If There’s a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read
Last week Mike Dash told a tale of high seas adventure that put me in mind of another, somewhat earlier one. Not that Anne Bonny and Mary Read had much in common with kindly old David O’Keefe—they were pirates, for one thing, 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 not 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 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 Most 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 birth in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, circa 1698. Her father, 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 fond of the child he arranged for her to live with him. To avoid scandal, he dressed her as a boy and introduced her as the child of a relative entrusted to his care. When Anne’s 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 “fierce and courageous temper,” reportedly murdering a servant girl with a case knife and beating half to death a suitor who tried to rape her.
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