Who She Was: Mary Read was born near London. Like Anne Bonny, Mary was an illegitimate child. Her mother was married, but not to Mary’s father. When her father died, her mother started dressing Mary as a boy and pretended that Mary was her husband’s child, a son who had recently died. By the time Mary was 16, she was a sailor on a “man-of-war,” an English navy ship. Next, she tried the army for awhile. She fought with great distinction until she fell in love with a comrade-in-arms and neglected her fighting duties, not to mention her efforts at male impersonation. Mary got her man, and they gave up soldiering to become innkeepers.
From Innkeeper to Pirate: Mary might have spent her life slinging ale instead of slicing up cabin boys, but her husband died, and Mary started to feel the pinch of poverty. She tried soldiering again, and at the end of her service, sailed to the West Indies. On the way, she was captured by pirates. Before you know it, she was one of the boldest “men” who ever sailed under a pirate flag.
France’s Charles VI had iron rods put into his clothes to keep his “glass body” from breaking.
Where and When She Sailed: Small world. Captain Calico Jack Rackham and his crew were the pirates who boarded Mary’s ship. Mary joined them and sailed on the Revenge until 1720.
A Legend in Her Time: Mary was famous for her fearlessness and loyalty. She still had a romantic side. While on the Revenge, she fell in love again. This time with a fellow pirate who was in trouble because he’d pledged to fight a duel with another mean, tough pirate. Mary’s sweetheart was sure to lose. To protect him, Mary picked a fight with the guy. When her terrified boyfriend showed up for the duel, his opponent was dead. Mary had killed him.
Mary Shows Her Stuff: In 1720, when the British boarded the Revenge to take its captain and crew to prison, Mary stayed on deck with Anne Bonny and fought the enemy off. When she saw other pirates retreating with the captain into the hold, Mary fired on them in anger and disgust. When captured, like Anne, she told the court that she was pregnant. Yet she believed in hanging. If it wasn’t for hanging, “every cowardly fellow would turn pyrate and so infest the seas, that men of courage must starve.”
Her Last Days: Mary Read died in prison of fever.
CHENG I SAO
The Pirate Godmother: History’s most successful pirate wasn’t Blackbeard or Red Beard. It was Cheng I Sao, a Chinese woman.
Who She Was: Born around 1775, Cheng I Sao lived on the banks of the South China Sea, where families lived on sail-powered houseboats called junks. Women on these junks fished, traded, and pirated alongside their men. In her youth, Cheng I Sao was a prostitute, on the low rung of poverty’s ladder.
From Hooker to Pirate: She was lucky to marry well; her husband owned a fleet of pirate junks, so they went into business. Pirating was an entrepreneurial opportunity, and she grabbed it.
Where and When She Sailed: The newlyweds were among the many pirates on the coasts and inland waterways of Kwangtung province in China during the early 19th century.
A Legend in Her Time: Most Chinese pirates operated in quarrelsome gangs. Cheng I Sao and her husband operated a family business. They realized that if the pirates stopped quarreling, they could become a true power. Cheng I unified the pirates into a confederation. When he died in 1807, Cheng I Sao took over.
She made her husband’s adopted son, Cheng Pao, her lover and trusted lieutenant. Then she built up six fleets of junks that carried cannons and up to 400 men each. Plunder was shared, and warehouses were filled to keep the pirates well supplied and well armed. The first time pirates stole booty they were flogged, the second time they were executed. Deserters lost their ears. Fornicators could lose their heads. But thanks to discipline, the confederation of pirates became a fighting force and a moneymaking machine that not only robbed ships, but also sold “protection” to fishermen and merchants and even entire villages.
Cheng I Sao Shows Her Stuff: When the Chinese government tried to tame her organization, Cheng I Sao sent her pirates (who ate their enemies’ hearts with rice for fortitude) to terrorize the nation and its rulers. Government fleets, sent to destroy the pirates, were themselves destroyed. A captured government officer was nailed to a deck and beaten horribly before he was killed.
