Anne Bonny

Anne Bonny (born Anna Cormac) was an Irish pirate born in Kinsale, County Cork in 1700. Very little is known of her life, but it is known that she was the bastard daughter of a lawyer, William Cormac, and his maidservant, Mary Brennan, conceived while Cormac's wife was ill and living with her Mother in Law.  Brennan also had a suitor, a young man who worked as a tanner in the town. The tanner used to call on the house when Cormac was out, and on one occasion, slipped three silver spoons into his pocket. Brennan soon noticed they were gone, and confronted him. Alarmed, he hid the spoons under Brennan's bedsheets. When Mrs. Cormac recovered from her illness and returned to the house, Brennan told her of the missing spoons. The tanner was called for, and claimed it was a jest, and told Mrs Cormac the spoons were in Brennan's bed. The matter was then settled, however Mrs. Cormac then realised that Brennan would surely have found the spoons if she had been sleeping in her own bed. She then left her husband, and Cormac and Brennan (who was pregnant) moved to Kinsale where Bonny was born.
They moved to Carolina when Bonny was 12, and her mother died shortly after. Her father failed to establish himself as a lawyer and joined a more profitable merchant business.
Bonny is said to have been a comely lass with red hair and a hot temper, and is said to have badly beaten a young man who tried to rape her, and he lay ill of it for a considerable time. Her father expected a good marriage for her, however at a young age she married James Bonny, a poor sailor and small-time pirate who hoped to inherit Cormac's estate, but Cormac disowned his daughter. The two moved to Nassau, a haven for pirates in the Caribbean. When Woodes Rogers arrived to quell the pirate fleets, James Bonny became his informant.

Once in Nassau, Bonny quickly tired of her husband and left him. It was then she met Captain "Calico" Jack Rackham, and became his lover and accomplice aboard the ship Revenge. She had a son by him in Cuba, who would take the name Cunningham, and once recovered, she returned to sea with Rackham. Reports say that Bonny was a competent pirate and skilled in combat, and Woodes Rogers included her name in a list in a 'Wanted Pirates' circular in the continent's only newspaper, The Boston News-Letter. It was then that she met "Mark" Read, a pirate in Rackham's crew, who she took a fancy to. After endeavouring to mate his better acquaintance, Mark revealed himself to be a woman, Mary Read. She revealed herself to Rackham also to calm his jealousy, but her identity remained a secret to all others.

When Rackham's crew was attacked by pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet in 1720, most of the crew including Rackham were dead drunk, and only Read, Bonny, and one unnamed other stood on deck to fight the hunters. They were overwhelmed and taken to Jamaica for trial. Like Read, Bonny was pregnant at the time of her trial, and was able to "plead the belly" to stay her execution. Her last words to Rackham were, "I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you need not have been hang'd like a dog."

There is no historical record of what happened to Bonny after her imprisonment, only that she was never executed. Some speculate that her father ransomed her, or that she escaped, or that she lived out her days in jail, but nobody knows for sure.

Mary Read

Mary Read was an English pirate born outside of London circa 1690, famously one of only two women convicted of piracy in the early 18th Century.

Read was bastard-born to a widow of a sailor who had died at sea. To preserve her dignity, Read's mother moved to the countryside so as to hide her bastard child from those who knew her. Read had had an elder brother, Mark, a year older who had died in infancy. Read's mother dressed her as a boy to disguise the girl as her brother in order to continue receiving financial support from her late husband's mother. Upon presenting the child, the old woman was fooled and offered to adopt the child from her, but Read's mother claimed parting would break her heart, and so instead the grandmother gave Read's mother a crown a week as maintenance until she died when Read was thirteen.

Read completely assumed the identity of her brother Mark, and apparently having a masculine bearing and making a convincing boy, found employment on a ship before joining the British Army. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Read fell in love with a Flemish soldier, and using their military wages and gifts from well-wishing comrades, moved to the Netherlands and opened an inn named 'De drie hoefijzers' (The Three Horseshoes).Read's husband died in obscure circumstances not long after they were married, and with the Peace of Ryswick being concluded, the military custom their inn had relied on dried up, and so with her life in the Netherlands ruined, she readopted her male persona and enlisted in the Dutch military. However, with the war over there was no room for advancement, so Read quit the service and found work on a ship bound for the West Indies.

The ship was taken by pirates, and being the only 'Englishman' aboard, Read was pressed into their crew. Later, Read and the crew she served in took the king's pardon, but later enlisted as a privateer in a war against the Spanish. No sooner had this crew set sail than they, with Read among them, turned on their captain and resumed their old trade.
In 1720, she joined Calico Jack's crew, still disguised as a man. She revealed herself to Rackham's lover Anne Bonny, who having taken Read for a handsome young lad, sought to make his better acquaintance. Read was forced to disappoint Bonny by revealing that she was a woman, and so as to quiet the jealous Jack Rackham, revealed herself to him also.

Read took a lover among those pressed into Rackham's crew, whose name is lost to history. However it is known that he quarrelled with one of the pirates, and one challenged the other to a duel ashore. Read was afraid for her lover's life, and so made a point of quarrelling with the same pirate, and also challenged him to a duel ashore, two hours sooner than he was to face her lover. She fought him with sword and pistol, and killed him on the spot. Later at her trial, Read would not give up her lover's identity, but would only say he was an honest man pressed into the pirate crew and they had both resolved to find an honest livelihood at the first opportunity.

Later that year, while hosting an off-shore rum party, Rackham's crew were attacked by pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet, who disabled Rackham's ship with a broadside. Rackham and most of his crew fled into the hold, probably dead drunk, leaving only Read, Bonny and one unnamed other to fight the hunters. Read allegedly fired angrily into the hold where the crew were hiding and killed one for cowardice.

The crew was overwhelmed and arrested, and Read and the others were taken to Spanish Town, Jamaica and convicted of piracy. However as Read was pregnant, she was granted a stay of execution, known as 'pleading the belly' to postpone her hanging.

Read died of a fever in prison, and was buried on the 28th of April, 1721, aged c.30.