What Was the Socio-economic Background of Mary Read and Anne Bonny
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Last week Mike Dash told a tale of loftier seas adventure that put me in mind of another, somewhat before one. Not that Anne Bonny and Mary Read had much in common with kindly old David O'Keefe—they were pirates, for one matter, 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 non 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 than 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 About 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 nascency in Kinsale, County Cork, Republic of ireland, circa 1698. Her male parent, 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 addicted of the child he arranged for her to live with him. To avert scandal, he dressed her as a boy and introduced her as the kid of a relative entrusted to his care. When Anne'due south 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 "trigger-happy and courageous atmosphere," reportedly murdering a servant girl with a example knife and beating half to death a suitor who tried to rape her.
William, a successful planter, disapproved of his daughter'due south rebellious ways; the endless rumors about her carousing in local taverns and sleeping with fishermen and drunks damaged his business organization. He disowned her when, in 1718, she married a poor sailor by the proper name of James Bonny. Anne and her new husband ready off for New Providence (at present Nassau) in the Bahamas, where James is said to accept embarked on a career as a snitch, turning in pirates to Governor Woodes Rogers and collecting the bounties on their heads. Woodes, a onetime pirate himself, equanimous a "nigh 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 "non altogether so reserved in indicate of Guiltlessness," and that James Bonny once "surprised her lying in a hammock with another human being." Anne grew especially enamored of one paramour, John "Calico Jack" Rackam, so-chosen due to his affinity for garish clothing, and left Bonny to join Rackam's coiffure. One fable holds that she launched her pirating career with an ingenious ploy, creating a "corpse" by mangling the limbs of a dressmaker'southward mannequin and smearing information technology with fake blood. When the coiffure of a passing French merchant ship spotted Anne wielding an ax over her cosmos, they surrendered their cargo without a fight.
A surprising number of women ventured to sea, in many capacities: equally servants, prostitutes, laundresses, cooks and—albeit less frequently—equally sailors, naval officers, whaling merchants or pirates. Anne herself was likely inspired past a 16th-century Irishwoman named Grace O'Malley, whose tearing visage (she claimed her face up was scarred afterwards an attack by an eagle) became infamous along the coast of the Emerald Island. However, female pirates remained an bibelot and perceived liability; Blackbeard, for one, banned women from his ship, and if his crew took i captive she was strangled and pitched over the side. Anne refused to be deterred past this sentiment. Upon joining Rackam's coiffure, she was said to have silenced a disparaging shipmate past stabbing him in the heart.
Almost of the fourth dimension Anne lived as a woman, acting the part of Rackam's lover and bride, just during engagements with other ships she wore the attire of a man: loose tunic and wide, brusk trousers; a sword hitched past her side and a brace of pistols tucked in a sash; a pocket-sized cap perched atop a thicket of dark hair. Between desultory bouts of marauding and pillaging, pirate life was fairly prosaic; our modern associations with the profession depict more from pop 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 information technology isn't true." Pirates ate more turtles than they drank rum, and many were staunch family unit men; Captain Kidd, for instance, remained devoted to his wife and children back in New York. Another historian, Barry R. Burg, contends that the bulk of sexual dalliances occurred not with women just with male shipmates.
Accounts vary as to how Anne met Mary Read. According to Johnson, Rackam's ship conquered Mary'southward somewhere in the Due west Indies, and Mary was amongst those taken prisoner. Subsequently the appointment, Anne, dressed in female attire, tried to seduce the handsome new recruit. Mary, possibly fearing repercussions from Rackam, informed Anne she was really a woman—and bared her breasts to prove it. Anne vowed to go along 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'south first kid (this one by her husband) was a male child, built-in shortly after her husband died at sea. Mary's mother-in-law took pity on the widow and offered to back up 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 go along receiving money from her husband's family, dressed her girl to resemble her dead son. Simply her grandmother soon caught on and terminated the arrangement. To make ends meet, Mary'south mother continued dressing her equally a boy and occasionally rented her out as a servant.
Mary excelled at living as a man. Around age xiii, she served as a "powder monkey" on a British human-of-war during the War of the Thousand Brotherhood, conveying numberless of gunpowder from the ship'south concord to the gun crews. Adjacent she joined the Army of Flanders, serving in both the infantry and cavalry. She fell in honey with her bunkmate and divulged her secret to him. Initially, the soldier suggested that Mary get his mistress—or, as Johnson put it, "he idea of aught but gratifying his Passions with very fiddling Ceremony"—merely 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 regular army and married the solider, who died shortly before the plough of the 18th century.
Mary resumed her life as a man and sailed for the West Indies on a Dutch ship, which was shortly captured by English pirates. The crew, believing Mary to be a fellow Englishman, encouraged her to bring together them. Calico Jack Rackam served as the quartermaster of her new coiffure, and he, forth with his shipmates, never suspected Mary's true gender. She was aggressive and ruthless, always gear up for a raid, and swore, well, like a drunken crewman. She was "very profligate," recalled one of her victims, "cursing and swearing much." Loose clothing hid her breasts, and no one idea twice about her lack of facial hair; her mates, well-nigh of them in their teens or early twenties, were also smooth-faced. Information technology'south 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 ane mean solar day burst into her motel intending to slit her pharynx. Mary sat up and opened her blouse. Rackam agreed to keep Mary's secret from the balance of the crew and continued to treat her as an equal. (He was also somewhat mollified when she took upwardly with a male crewmate.)
During battles Anne and Mary fought next, wearing billowing jackets and long trousers and handkerchiefs wrapped effectually their heads, wielding a machete and pistol in either hand. "They were very active on lath," another victim later testified, "and wiling to exercise any Affair." The summertime and early fall of 1720 proved peculiarly lucrative for Rackam's coiffure. In September they took vii fishing boats and two sloops virtually Harbor Isle. A few weeks subsequently, Anne and Mary led a raid confronting a schooner, shooting at the crew every bit they climbed aboard, blasphemous every bit they gathered their plunder: tackle, fifty rolls of tobacco and 9 numberless of pimento. They held their captives for 2 days before releasing them.
Near midnight on October 22, Anne and Mary were on deck when they noticed a mysterious sloop gliding up aslope 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, merely 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 concur. Outnumbered, Rackam signaled surrender and chosen for quarter.
Merely Anne and Mary refused to give up. They remained on deck and faced the governor'southward men lone, 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 concur and yell, "If in that location'south a human being 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 downwardly into the hold, killing one of them. Anne, Mary and the rest of Rackam's coiffure were finally overpowered and taken prisoner.
Calico Jack Rackam was scheduled to be executed past hanging on November 18, and his final request was to see Anne. She had but one matter to say to him: "If you had fought similar a man, you demand non have been hang'd similar a dog." 10 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 1 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 and so 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 take 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 Blackness 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 South. 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 Virtually Notorious Women. New York: Penguin Grouping, 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, Apr 23, 1992; "West Indian Sketches." New Hampshire Gazette, Apr 10, 1838; "How Blackbeard Met His Fate." Washington Post, September 9, 1928; "Seafaring Women." Los Angeles Times, March eight, 1896; "Capt. Kidd and Others." New York Times, January 1, 1899; "Female Pirates." Boston Globe, August 9, 1903.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/if-theres-a-man-among-ye-the-tale-of-pirate-queens-anne-bonny-and-mary-read-45576461/
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