Happy Friday! I hope that all who celebrated it had a good Thanksgiving yesterday. We had a great time with our friends. And the Cowboys beat the Kansas City Chiefs! For a team that hasn't done very well this season, they beat two recent Super Bowl champion teams in in the past week – woo hoo!
There is something about pirates that is intriguing. Not so much modern pirates but those from days of olde. (I led a discussion of Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean at my synagogue book club earlier this year and it was the best-attended session ever! And, our course, Captain Morgan attended.) On this day in 1720, two infamous female pirates went on trial, were convicted and sentenced to death. Did that get your attention?
The life of Englishwoman Mary Read was not well documented but is strange regardless. Per history of dubious accuracy, her mother married a sailor and they had a son. The husband deserted the family, then mom had an affair and gave birth to Mary. Mary's half-brother died in childhood and her mother dressed her as a boy and passed her off as the deceased son to collect money from his paternal grandmother. It gets stranger...the dead half-brother's grandma died when Mary was 13 but she continued to dress as a boy.
Incognito, Mary worked as a servant, then went to Flanders to serve in the military. She met another soldier, revealed her true sex to him and they married. After serving in the military, they opened an inn in the Netherlands called the Three Horseshoes. Her husband became ill and died and she went back to living as a man.
She got a job as a sailor during the "golden age" of piracy (1650-1720s). Her ship was seized by pirates (or Pyrates, as it was spelled) and she either decided or was forced to join their ranks as a buccaneer. She and her crewmates sailed to Nassau and she later joined a pirate ship captained by John ("Calico Jack") Rackham. She continued to dress as a man although some of her crewmates recognized that she was a woman. She met Anne Bonny on the ship, who was having an affair with Rackham. Bonny was also dressed as a man at the time but they soon realized that they were both women, and became friends.
Anne Bonny's life is also open to speculation. She was born near Cork, Ireland and thought to be the illegitimate daughter of William Cormac, a lawyer, and one of his maids. Cormac separated from his wife because of his infidelity and had custody of Anne. The whole affair pretty much ruined his professional reputation, so he moved his new family to Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina. Unlucky number 13 also figured in Anne's life – her mother died of typhoid fever when she was 13 years old.
Her father arranged a marriage to a local man, but Anne declined his kind offer, married sailor John Bonny and they traveled to the Bahamas. John became in informant for the governor of the Bahamas, a privateer himself. Anne lost interest in him and had the aforementioned affair with Calico Jack. She offered to pay off John to get a divorce, but he refused.
Anne abandoned her husband in 1720 and worked with Calico Jack Rackham on the William (a stolen vessel) to pirate merchant vessels along the coast of Jamaica. This is notable, as women were considered to be bad luck aboard ship. However, Anne was a force to be reckoned with – one story claims that as a young girl she had beaten an attempted rapist so badly that he had to be hospitalized. Anne's crewmembers knew that she was female, and the only times that she hid her sex were when she participated in armed conflict. She met up with Mary Read on the William in August, 1720.
Bonny and Read had a reputation for being ruthless, they swore like...well...pirates, and were able and willing to "do anything on board". They led the crew in battles and fought as valiantly as men. Legend has it that Mary fell in love with a carpenter on Rackham's ship. Another, more experienced, pirate challenged him to a duel, Mary intervened knowing that her lover didn't stand a chance. The battle occurred on shore and the pirate was winning until Mary ripped opened her shirt and revealed her breasts. The other pirate - shocked – hesitated and Read stuck his neck, nearly decapitating him.
In September 1720, the governor of the Bahamas declared that Read and Bonny were "Enemies to the Crown of Great Britain". Another privateer, Capt. Jonathan Barnet, located the William and caught up with them at Negril Point, Jamaica. Most of the crew of the William were drunk at the time but Read and Bonny had not imbibed and battled their pursuers. Nonetheless, the crew was captured and brought in for trial. Rackham and the male crew members were immediately found guilty and hung. Bonny and Read were tried on November 28, found guilty and sentenced to death but their executions were stayed when it was discovered that they were both pregnant. Read died in prison the next year. Bonny was released, returned to Charles Towne, married, had children and lived there for the remainder of her life.
And who says that girls can't dress as pirates on Halloween? Shiver me timbers lads and lasses! Have a swashbuckling good weekend!
Deb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf0E_PJtJWg&t=11s