Mary Read and Anne Bonney

Two of the most notorious pirate women in history, Anne Bonny and Mary Read terrorized the Caribbean aboard the warship Revenge -- but their lives and adventures go far beyond just the high-seas infamy for which they are now known.

My original article on Anne Bonney can be found here, and she has her own chapter in the first Badass book, which is available over at the store.

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Episode Transcript:

We’re on a ship in the Caribbean blanketed with the spray of ocean water, the stench of gun powder and of course… the blood-curdling screams of pirates. The deck is slick with blood and ears our filled with the snaps of musket fire and the clanging of cutlasses banging off one another

In this chaotic fray, one figure darts through the smoke of cannon and shot, screaming into battle at the head of the Pirate forces that swarm over the deck of the Spanish galleon. Wielding a flintlock in each hand, with three more strapped on a bandelier across her chest and a cutlass at her hip, she barks orders to the ferocious array of demons that follow her every command.

She is a vision of Hell, the embodiment of the Furies of Antiquity. She is the notorious Anne Bonny, and she will not be denied.

Pat [00:01:12] Hey, Ben. How's it going today?

Ben [00:01:14] Well, as usual, I'm recording on the floor of my closet because I don't have a studio set up yet. So, uh, you know, about as comfortable as it can be.

Pat [00:01:23] I mean, isn't that the canonical way to do it these days?

Ben [00:01:26] It’s the only room in my house that doesn't have, like, a million windows, and I live like a right by the freeway. And there's always emergency vehicles running outside.

Pat [00:01:35] How's moving going, by the way?

Ben [00:01:36] It's okay. I was supposed to move on Tuesday, and now we're having some issue. And like, now we can't — we couldn't move on Tuesday, so we might be moving tomorrow or we might be moving next week, or the whole thing might be falling apart. So who knows? I don't think the whole thing's falling apart. I very much hope to not be recording in a closet next week, but we’ll have to see.

Pat [00:01:54] Yeah. Where will you be recording? Like on horseback?

Ben [00:01:59] Yeah. That'll be the badass way to do it from a jet fighter. Probably have some background noise issues.

Pat [00:02:05] Well, you might have a cat giving birth to kittens. Did he see that? Is North Carolina the Hickory Aviation Museum? You know, we have these airplanes on display and there was a cat who just was looking for a place to give birth to her kittens and somehow managed to get into the plane. And the people who work at the museum just think oh, what's going on here? Oh, kittens. Okay. We're not going to interfere at the moment. And I think they're trying to adopt the kids out now, and they've named them after different types of planes. And anyway, that would make things even more interesting if you decided to, you know.

Ben [00:02:38] Record from the cockpit of a plane with kittens being born around me. Yeah, it's the ultimate dichotomy of badass, right? Like the jet fighter and the cute kittens.

Pat [00:02:49] Yeah. It's easy to forget that these little, like, 7 pound beings are actually fierce predators. Just fun-sized.

Ben [00:02:56] Yeah, they're extremely cute. And they're also, like, one of the only creatures on earth that, like, kills for fun, right? It's like humans. Dolphins and cats are, like, the only—

Pat [00:03:06] Wait, dolphins kill for fun?

Ben [00:03:07] Dolphins will kill something for fun.

Pat [00:03:09] Oh, I didn't know that.

Ben [00:03:10] Yeah, Yeah. They'll kill something and not eat it. So, like, there's only, like, three or four creatures in the world that do that.

Pat [00:03:17] Because I thought dolphins were all like, you know, peace and love and sunshine.

Ben [00:03:21] No, there's they're, they're, they're kind of like murderous maniacs.

Pat [00:03:25] Alrighty then. Okay.

Ben [00:03:27] So there's a whole thing with dolphins.

Pat [00:03:29] I mean, I have to say, like, you know, any creature that seems intelligent, you know, that I tend to want to like.

Ben [00:03:37] Yeah, but intelligence breeds that like, “yeah, I wonder what would happen if I did this” right? You get that, like, too smart for your own good level.

Pat [00:03:46] Yeah. Or too smart for the good of the beings around you or whatever.

Ben [00:03:50] Well, I don't know. I guess. Speaking of predators?

Pat [00:03:54] Yeah.

Ben [00:03:54] You talk about pirates, you know, I mean, predators, I guess.

Pat [00:03:57] Well, yeah. So, you know, one of the Latin words. Okay, sorry. This is me putting up my my, you know, Latin just had one of the words for pirate in Latin is praido, which is where we get the word predator from.

Ben [00:04:09] Really?

Pat [00:04:09] Yeah.

Ben [00:04:10] They have the same root.

Pat [00:04:11] Yeah.

Ben [00:04:13] I guess it makes sense, right? They prey on shipping or whatever. Exactly. Like that's that's a phrase you hear a lot in reference to pirates.

Pat [00:04:19] Yeah. Someone who goes after loot.

Ben [00:04:21] Huh? Yeah. That’s really cool. I didn't know that.