Her Last Days: After negotiating a deal with the government so she wouldn’t be prosecuted, Cheng I Sao retired in 1810. She married Cheng Pao, and kept her nose clean until he died. Then she went back to a life of crime, running illegal businesses that involved gambling and possible smuggling. For ambitious Cheng I Sao, this was a quiet life. She died of natural causes in 1844.
Charlemagne and Otto von Bismarck are credited with leading the First and Second Reich.
GRACE O’MALLEY
Rebel With a Cause: If ever a woman was a pirate-queen, it was 16th century Irishwoman Gráinne, a.k.a. Grania or Grace O’Malley. The English considered her a dangerous rebel. Those who depended on her viewed her as a fearless, shrewd leader who put food on their table and defended their Gaelic way of life.
Who She Was: Around 1530, in Ireland’s Mayo County, Grace was born into the Gaelic aristocracy. Her wealthy father, Owen O’Malley was the elected chief of the O’Malley clan and captain of a fleet of ships. Grace loved the sea, but girls were not supposed to be sailors. As legend has it, she cut off her hair and dressed in boy’s clothes so she could go to sea. The family laughingly nicknamed her “Gráinne Mhaol” meaning “bald Grace,” and allowed her to travel with her father. It was a life-saving decision. When Owen O’Malley’s ship was attacked and a pirate came up behind him with a dagger, little Grace jumped down from the rigging to go after the pirate. This distraction saved Owen, and his men defeated the pirates.
Where and When She Sailed: At 16, Grace was given in a political marriage to Donal O’Flaherty, the heir to the leadership of the O’Flaherty clan. The united clans controlled the waters off the west coast of Ireland. The couple lived in castles when not at sea.
For 209 days, a Canadian named Andrew Bonar Law was prime minister of Britain.
Pirate Queen: After 19 years of marriage, Donal died defending Cork’s Castle from a rival clan. Grace, now the widowed mother of three children, stormed and regained the castle. Her bravery led to Cork’s Castle being renamed Hen’s Castle—the name it has today. Grace returned to O’Malley territory and went back to sea. She charged money for safe passage along the west coast and plundered any ship that didn’t pay tribute. Eventually, she married again, and moved into her new husband’s home, Rockfleet Castle. She dominated her second husband, Richard Burke, while controlling the seas from Clew Island to Galway.
A Legend in Her Time: Legend says that Grace gave birth to her fourth child onboard ship, one day before Turkish pirates attacked. When a crewman told her that the Turks were winning, she said “May you be seven times worse this day twelve months, who cannot do without me for one day.” She rushed into battle wrapped in a blanket, defeated the pirates, and added their ship to her fleet.
The Pirate Queen Meets the Virgin Queen: In 1586, Gráinne was captured by a hated enemy, Sir Richard Bingham. He confiscated her cattle and horses, tied her up, and built a special gallows to hang her. She escaped hanging and was sent home. Bingham had destroyed her livelihood on the land, and she feared he would keep her from the sea too. The wily pirate petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for justice and went to London to plead her case—risking death since Elizabeth showed no mercy to rebellious Irish chiefs.
No one knows what passed between the two queens at the meeting, but in September 1593, Queen Elizabeth ordered Bingham to pardon Grace and her family. In addition the Queen demanded that the governor give “the old woman” a stipend to live on. Elizabeth wrote that she considered the Irish leader an ally who would “fight in our quarrel with all the world.”
Her Last Days: Gráinne controlled a fleet of ships into her seventies. It’s believed she died in 1603, at home in Rockfleet Castle.
Jean-Paul Marat and Agamemnon were both slain in their bathtubs by women.
/> THE MONGOL HORDE
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The difference between the Mongols and everyone else was the personal touch they provided each and every town, hamlet, and village they visited.
