As a great pirate once said “The ship is the best teacher. She will guide you with her sighs… her shudders, her gentle swaying as she rides the crests of the waves.” – In reality that was Isabela from Dragon Age attempting to woo a grey warden, but I’m sure it still applies to the actual sea, right? Anyway, before I get carried away writing about Dragon Age, let me tell you about another infamous pirate. Today, we’re talking about Mary Read’s partner-in-crime, Anne Bonny.

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Anne Bonny is believed to have been born in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland around 1697 to William Cormac and Mary Brennan. Her father was a well-known lawyer and her mother was a servant, meaning that Anne was an illegitimate child. To cover up the scandal of the affair, William dressed Anne as a boy and attempted to convince people that she was a distant relative he’d been made to look after; but, when Williams wife made her husband’s affair public and ousted Anne as a girl, he fled to Charleston, South Carolina with Mary and Anne in an attempt to build his reputation back up. After he managed to start his legal career once again, they bought a plantation. Mary Brennan died in 1711 and it was then when Anne became a rebel – Okay, that’s an understatement. According to legend, she murdered a servant girl and beat a man, who tried to rape her, half to death.

After about seven years of drunken antics, several affairs with fishermen and sailors, William couldn’t take any more of his reputation being damaged because of his daughter’s actions and the final straw came when Anne married a man named James Bonny in 1718. So, her and James hoped on a ship and sailed to New Providence in the Bahamas. James Bonny became the local snitch and would often rat out pirates to the infamous Governor Woodes Rogers – who shows up in Blackbeard’s story and puts both him, Anne Bonny and a handful of other pirates on a most wanted list.

It’s safe to say that Anne was pretty disappointed with the man she’d married and began drinking heavily in the bars, meeting and befriending the pirates that would hold up there. Here she met a man who ran a brothel. This, eventually led her to Jack ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham – named after his love for fancy clothes. The two ran away together and began pirating along the coast of Jamaica. While their relationship wasn’t public knowledge, on the ship she was the Captains woman and off-limits to any of the crew.

Women were generally bad-luck on ships because they ‘distracted the crew’ or in vulgar terms, men couldn’t keep it in their pants and this would keep the crew from their duties, which, in turn would anger the sea and cause storms. Ironically and to the pleasure of most of the crew on board, naked women would calm the sea; this is the reason a naked woman was usually placed as a figurehead.

Naturally, the relationship between Bonny and Calico Jack led to a pregnancy, but the rumor states that Calico left Anne in Cuba to deliver the baby as soon as he found out. Nobody really knows what happened to the child; some believe that it died at birth, others believe that Calico had a friend who agreed to raise the kid.  

Shortly after, Anne met Mary Read. The two formed a close friendship being the only two women on the ship. Most of the time when docked and pillaging Anne, much like Mary, would pass as a man.  The two together formed an unbreakable team, apparently taking ships and even leading a raid against a schooner (a ship with two or more masts) and held captives for days before releasing them.

Then everything went wrong for Calico Jack’s crew in 1720 when they went to party off the coast of Jamaica. While the crew were off getting drunk they were attacked and arrested and only Mary and Anne fought back against the attackers, while Rackham quickly surrendered. The two continued fighting until they were overwhelmed and taken to Jamaica. In November of 1720, all the crew were tried, convicted and hanged, all apart from Mary Read and Anne Bonny, who were tried on November 28th and sentenced to death. The reason for this extension on their trial was because they were both pregnant and their executions would be postponed until both children had been born; however, Read died in the April in prison, but it’s believed that released and returned to Charlestown, where she married and had more children, living out the remainder of her life in peace.

So, another adventure of one of the best swashbuckling pirates there was, most of which comes from a book called A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson, so we cant say whether this was all true.

While this one ends with a white picket fence and a big nice house, let’s not forget that this woman was one of the fiercest, best and baddist women to sail the seas.

Thanks again for reading! If you like this blog, please be sure to follow and like my facebook page under the same name to keep you up to date on any new blogs.

As always, stay safe and thanks!

Cait