Pat [00:04:23] Fun fact.

Ben [00:04:24] I was really struggling on how we were going to turn my kitty cat into a pirate story. But here we go.

I'm really excited about this week because we're going to talk about one of my favorite badasses ever. I've been doing this for a long time, for 15 years, probably closer to 20 than 15 now. Ane Bonney is a is a character I wrote about — she was an original, like very early on — badass on the website, and I'm very excited to talk about her this week. She is a a woman who was a pirate at the height of the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean. She's not the most successful female pirate of all time. Right. You have—

Pat [00:05:01] Yeah, but here we are talking about her, so.

Ben [00:05:03] Yeah!

Pat [00:05:05] So who would you consider the most successful?

Ben [00:05:07] There were a few, like, female pirates who were, like, very successful.

Probably the most successful one was a Chinese woman named Ching Shih. She she commanded, like, a fleet of pirates. She kind of came from nothing and then became like the wife of a pirate king or the concubine of a pirate king, and then he died and she took over. And then she just, like, ruled with an iron fist. She created like a fleet of ships, like the Chinese Imperial Navy tried to attack her, and she defeated them in battle, like she collects this huge bounty of of gold and treasure. And then she retires. There was a woman named Jeanne de Clissone. She was a French woman who pirated in the English Channel during the Hundred Years War. I guess like the English had killed her husband, I think is the story. And she would like capture English ships and kill everybody on board. She's so extremely violent but very successful, and there was another there was an Irish woman named Grace O'Malley, who's another like very famous female pirate. We'll probably talk about all three of these at some point on the show.

Pat [00:06:05] Some point. Yeah.

Ben [00:06:06] But yeah, the one that for me always kind of the one that I think for most of popular culture and like popular history stuff like Anne Bonney is kind of the go to like for like “badass pirate woman of the Caribbean”. She's got the most exciting stories. She's operating in the right place at the right time with the right people. She's meeting all of the main characters you talk about when you talk about piracy, right? Yeah, there are so many good pirate stories is happening in in China and off the coast of Africa, but when people think of pirates, they think Pirates of the Caribbean and of those and Bonney is kind of the story that everybody wants to talk about. And we're really excited, talk about it, and we're excited to talk about not just in Bonnie, but also Mary Reed. Yes. The other woman that was on this crew.

Pat [00:06:51] And so we've got this ship, which has not one but two badass female pirates on it.

Ben [00:06:55] And they were more badass than any of the male pirates on that ship, apparently. And we'll get into why that is. Yeah. So stick with us. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back. And we are going to get into talking about Anne Bonny, who is a personal favorite of mine, and this is a really fun story about a very cool and interesting and an exciting and to be honest, like pretty angry person.

Pat [00:07:29] And to be honest, angry people are interesting sometimes. So tell us about and Bonnie.

Ben [00:07:37] Anne Bonney was originally born Anne Cormac. She was born in Cook County, Ireland, around the turn of the 17th century. She was born to a wealthy lawyer named William Cormac, and his maid, a woman named Mary Brennan.

Pat [00:07:52] Maid, as in person who worked at the household. Not actually the wife.

Ben [00:07:58] Not Mrs. Cormac.

Pat [00:07:59] Not Mrs. Cormac. Yeah.

Ben [00:08:01] Yeah. Mrs. Cormac was not happy about this. She was pretty upset about it. And she made Mr. Cormac’s life hard in Cook County, Ireland.

Ireland was very Catholic at the time, and still is today and—

Pat [00:08:16] And also, she's just allowed to be mad because she's allowed to be mad. You know, she's got the right to be cranky.

Ben [00:08:21] Hey, look, if I was Mrs. McCormac, I'd be pretty mad. Yeah.

Pat [00:08:25] There's a lot going on there. Yeah.

Ben [00:08:26] But this kind of informs Anne Bonnie pretty early on in that she's unwanted from minute one and her life is hard and it becomes harder and, and she responds to it in a variety of unhealthy ways.

Pat [00:08:42] Yeah. Unhealthy but understandable. We get where she's coming from.

Ben [00:08:45] Right, exactly.

So she's there and Mr. Cormac tries to kind of raise her as his own as best he can. But it's hard, right? And he decides, eventually, like, you know what? I'm going to move. I’m going to start over and he decides he's going to relocate to Charleston, South Carolina. So he picks up and and he takes off.

He gets a big plot of land in outside Charleston, South Carolina, and he moves there to kind of start over again, go somewhere where nobody knows who he is or cares and is mostly raised there. I imagine she probably doesn't remember much of Ireland, except that I think she maintained the reddish hair. And that's about all she really got from from Ireland. And Charleston at this point is a pretty exciting place to be. It is. It's a hub of of what's known as the triangle trade, which is a little bit of a sticky thing to talk about.

