The November Jamaican sun shines through the bars of a cell, illuminating a straw-strewn floor and two thin occupants. One woman leans languidly against the chilly stone wall. Her once flashing black eyes dull and lethargic, limp strands of fiery red hair hang loosely about her dirt smeared face. Opposite her, the second inmate sits, hunched and shivering in a corner. This woman’s pale skin stretches tightly over high cheekbones. A red flush suffuses her sweat stained face, telling a deadly story of rampant fever. Her body is frequently wracked by dry coughs that add to the cacophony of sounds typical of a colonial prison in 1720.
These women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, were wanted for piracy across the English-speaking world. Having been captured by a privateer off the Jamaican coast, they were awaiting trial, set to face the consequences of not only murder and theft, but of being a woman daring enough to brave the rough life traditionally occupied by the lowest class of men. Hierarchy on a ship was important and strictly enforced, but captains and sailors became a law unto themselves when surrounded by a perilously vast ocean.
Pirates: The Outlaws of the High Seas
The Golden Age of Piracy, a period spanning from about 1650 to 1720, was characterized by several prominent and notoriously bloodthirsty buccaneers. Morally grey privateers, hired by governments to attack enemy nations or confront criminal seamen, were often as brutal and ruthless as the pirates they sought to destroy.
Women, considered the weaker sex, were the center of much superstition and hostility among seafaring men. Most ships barred them from coming aboard, believing it would spell doom for a ship and crew. The rough and violent nature of nautical life as well as the social rules under which the European world operated were enough to discourage most ladies of the time from wanting or attempting to inhabit such a sphere.
“For hundreds if not thousands of years, seafaring was almost exclusively a male preserve,’ said Dr. Charlotte Carrington-Farmer in a lecture for Cary Memorial Library, “We know then from sources that fisherman heave their nets and lines off the icy waters of Cape Cod…their wives and daughters remained behind to look after the young children and to make and mend the nets and to pray that the men survived the storm,”
There were some however, shaking their fists at tradition and societal values, that preferred the freedom and danger of the stormy open sea. Anne Bonny and Mary Read became legendary for their blatant disregard of these constructs and stigmas surrounding female pirates.
Most of what is known about these women, often dubbed “queens of the sea” is taken from the highly contested “A General History of Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.” Written by Captain Charles Johnson, the conjectured pen name of English author and journalist Daniel Defoe, the work seems to incorporate urban legends and seafaring yarns with the true historical facts. Trial records are sparce, and though the documentation proves the women’s existence beyond doubt, historians today remain unsure of what is fact or fiction in their stories.
An Irish Scandal: 1698
Both women’s early lives and careers before piracy are shrouded in mystery. Bonny was thought to have been born around 1698 in Cork Ireland, the child of a country lawyer, William Cormac, and his housemaid. When news came of her husband’s infidelity, Cormac’s wife left, and he began an open relationship with his mistress. The scandal surrounding Bonny’s birth prompted the trio to emigrate to what is now Charleston South Carolina.
Some legends avow that the young girl was raised as a boy by her father to protect her from harsh social censure associated with her birth out of wedlock. Notorious for a temper that matched her flaming hair, some stories claim she attacked a young apprentice, severely injuring him.
It is believed that the young woman married a pirate turned privateer, John Bonny, thus ostracizing her father. The couple moved to New Providence, an island in the Bahamas, where John Bonny informed the governor on the movements of his former compatriots. It was during this period that Anne Bonny allegedly met John Rackham, a pirate temporarily pardoned by the governor. The reason for Rackham’s nickname “Calico Jack” is contested. Some say it was due to his preference for plain cloth rather than the expensive silk clothing pirates often fancied. Others claim that it was a derogative term describing his reputation as a dandy. Still others insist it came about because of his habit of wearing colorful pants.
Regardless of his fashion taste, the two began an affair that culminated in Rackham offering to pay John Bonny to divorce. This practice of “wife selling” was common at the time. John Bonny hotly refused however and threatened to have his wife whipped if she did not end her relationship with the pirate.
For Anne Bonny, already disenchanted with her husband, this was the final straw. She and Rackham ran away together shortly after, and Bonny’s nautical career began.
