300 Years Ago: Pirates Mary Read & Anne Bonny Were Sentenced to Death
Today in 1720, two swashbuckling women were found guilty of piracy in Jamaica
Why Hollywood hasn’t latched their hooks into this story yet is a mystery the size of Davy Jones’s Locker.
Mary Read (b. 1685) was the daughter of an English sailor who died at sea. Anne Bonny (b. 1697) was the daughter of Irish lawyer who would dress her in boy’s clothing. Rugged fighters and foul-mouthed sots by their teens, they each found their way to the Caribbean, where they fell into the company of a flamboyant pirate named Calico Jack. Assuming male identities, they both became renowned buccaneers under his flag.
Their pirate clan successfully marauded the sea for years, until the governor of the Bahamas finally put a bounty on them. When privateers caught up with the bandits off the coast of Jamaica, the crew, including Calico Jack, cowered in the hull while the women vigorously defended the ship. The scalawags were captured, tried, and sentenced to death. Anne visited Jack in prison on the day before his hanging, just to deliver this emasculating zinger: “If you’d fought like a Man, you need not have been hang’d like a Dog.”
The women were tried separately, but 300 years ago today were also found guilty and sentenced to hang. By “pleading the belly,” or claiming pregnancy, their executions were stayed. Both belly claims were actually true, but Mary died in prison months later. Anne was eventually freed.
Aspiring screenwriters might be interested to know that Mary and Anne were both romantically linked to Calico Jack, making possible a tawdry ménage à trois scene that generates half-siblings — which can (maybe) even be defended as historically accurate! Further research into your tale of feminist swashbuckling will likely turn up longform stories in the Post and Courier and Smithsonian Magazine. The original transcripts of the trial also exist. Or you can go directly to the primary source, A General History of the Pyrates, a 1724 book that may or may not have been written by Daniel Defoe.
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