History’s Famous Women Pirates: Grace O’Malley, Anne Bonny and Mary Read

by Charles River Editors

  However, once Mrs. Read reached her new town tragedy struck once again, this time taking the life of her infant son. It was around this time that Mrs. Read came up with a cunning plan; if her new child was a boy, she could remain away long enough to let him “catch up” with the older baby’s age and them pass him off as her first child, once more returning to her mother-in-law’s good graces.

  Unfortunately for Mrs. Read, fate had other plans, and she soon gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Mary. She may not have had the boy she desired, but the determined young woman saw no reason for the child’s gender to thwart her plans, and she began to immediately dress young Mary in her dead brother’s clothes. This was made easier by the fact that boys and girls in 17th century Europe both wore dresses until they were five or six years old. Her plan succeeded, and the elder Mrs. Read became once more enamored of her little grandson and continued to support them until her death.

  As Mary’s mother continued the ruse, little Mary found that she not only enjoyed dressing like a boy but also loved having access to the freedom that the life of a boy afforded her. Though her mother explained to her when she was old enough to understand that she was not actually a boy like other boys, Mary chose to continue to live as if she had been born male. After her grandmother died, her mother was again destitute and again hatched a plan to use her daughter to support her. Mary was by this time 13 years old, and when dressed in male clothing she looked very much the part of the effeminate footmen that the French nobility of that time preferred.

  Before long, however, Mary grew tired of the restrictions of her life in the home of a nobleman and decided to seek her fortune elsewhere. She began by joining the crew of a British Man of War, but at first she found that life at sea was not to her particular liking. It may have been that she found it difficult to conceal her true gender within the cramped quarters of a sailing ship, but at the same time she was still just a teenager. She may very well have been intimidated by the rough and tumble life of a British sailor.

  Whatever her reasons, she soon left the navy and joined the British army as a foot soldier. Though she did well in battle and was brave under fire, she soon realized that her family background was not sufficiently noble to earn her a commission as an officer in the infantry. As a result, she transferred again, this time to the cavalry, where she earned high praise for her ability to ride and shoot. It is unclear where she might have learned these skills, but the most likely place was while she was employed by the French nobleman.

  It was while in the cavalry that Mary’s life as a man came to an abrupt end. While she was in Holland she found herself fighting alongside a Flemish soldier and often spending evenings talking to him by the fireside. Before long, she found that she was no longer taking care of either her gear or herself, with her mind constantly wandering back to her Flemish comrade. She also found herself volunteering for increasingly dangerous missions, if for no reason than to fight by his side and help protect him. As Johnson quipped in A General History of the Pyrates, “Mars and Venus could not be served at the same Time.”

  As their feelings for each other intensified, the men with whom she served began to be suspicious, as did the object of her affection. When rumors began to fly about the camp that she might be homosexual, she decided to “come out of the closet” in a most unusual way: she admitted to her Flemish love that she was, in fact, a woman. The soldier, perhaps relieved that he had not fallen in love with another man, was thrilled to discover that she was in fact female, because it seemed to afford him the chance to take up his own personal mistress in camp. Johnson explained, “He was much surprized at what he found out, and not a little pleased, taking it for granted, that he should have a Mistress solely to himself, which is an unusual Thing in a Camp, since there is scarce one of those Campaign Ladies, that is ever true to a Troop or Company…”

  While his initial intentions appear to have been strictly to make her his mistress, he soon discovered that she was not that willing to enter into a sexual relationship without the security of marriage. It’s possible that Mary understood the price her mother paid for bearing her as an illegitimate daughter and was determined to avoid that fate herself.

  For his part, her Flemish comrade eventually grew tired of waiting and proposed that they marry as soon as they could. Thus, when the army went into its summer quarters, they pooled their wages and bought her some simple, female clothing. Thus dressed, she broke the news to the company commander, who responded better than they had hoped and allowed her to leave the army with no blot on her record. Upon that, they were able to marry, and needless to say, the wedding between two former soldiers attracted much attention in the camp and led to the soldiers putting together, from their limited salaries, a sizable amount of cash for the newlyweds to begin their life together.

  Using the money that they were given, as well as a little they had saved from their mutual salaries, the young couple bought an inn named The Three Horseshoes near Breda in Holland. Mary traded her breeches for petticoats and her gun for mugs of ale. There they did a good business, attracting many of their former brothers-in-arms, as well as others who heard their story and wanted to see the famous couple for themselves. But tragedy seemed to have an affinity for the Read family, and Mary’s comfortably happy life ended when her husband died and left her a widow. Unable to continue to run the busy inn on her own, Mary returned to the only work she knew: soldiering. She cut her hair short again, pulled her sailor trousers out of the trunk and returned to Holland and the life of a foot soldier.

  Mary obviously couldn’t return to her cavalry division now that they knew her true gender, so instead she volunteered for out-of-the-way outposts with very few men, banking on the odds that she would not run into anyone who would recognize her. But this time, her plan to go to war was thwarted by peace. She soon realized that there was little hope of advancement within the confines of the peacetime military. Thus, instead of remaining in the army and waiting for her luck to run out, she boarded a merchant ship bound for the West Indies. In a new land, she might have reasoned, she would have new opportunities.

