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Women Posing as Sailors
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Anne Bonny and Mary Read,
1829 From The History of the Pirates:
Containing the Lives of Those Noted Pirate Captains, Misson,
Bowen, Kidd, Tew, Halsey, White, Condent, Bellamy, Fly, Howard,
Lewis, 1829
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
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ANNE BONNY AND MARY READ: FEMALE PIRATES
Anne Bonny was born in Ireland, the daughter of a lawyer and his
maid. After emigrating to the colonies, Anne married a seaman named
James Bonny and sailed with him to the Bahamas. There, in 1719,
she met Jack Rackham, a colorful pirate known as Calico Jack. She
left her husband and sailed with Rackham, raiding Spanish ships
off the coast of Cuba and Hispaniola. Strangely enough, one of the
ships captured by Rackham carried another female sailor, Mary Read.
Mary Read was born in England in 1690. In order to claim money from
her father's family, her mother raised her as a boy from birth.
She joined the navy, then deserted and boarded a ship headed to
the West Indies. The ship was captured by Jack Rackham, and Read
joined Rackham's crew.
In 1720, the British captured Calico Jack near Jamaica. The pirates
were tried and found guilty. Rackham and the men were hanged. Bonny
and Read were imprisoned instead because
both were pregnant. No one knows what happened to Bonny or her child.
Read died of a fever within a year.
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She Killed Him on the Spot,
1896 Engraving by William Margetson,
from
The Story of the Sea: Pirates and Marooners
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives |
While on Calico Jack Rackham's ship, Mary Read
fell in love with a fellow pirate--a man who lacked Read's fighting
skills and aggressiveness. When the man was challenged to a duel,
Read, knowing that her lover would lose, picked a fight with the same
sailor and won the duel herself.
Section 2 of 4 |
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