Female Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read And How They Escaped Death Sentences
By April 19, 2021
Hollywood depicts female pirates as lusty, tight-bodiced hotties who are equally skilled in fighting and pillaging, throwing back pints of rum, and seducing their enemies, but the reality is slightly more complicated. The pirate world of the Caribbean, which thrived from about 1650–1730, was very much a man's world, but Anne Bonny and Mary Read managed to sneak in and earn reputations as ruthless female pirates—mostly by dressing as men.
Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny spent much of her childhood pretending to be a boy, so cross-dressing came naturally to her. Born sometime around 1698 in County Cork, Ireland to prominent attorney William Cormac and his family's maid, Anne was presented to the world as the young son of a distant relative of her father, who kept her hair cut short and dressed her in boys' clothes. When the ruse was discovered, Cormac and Anne's mother, Mary Brennan, fled Ireland in disgrace for Charleston, South Carolina.
After Brennan's death in 1711, Anne ran wild, drinking at the local taverns into the wee hours of the night and bedding the fishermen who docked in Charleston. She also developed a fierce temper, once beating a man half to death who had attempted to rape her and possibly even fatally stabbing a servant girl who crossed her. Still, Cormac didn't disown his daughter until 1718, when she eloped with James Bonny, a lowly sailor.
Since her new husband was a wannabe pirate, the newlyweds moved to the Bahamas, but James Bonny made more money as a mole, secretly turning in wanted pirates. While he was off turning his cloak, Anne was doing her thing in the local watering holes and getting cozy with several true-blue pirates, including John Rackam, A.K.A. Calico Jack. She soon left her husband to join Jack's crew, and despite superstitions against women on board, Anne lived openly on the ship as Jack's paramour, though she tucked her hair into a cap and posed as a man during battles with merchant ships. Often, Calico Jack took prisoners, which is how Annie met Mary.
Mary Read
Like Anne Bonny, Mary Read was also forced to dress like a boy as a child. Her mother had given birth to a son just before her husband died at sea, and her in-laws offered to financially support the boy until he reached adulthood, but after her son died in infancy, she had to get creative to secure her financial future. She quickly got pregnant and had a second child, an illegitimate daughter that she named Mary but passed off as her husband's son. Even after the deception was uncovered, she continued to dress Mary as a boy and allowed her to take odd jobs that were typically reserved for young men.
One such workplace was the British naval fleet, where she fell in love with her bunkmate. After she revealed both her feelings and genital configuration, however, the young man responded with offensive propositions that Mary rebuffed on the grounds of being a "proper lady," so he outed her to the rest of the crew, forcing her to quit her job. With few options left, she married her former crush, but he died soon after. On her own once again, she resumed life as a man and took a job on a Dutch ship headed for the West Indies, which was attacked by Calico Jack. Assuming she was a fellow Englishman, his men invited her to join their pirate crew, an offer she gladly accepted. Mary fit in well with the crew: She drank heavily, swore like a sailor, and fought with the best of them. No one suspected her secret.
