Pirate ships were usually crammed with men. Yet history shows that some women joined the plunder. Mary Read was an adventurous English woman who disguised herself as a man to earn money as a soldier and sailor. Captured by pirates on her way to the West Indies, she fell in with them and earned a reputation as a skilled fighter. According to Capt. Charles Johnson’s 1728 account of her life as a pirate: “No person amongst them was more resolute, or ready to board or undertake anything that was hazardous.”
Anne Bonny, an Irish-born woman “of fierce and courageous temper”, was part of the same crew. Bonny had been living in the Bahamas. She left her husband after falling in love with the pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham. Bonny dressed in men’s clothes and escaped her life ashore, joining Rackham’s crew.
Together with Rackham and Read they attacked and robbed many ships that sailed between Jamaica and England. When finally captured and tried by British authorities in 1720, Rackham was hung. The two women were spared because they were both pregnant. Mary Read died of illness while in prison. Nothing is known about the fate of Anne Bonny.
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Mary Read; from Histoire der englesche zee-roovers Amsterdam:H.Uytwerf,1725)- a translation of Captain Johnson's:A General History of the Pirates(often attributed to Defoe).Courtesy of James Ford Bell Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneap
