, attempted parricide, and conspiracy against the King's authority. An even more unlikely story is that she went into a nunnery. Pirate literature is not noted for its accuracy, and there has never been any thoroughgoing research into the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Their story, like that of all pirates, has been treated as a peg upon which the bourgeois imagination can hang its thirst for mobility, ill-gotten gains and romantic independence. And like all tales of high adventure, their story comes in widely different versions, according to the whim of the historian or novelist or playwright.

As Steve Gooch said, "The whole area is one of legend and myth and it depends on what you make of it." The story I have told above seems to be the most accurate we can cull from the very earliest documents. Evidence of their homosexuality is not so clear cut as we might wish, and at most they were bisexual, so "lesbian" is not strictly accurate. Some less substantiated legends claim that both women were brought up in boy's clothing, and that there was a thriving gay subculture in New Providence; homosexual men certainly did flee persecution in places such as Amsterdam, and they may well have ended up at New Providence. In any case, we must take into account Anne and Mary's dismissive treatment of their temporary male paramours and even their children, their obvious enjoyment of their cross-dressing, and the fact that they acted together as a couple and obviously loved one another; so the evidence suggests that they must be relevant to any history of lesbian experience. The episode of Calico Jack discovering them in the cabin together, with at least one of them in bed unclothed, has been worried over so much by (heterosexual)historians that there must have been something in it!

Above all, it is odd that the only two women pirates that history records should have ended up together, and we cannot lightly dismiss their obvious love for one another. They are essentially a couple and it is impossible to totally ignore the lesbian ambience of their relationship. Steve Gooch's Play The story as I have told it is not quite the one told by Steve Gooch in his play The Women-Pirates: it is not a gay play, though it has gay elements. There are very faint suggestions that Anne and Mary eventually had sex together from a "what the hell" motive, but for the most part they appear as two "normal" albeit strong women pitted against an "unnatural" crew of pirates and government authorities.

The references to (male) homosexuality are mostly abusive: Pierre is called a "French fairy"; one sailor is called a "Belgian ponce"he tells Mary "They think we're queer" and feels that their friendship is "unnatural" until he discovers she is a woman; Calico Jack is jeered at because "he wears scent too!"; Mary constantly strips off her clothing to reveal her true gender, and is more demonstratively non-masculine than in my reading of the historical documents; even Woodes Rogersthe villain of the pieceis accused of being a "sod," and "the spreading arsehole" metaphor is applied to the authorities in both its sense of being "a pain in the arse" and specifically homosexual or queer. I raised some of these issues with Steve Gooch. He said he did not consciously intend the references to arseholes and sodomy to be anti-gay, and he felt that such language in any case reflects the abusive jokes that would have been typical fare among pirates. He was obviously sympathetic to the problems faced by oppressed groups, though perhaps not quite sensitive enough to the stigma promoted by language.

He did feel, however, that gays were rightly concerned with language, even more justly than women, for the terms applied to gays throughout history are more downright abusive than the terms which are dismissive of women. I asked Steve Gooch if he had ever thought of Anne and Mary as lesbians. He had, but not until after he had written the major draft of his script, when the actress and sometime Gay Sweatshop director Kate Crutchley showed him a copy of Susan Baker's biography of them in Women Remembered, and he saw that the story could be interpreted in that fashion. But by that time it was too late. In any case, he said, It seemed more important to explore class differences and the role reversals in terms of Anne and Mary. Mary's background was more depressedshe was forced to be a man. Anne's life was easiershe felt a very aggressive form of feminism. Mary was much more passive, much more of a stereotypical feminine character despite her boots and trousers. I wanted to explore that area of sexual ambiguity without allowing the audience to be sensationalized by it. I felt that there were so many pitfalls on either side of the line. . . .

I think it's more interesting to see them as rebels among rebels because that poses a more interesting. . . . The second half of the play is about mass political movements and I notice that people over thirty get off on the first half which is more conventional, and the people under thirty find the second half meatier. People who set themselves apart respond to it more readily. Gooch objected to my suggestion that Mary was probably as much a foul-mouthed pirate as any buccaneer, and said he was trying to avoid the "pirate" stereotypes. "Historical distortion? There's quite a lot . . . I don't mind anachronisms . . . I've avoided any attempt to historicize the period because we don't know what colloquial speech was like at the time." (We do in fact have a thorough record of thieves' cant used in the 1720s.) Also, he said, "I don't think I'd be qualified to speak about lesbianism." Our short interview was amiable and pleasant, but proceeded in such a way that when I left he said "So you're going to tell everyone not to come and see the play?" Not so.

The play is not meant to be a documentary, but a "vehicle" for certain issues which concern feminists and others, and it seems to work very well on its own terms. It is an exciting and colorful play of Social Commitment, and there is no reason why gay people should not enjoy a rousing play about non-gay feminist pirates as much as anyoneor is there? SOURCES: Charles Johnson (pseud. Daniel Defoe?), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, 1724; Charles Ellms, The Pirates' Own Book, 1837; Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy, 1932; Neville Williams, Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy, 1961; Alfred Sternbeck, Filibusters and Buccaneers, 1930; David Mitchell, Pirates, 1976; Susan Baker, "Anne Bonny & Mary Read" in Women Remembered, ed. Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch, Diana Press, 1974; C. J. S.

Thompson, The Cruel Mysteries of Sex, 1974; and History der Engelsche Zee-Roovers, 1725. Copyright © 1997, 1992, 1978 Rictor Norton CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation: Rictor Norton, "Lesbian Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read", Lesbian History, updated 14 June 2008 <

Question: Mary Read and Anne Boney had what job in common?
Answer: Pirates