Other notable invading armies didn’t really give a damn about your pathetic little hole-in-the-wall burg. It was just another bump on the road to, oh, let’s say, Russia. You could just feed ‘em lunch and send them on their way, and still get the harvest in on time. Everyone was happy, at least until the army froze itself to death outside of St. Petersburg later that winter. But hey, like that’s your problem.
THE DIFFERENCE
Not so the Mongols. Sure, they were gonna kick the stuffing out of China, sooner or later. But they weren’t in that much of a rush. China wasn’t going anywhere—heck, it’s just over that wall they built. Handy marker, that. In the meantime, they were happy to devote their full and undivided attention to you. But at least they made it simple. You had two choices: Resist, and die a totally horrible death, what with the screaming and the stabbing and the horse trampling with the clop clop clop, or surrender, and have your villagers serve as the shock troops to invade the pathetic little hole-in-the-wall burg two miles down the road. Unless they decided to kill you anyway, for tactical reasons. Nothing personal.
WHOSE VERSION OF HISTORY?
Historians typified the Mongols as a “horde.” While admittedly this would appear an apt description, as tens of thousands of yowling Asiatic warriors bore down on you with spears, atop a sea of fiery steeds, the fact is that the Mongols were both amazingly well disciplined and utterly loyal to the aims of their maximum leader. He’s a fellow we call Genghis Khan, but who, to his friends and family, was known as Temüjin.
GONE WITH THE YAK’S MILK
You can’t tell the story of the Mongols without telling the story of Genghis, a story that reads like the script pitch of a desperate hack screenwriter to a development minion for a third-rate director. Genghis, pampered son of a clan leader, found his life shattered when his noble father, Yesügei, was poisoned by the evil Tartars. (It was in the yak’s milk!). Abandoned by his clan, Genghis’ family was reduced to eating roots and fish. Genghis swore, with God as his witness, that he would never be hungry again!
David Livingstone wasn’t exactly lost. He just wasn’t interested in being found.
HIS START IN THE INVADING BUSINESS
Genghis’s father had prepared for his son’s future by finding him a fiancée when he was just a little boy. When Genghis went to claim the woman he was betrothed to, he found that she had been kidnapped and ravished by the nefarious Merkit people! Enraged, Genghis allied himself with an old blood brother of his father, gathered an army together, and crushed those nasty Merkits like the fiancée-ravishing worms they were! While he was away, the Jürkins, supposedly his allies, plundered his lands! Those Jürks! He squashed them too, and killed every member of the clan taller than a wagon axle, leaving only children alive.
MURDER, PILLAGE, AND MORE
Thus Genghis began his conquering ways. It wasn’t all murder and pillage, mind you. Genghis actually had a plan. It had been the old clan system that contributed to his father’s death and that kept the Mongol people set against themselves; Genghis changed all that by scattering the members of conquered clans among his troops, and by arranging those troops into divisions that were arranged numerically rather than by clan. Advancement in the army was thus tied to a soldier’s loyalty to Genghis, not to his former clan; soon enough, everyone was sucking up to Genghis, and of course he liked that just fine.
THE BABY-EATING RUMOR
By 1206, Genghis and his highly regimented not-at-all-a-horde horde was ready to kick some serious non-Mongol booty, and off they went. They were almost all on horseback, which gave them exceptional mobility and range, since all the horses needed to eat was the grass they found on the way to clobbering some poor foes. The Mongols also made use of whatever technology they found; they were extremely happy to use a nation’s own knowledge against it.
Genghis himself, despite his current reputation for crazed, baby-eating dictatorship, actually took advice rather well. For example, he had planned to turn the whole of northern China into a horse pasture, until it was pointed out to him that it might be better to raise food there and then profit from the taxes and trade. Only after he made that decision did he eat any babies (no, not really).
Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania, New Zealand, and Fiji, but never noticed Australia.
