People are always asking us if we encountered pirates during our travels on Wild Goose. Yes, they’re out there, we did encounter them, and that tale will be part of this blog someday. But, I thought I’d divert a bit and tell you story
-a true story-
according to the history books. Let me know what you think about the divergence.
This is the story of two unusual pirates who pillaged the Caribbean Sea in the 1700’s- Anne Bonny and Mary Read. They were known as the Hellcats of Calico Jack and their secret would shock the courts and become the subject of many legendary ballads.
Anne was the illegitimate child of a prominent Cork, Ireland attorney and his housemaid. Disgraced and disgusted, his wife left him, so the attorney packed up his new family and immigrated to Charleston, South Carolina. He bought a plantation and became a very successful businessman and planter. To his dismay, young Anne was untamed and volatile. She snubbed the proper young men of Charleston and married a worthless sailor named James Bonny. The couple fled to the pirates' lair of New Providence (now Nassau) in the Bahamas.
Mary was born in London and was also illegitimate. Her mother dressed the young child as a boy and portrayed her to be the male child and legitimate heir to a wealthy couple whose son had died. The two received a small stipend for a few years. Mary continued the ruse by joining the Royal Navy as a cabin boy aboard an English warship. In the 1700's, a doctor's examination was not required before enlistment and men aboard ships rarely bathed. It was easy for a woman to hide her identity. Fierce and ruthless, Mary climbed the ranks in the Royal Navy with a reputation for excelling in the use of hand weapons.
These two women would ultimately meet on the pirate ship run by the legendary Calico Jack Rackham. Handsome and daring, Rackham dressed in brightly colored clothing and strutted like a peacock. He openly courted the feisty Anne Bonny and, on a shadowy night in 1718, Anne tucked her hair into a cap, dressed as a man, and fled with Calico Jack aboard his sloop, Revenge. Anne was a capable deck hand as well as an accomplished assailant with either a pistol or cutlass and she became a valuable second mate. The crew never dared to question her.
Meanwhile, Mary signed on with an ill-fated Dutch merchant ship bound for the West Indies. Rackham, Anne and their pirate crew overpowered the merchant ship in the Caribbean and Mary signed on as pirate crew rather than walk the plank into the sea.
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| Calico Jack's Signature Flag |
Disguised as men, Anne and Mary were known for their violent tempers. Mary had secretly taken a lover, a shipmate on the crew to whom she revealed herself as a woman. When an irascible crewmember challenged her secret lover, Mary knew her lover could never win a fight with this man. She stepped in and began insulting and belittling the crewman until he agreed to a duel. At dawn on a sandy beach, Mary and the irascible crewmember stood back-to-back. They walked fifteen paces, turned and fired. Mary’s shot was accurate and deadly. The crewmember lay on the beach bleeding, two shots in the center of his chest. The duel was over. Mary was unscathed and her lover was still alive.
The nefarious careers of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham and their crew came to a sudden end in October 1720. Lying at anchor off Jamaica's coast, the crew was below deck. They were all drunk, celebrating a lucrative plunder. All, that is, except for Anne and Mary.
A British Navy sloop glided alongside the pirate ship and sailors began to board. Anne and Mary ran topside to battle the invaders with such ferocity the Navy sailors retreated to appraise the situation. The navy crew eventually prevailed, arrested all aboard the pirate ship and took them to Jamaica to stand trial. Lieutenant Barnett, the sloop's commander, testified that "none among the pirate crew were more resolute, or ready to board or undertake any thing that was hazardous than the two hellcats with pistols and cutlasses fighting wildly on the deck that day”.
He noted that both were screaming at their shipmates to "come up and fight like men". In desperation, he recalled, one of the hellcats raised the hatch and fired a pistol among the cowardly pirates hiding below, killing one and wounding another.
Calico Jack and his crew had become famous and the trial attracted a large crowd spilling out onto the courthouse steps and beyond. The gawking mob cheered as it was announced that Calico Jack and his crew were sentenced to hang for their deeds. Their cheers were followed by shock when the next announcement proclaimed two heavily shackled pirates had stepped forward and said, "Milord, we plead our bellies." By law, the court could not take the life of an unborn child by executing the mother. A quick doctor's examination proved the inevitable. The Hellcats of Calico Jack were indeed women and both were with child.
The fate of Anne Bonny and Mary Read is questionable. Some accounts say Mary became ill in prison and died before giving birth. It’s thought that Anne was released after delivering her child and she and the child eventually faded into the shadowy ballads of time.
The newspapers of the day did report on one of Anne Bonny’s last tempests. Bonny was allowed to watch as Calico Jack resolutely walked to the gallows to meet his death. Rather than pleading mercy for her lover, she defiantly walked forward, spat in his path, and scornfully reproached,
"Had you fought like a man,
you need not hang like a dog!"