In a stolen ship, or “sloop” the pair began their brief piratical tirade, capturing small fishing and merchant vessels close to shore, assaulting Caribbean sailors and stealing their cargo. It was during one such capture that the two met Mary Read.
An English Bastard: 1685
Mary Read was also illegitimate, the daughter of a sailor’s wife whose husband failed to return from a voyage. Her older half-brother, Mark, died shortly after Mary was born, and, to maintain the financial support of her wealthier in-laws, Mary’s mother persuaded those around her that her son was still alive. Dressing and raising Mary as a boy seemed to convince her mother’s relatives, who continued to finance young Mary until her early teens. The girl was sent into service as a footman, but, tired of the menial lifestyle, ran away and joined the English military.
“Mark” Read fought for the British and later, the Flanders military, where she met and married a young Flemish soldier. The couple organized their discharge from the army, settling down to run an inn together. Upon her husband’s death shortly after, Read reassumed her male identity and began to consider a seafaring life. Sources are conflicted on when she met Rackham and Bonny, with the popular story pointing to her capture and subsequent adoption into the pirate crew, a lifestyle to which she was not adverse.
According to the account of Captain Charles Johnson, Anne Bonny was intrigued and enchanted by the beautiful Read, still in her male disguise. When Bonny cornered and attempted to seduce her, the truth of Read’s identity was revealed. She later admitted to being a woman to Rackham, who had become jealous of Bonny’s attention to Read. Whether or not the two were ever lovers is debatable.
From obscurity to notoriety
The two gained a reputation of fearlessness and were, according to a witness “very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and ready and willing to do anything on board.”
Their forays along the Caribbean shore did not last long. While celebrating a recent conquest, the inebriated crew was found and captured by the privateer Johnathan Barnett. Furious at the cowardice exhibited by the drunken and terrified crew, the women allegedly turned on the men.
Read stopped fighting long enough to yell to the crew belowdecks, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be,” before shooting through the hatchway, killing one of the huddled occupants.
Despite the women’s best efforts, the ship and crew were lost. Badly outnumbered, Rackham called for a surrender and the pirates became prisoners of the elated Barnett.
Trial and imprisonment
The trial was set in the British colony of Spanish Town, Jamacia, and the vanquished seafarers awaited their fate in cells. The men were tried and sentenced shortly after their capture. Rackham was found guilty and executed within days. According to legend, Rackham was brought to Bonny’s cell before his death. The distraught man pleaded for a word of comfort on his walk to the gallows.
Never one to waste words on civilities and disgusted with the circumstances of their capture Bonny scoffed “If you had fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.”
Only ten days after the death of their lovers and crew, Read and Bonny were tried together, pleading not guilty to the charges of piracy, robbery, and kidnapping brought against them. Several witnesses and victims of the women’s exploits came forward with incriminating evidence of the full extent of Bonny and Read’s participation in the crew’s criminal activity. The pair was swiftly sentenced to death and execution arrangements were quickly underway when new information caused an abrupt halt in the preparation.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read were pregnant.
Both women “pleaded their bellies” on the grounds that they were “quick with child”. As at the time it was illegal to execute a pregnant woman, Bonny and Read were granted stays of execution and resumed their residence within the prison walls.
Read’s evasion of death was short lived. Whether from a fever or complications from childbirth, Mary Read died in April 1721. Her burial was recorded in the local parish register.
The fate of Bonny is speculative. After the trial, there is no positive record of her execution, death, further confinement or the birth of her child. Some claim that her father, having learned of her capture, bailed her out of prison and brought her back to the American colonies. Others surmise she died not long after Read, and her record has been lost to time. Still, some argue that she escaped, married, and lived for many years recounting her stories of piracy to her children and grandchildren. The paper trail of the women, already thin and patchy, decidedly ends here.
Legend and pop culture has taken over the stories of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, distorting the history into a blend of fact and fiction, with the two becoming symbols of feminism and courageous resistance. Remembered for their disregard of rules and decorum, Bonny and Read are synonymous today with equality and liberation.
The two have made names for themselves, daring to live a roughshod life in an era characterized by strict social standards and expectations. The enigmatic nature of their story and their depiction of women as brutal and brave will ensure they remain enshrined in history for many more years.
Tyler Leatherman Portfolio 
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