WHAT MADE THEM SO GOOD
It was in fact this combination of ruthlessness and adaptability that made the Mongols the invaders to beat—literally—throughout all of history. They were smarter, they were meaner, and they could rides circles around you on their little horses. Their empire ultimately reached from China to the Russian steppes. And they would have gotten Japan, too, were it not for a fortuitous typhoon that sunk their attacking ships—the fabled kamikaze, or “divine wind,” which would serve as a motivation for Japanese fighter pilots to ram explosives-laden fighter planes into American battleships in WWII.
WHAT THEY WEREN’T SO GOOD AT
The Mongols’ problem was that they were better at conquering than they were at actual empire ruling; after the death of Genghis’s grandkid Kublai Khan in 1294, it all sort of fell apart. But who cares? When they knocked on the door, and said “Hi! We’re the Mongol Horde!” you just knew they weren’t selling magazine subscriptions to work their way through college. It was trouble with a capital “T,” and that rhymed with “G,” and that stood for “Genghis.” That’s what it took to be the best invaders in history, and the Mongols had it, with plenty to spare.
HANG ‘EM HIGH
Lynching didn’t start in the old West but during the American Revolution. A justice of the peace and farmer in prewar days, Colonel Charles Lynch led a bunch of vigilantes to dispense their own brand of justice on British supporters and outlaws. Thus, hanging someone without a trial became known as “lynching,” and bands of vigilantes bent on hanging their quarry were called “lynch mobs.”
Although John Cabot sailed for the British, he was really an Italian named Giovanni Caboto.
HOW SHORT WAS NAPOLEON?
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Everybody knows at least two things about Napoleon Bonaparte. First, that he met his Waterloo, and second, that he was short. But exactly how short was he?
Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, stood 5 feet, 6½ inches in his stocking feet; short by today’s standards—but not by the standards of his time or his countrymen.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE PARISIAN
The average height of a Parisian man circa 1800 was about 5 feet, 6 inches. Which makes Napoleon a teensy bit above average in height. So why does the world think of him as short?
THE SHORT MAN ON THE TEAM
The men he was most often seen with—the grenadiers of his Imperial Guard—were very tall men. That might have started the first inkling of a rumor, and might be why the English political cartoons of the day depicted him as short. But that’s not the answer. Napoleon’s height didn’t become carved in the stone of history until he died.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
During his autopsy, Napoleon’s body was measured using the old French system called “pieds de roi,” which translates to “feet of the king.” The French 5 feet, 2 inches translates to 5 feet, 6½ inches in English measurements.
P.S. THE HAND INSIDE THE SHIRT
Most depictions of Napoleon show him with his hand inside his vest. While some historians believe that he suffered from ulcers and was pressing his hand against the painful spot, it’s also true that the hand-in-the-vest pose was often used for gentlemen’s portraits in that period. So we’ll never know for certain—unless someone builds a time machine and goes back to ask, “Pardonnezmoi, Your Imperial Highness—does the stress of running the Empire give you tummy troubles?”
The British Empire started in Newfoundland, where England founded its first overseas colony.
WHER
EWORDS: A QUIZ (His Closet)
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There’s just no telling what you’ll find when you start snooping around some old closet, even if it’s your own! Where did all this stuff come from? Choose the best answer, then check it against our answers on the next page.
1. SOCK
a. The first were woven from fine Egyptian linen called “sax.”
b. Named for Sir William Soxbury, who first wore them in public.
c. The Latin word “soccus,” a shoe made of thin leather.
2. TUXEDO
a. Its resemblance to Aptenodytes tuxidoa, the tuxedo penguin.
b. Mark Twain, who ridiculed formalwear as “tailored & tucksied.”
c. It made its 1886 debut at a country club in Tuxedo Park, NY.
3. STETSON
a. In prairie pidgin, to “stet” means to “stay,” and this hat “stay’s on.”
b. Alteration of “State Son,” honoring Texans who died at Alamo.
c. Named for its creator, Philadelphia haberdasher John Stetson.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 8