  Chapter 2: Anne Cormac

  18th century depiction of Anne Bonny

  “Anne was not one of his legitimate Issue, which seems to cross an old Proverb, which says, that Bastards have the best Luck.” – Captain Charles Johnston, A General History of the Pyrates

  The story of Anne Bonny, and perhaps her ultimate fate, was set before she was even born. Her father, William Cormac, was a prominent Irish lawyer in County Cork who had been married a year or two when his wife gave birth to their first child. The birth was somewhat traumatic and it was decided that she would go to his mother’s home to rest and recover. To keep the house running while his wife was gone, Cormac hired a young woman named Peg Brennan. During the wife’s absence, Cormac and Brennan became romantically entangled, and not long after his wife returned, she discovered their misadventures and began to plan her revenge.

  Her first step was to return to the home of the elder Mrs. Cormac and share with her what her son had been up to. Wife and mother then joined forces to see to it that Cormac lived to regret his actions. He was cut off from all his family’s money and told that his wife would never return to him. The wife also accused Brennan of stealing some family silver and had her thrown in jail, where she remained for about six months. During this time the wife’s anger against her waned, and after learning that the girl was pregnant, she dropped the charges against her. Brennan was released and returned to her own home, where she delivered a healthy baby girl, Anne, on March 8, 1702.

  Not long after Anne was born, the younger Mrs. Cormac gave birth herself to twins, a boy and a girl. They appear to have been conceived during the short time between her return to Cork and her discovery of her husband’s infidelity. By this time the, elder Mrs. Cormac was dying and called for her son to be reconciled to his wife for the sake of the two babies, but he refused and questioned if the children were even his, since the
y were born so soon after his wife’s journey away from him.

  Angered by her son’s refusal to restore his family, the elder Mrs. Cormac changed her will, leaving all her money in trust for the care of her legitimate grandchildren and the younger Mrs. Cormac. She then died, still estranged from her son. Following her death, Cormac fell on hard times, so his wife, still feeling some affection, began to provide for him out of her inheritance.

  Nevertheless, during this time Cormac had also kept up his relationship with Peg Brennan, though at something of a distance. They wrote to each other regularly, and he was kept well informed of the growth and development of young Anne. When the little girl was about five years old, he decided that he would like the chance to get to know her better, so he invited her to come and live with him. However, he knew that if his wife found out, she would not be pleased and might very well cut off his allowance.

  To get around this potential problem, he hatched a cunning plan. He wrote to Brennan and told her to cut the child’s hair and dress her as a boy. She could then send her to him by carriage but not come herself, and he would subsequently tell the community that Anne was actually the son of a distant relative who had been sent to apprentice as a law clerk. The plan worked for a while, and father and daughter finally got to know one another, but Mrs. Cormac eventually discovered that the boy was actually Brennan’s daughter. This proved to be more than Mrs. Cormac could stand, and she immediately cut off her husband’s allowance.

  For his part, William realized that without the money he had nothing to lose, so instead of sending Anne back to live with her mother, he brought Peg to live with them. While this had the desired effect of upseting and embarrassing his wife, it also brought him into public disrepute in the community and resulted in a serious decline in his law practice. When he was no longer able to support himself and figured that his life in Ireland was ruined, William decided to cut his losses and try his hand in the New World. He sold everything he had except the clothes on his back and, taking Peg and Anne with him, boarded a sailing ship bound for the Carolinas, ultimately settling in the Bahamas.

  William quickly tried to establish a new law practice, but he discovered in short order that there was less demand for lawyers there in the early 18th century. Eventually William turned to merchandising, which suited him better, and for the next several years he and Peg lived together as man and wife while he bought and sold goods in the coastal town where they had landed. Before long, he had amassed a sufficient fortune that allowed him to purchase a rice plantation, where he and his family lived happily for a few more years until Peg’s death. By this time, Anne was about 13 and considered a young woman more than capable of taking over her mother’s duties as mistress of the plantation.

  Chapter 3: Anne Bonny

  “She was of a fierce and couragious Temper, wherefore, when she lay under Condemnation, several Stories were reported of her, much to her Disadvantage, as that she had kill’d an English Servant-Maid once in her Passion with a Case-Knife, while she look’d after her Father’s House; but upon further Enquiry, I found this Story to be groundless: It was certain she was so robust, that once, when a young Fellow would have lain with her, against her Will, she beat him so, that he lay ill of it a considerable Time.” – Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates

  At 13, the slender and athletic Anne was considered very good looking. She had her parents’ Irish coloring, with creamy skin, flaming red hair and pea green eyes. She also had a remarkable amount of grace and balance for a girl of her time, probably due in part to the fact she spent some of her early life romping and playing outdoors as a “boy” instead of sitting and sewing by the fire. But Anne also had a fiery temper to match her red hair, and she was known throughout the community for giving anyone that crossed her a piece of her mind. Sometimes, if they were not careful, they might get something else; on at least one occasion, she attacked a servant girl with a case knife, and the anonymous author who wrote A General History of the Pyrates under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson suggested that she actually killed the girl. And while Anne no longer dressed as a boy, it seems she still fought like one. On another occasion, when she was alone in the house or out for a walk, a young man attacked her with the intention of raping her. However, he soon regrtted his attempt when she fought back so fiercely that she beat him unconscious. Though he survived the attack, he was apparently out of commission for some time and never tried anything like that with her again.

  One might think that such a dangerous young woman would have a problem finding a husband, but in the early 18th century there were very few available women living in the Bahamas. As a result, those who were there had no problem finding young, single men to court them. Also, by this time, Anne was the only daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, making her all the more attractive as a match. Unfortunately for her father and potential suitors, Anne’s temper and rebellious streak made her turn up her nose at all the nicer young men from good families that her father brought home to meet her. Fittingly, Anne was attracted to the shadier rogues instead, and when she was 16 years old, she fell in love with James Bonny, a poor sailor with rumored underworld connections.

  When she told her father of her new beau, he flew into a rage and informed her that the word around the island was that Bonny was a pirate, and that he was probably only interested in her for her money. He forbade Anne to see him again and threatened to disinherit her if she did not end the relationship immediately. Of course, such threats meant nothing to the hard-headed girl, and her father’s disapproval may well have made Bonny even more attractive to her.

  For his part, it seems that Bonny was indeed interested in her money. While he probably found her fun and attractive, it was Anne’s future inheritance that really set his heart racing. He continued to court her, hoping no doubt that her father would come around, but even when he did not, the two took their chances by eloping and running away to get married. William Cormac responded as promised and disowned her.

  One legend has it that Anne was so incensed at being cut out of her father’s will that she decided if she was not to have the plantation, no one would. The story claims Anne (and possibly Bonny) proceeded to sneak on to the grounds in the dark of night and tried to set fire to the fields and the house, but since there is no record of this event, it’s likely either that Anne failed or never actually made the attempt.

  Following their marriage, Anne and James moved to Nassau on what was then known as New Providence Island, hoping to find work there. When they arrived there, sometime between 1714 and 1718, it was a well-known haven for pirates, especially those from Britain. Over the previous century, many nations from Europe attempted to gain control of the various islands of the Caribbean, leading to competition that mostly took place on the seas and left no single nation able to enforce law and order in the area. Naturally, piracy exploded in this environment, with many pirates igniting fear across the warm tropical seas of the middle Atlantic.

  Anne and her husband were arriving to New Providence Island right around the time Queen Anne’s War was coming to an end. In Europe, the war was called the War of Spanish Succession, since that was the substance of the war, but in North America it was known as Queen Anne’s War. Each of the major belligerents - Spain, France and England - controlled critical pieces of North America, ultimately sucking them in despite the fact they were far removed from European thrones. In North America, the hostilities focused principally on various border disputes, and the Native Americans in the region were also actively involved in the development of the conflict.

  When the European nations were officially at war with each other, they used private sailors as privateers to aid their cause. Being a privateer was, in some sense, legalized piracy; a privateer was not a member of the Royal Navy but instead owned his own private ship and received a contract (called a letter of marquee) from the government to attack enemy ships during a time of war. This allowed the marque-awarding government to place u
ndercover ships out to war. It also, however, made the enemy wary of anything the opposing belligerent owned, and thus caused many private ships to be enveloped in the war, even the kinds of merchant ships that posed no threat and were essentially civilian targets.

  The line between a privateer and a pirate was often vague. For practical purposes, there was no apparent difference, other than that a privateer was legally sanctioned by a government while a pirate was often a freerider independent of any larger organization. When it came to day-to-day activities, however, the aim of the privateer was the same as that of the pirate: to find treasure and to steal it.

  Privateers were valuable during war, but they were a problem when the wars ended. Naturally, those who had been privateers kept doing what they did best even when their nations were no longer technically at war, and after years of serving as a sort of paramilitary organization for the British Crown, many former privateers had fallen into disrepute when peacetime made their sanctioned robbery illegal. Much had changed in the century since Elizabeth I had knighted Francis Drake for robbing Spanish ships; there was now too much legal trade going on with the New World to allow rogue pirate ships to interfere with the dealings. But the ultimate result was that the privateers who had once served their own nations now had no qualms about robbing from the mother country anymore.

  In a letter written by Governor Hamilton, English governor of the Bahamas, to the Council of Trade on April 10, 1716, he complained:

  “In my former letter I acquainted your Lordships with Captain Soanes, H.M.S. Seahorse, who did design to leave this station and notwithstanding all the arguments that I have used, he does persist in his resolution of going home for Great Britain, before the arrival of the other ship of war to supply his place, and notwithstanding that we have now pirates among these Islands which I had an account of one of the Lieut. Governor of Antigua had been seen off for eight or ten days to the Windward part of that Island.