Pat [00:09:43] It's sticky, it's problematic. I mean, let's let's just put it out there. It's problematic. It's you know, what what what are the three points of the triangle? You know, you've got sugar, you've got rum, and you've also got human beings being traded as possessions because this was the age of slavery across the Atlantic.

Ben [00:10:01] Exactly.

Pat [00:10:02] This is the background against which Anne Bonney does her stuff.

Ben [00:10:07] Right. And and so that's going on. And Charleston is a big hub for that. So it's one of the points of the triangle. And there are ships coming in and out. There is there is all kinds of like people and trade and movement. And it's an exciting place to be if you're Anne Bonney because the entire Atlantic trade is all kind of running through this port at Charleston. So there's a lot happening for her and she's kind of growing up in this kind of exciting environment. She goes down to the docks a lot and hangs out there and, you know, she's drinking at 15 and she's partying and she is.

Pat [00:10:43] Living life to the fullest in her own way.

Ben [00:10:46] Exactly. She's doing teenager things down at the docks. Right.

Pat [00:10:51] Note to my students, Dr. Larash does not endorse drinking at age 15. Continue.

Ben [00:10:55] And so Anne gets into trouble for the first time at the age of 14, when she gets into an argument with one of the housekeepers at the estate and she ends up pulling a steak knife and stabbing that woman in the stomach with it.

Pat [00:11:08] Woo! At age 14? Yeah.

Ben [00:11:10] I'm not saying that, like stabbing your maid in the stomach with a steak knife is badass, but like, yeah, this just kind of gives you insight into the character of Anne Bonney and is she is a fiery, angry person who doesn't take shit from anybody. And this will serve her well in her career as a pirate. But she's trouble for Mr. Cormac. About a year later, she's down at the docks drinking at a bar, and some guy is a little too handsy with her. So she hospitalized him. She beats him senseless and leaves him in a ditch, which is, okay.

Pat [00:11:44] I mean, you know, self-defense. You know, she's enforcing boundaries.

Ben [00:11:48] Very clear about her boundaries. This guy pushed it a little too far and she she put him in the hospital for what appears to be months.

Pat [00:11:57] Oh, he. Whoa!

Ben [00:11:59] Yeah, she really messed this guy up. Oh, she's not a person to be messed with. So, Mr. Cormac, she's a little bit of a headache for Mr. Cormack. And Mr. Cormack decides, you know what we can do? We need to marry sweet Anne off to a nice boy, and. And she'll be happy once she settles down with a nice man.

Pat [00:12:13] Right, because that'll work.

Ben [00:12:16] Go figure. But she doesn't want to date any of these guys, and she doesn't like any of the high society dudes that her dad tries to set her up with. So what she ends up doing to kind of escape this life is at the age of 16, she runs off and marries a pirate.

Pat [00:12:30] As one does.

Ben [00:12:31] As you do. You go down to the dock, meet a pirate. She meets a guy named James Bonney. That's where the Anne Bonney comes from. And he takes her to Nassau, which is the capital of the Bahamas. It's always very interesting because Nassau is like this beautiful, exotic, you know, Caribbean beaches and turquoise water kind of thing. But whenever I think of Nassau in my head and in the 1700s, I picture that scene from Pirates of the Caribbean where the dudes are like swigging a lot of flagons and like, swinging from the swinging from the the light fixtures in the bar. It's just anarchy and craziness.

Pat [00:13:05] And and we can picture Anne Bonney doing this.

Ben [00:13:08] Absolutely. She's in the middle of all of this. Anne Bonney like to party. Anne Bonney was definitely always down for a for a bar fight or a drinking competition or any type of thing like that. So you put her in Mos Eisley spaceport and she is just going to, like, make friends immediately or get into a fight. Or both.

So Anne Bonney is doing her thing in Nassau. She likes it. It's much better than anything she'd had in in Charleston. But she does occasionally get sucked into this high society thing. She can't escape it. She ends up going to a party at the at the house of the the sister in law of the governor of Jamaica. So the governor of Jamaica at this time is a guy named Woodes Rogers, who if we're looking at the grand scheme of the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean, we are reaching the end of it. So Woodes Rogers is kind of the guy who ends the golden age of piracy. He's a British officer who shows up and kind of cracks down on everything, and he offers a pirate amnesty. So like, you know, I'll forgive you for whatever your crimes were, if you rat out your friends for me, and then everybody who's left after that, he sends the British Navy after them. He's very badass, but he's not particularly relevant to the story that just places and kind of at the end of this golden age.

Yeah, she is at a party at Woodes Roger's sister in law's house. So his brother's wife, she is there and she is talking to the sister in law apparently Woodes Rogers sister in law makes some comment that Anne Bonney doesn't like and Bonney hauls off and slugs her in the face and knocks out two of her teeth.

Pat [00:14:45] Oh, my. Okay. That seems like a very unexpected way to respond to a slight in high society.

Ben [00:14:54] You know, no matter how much she was brought up in the high society life, she never really got the hang of it. And so, yeah, I would love to see this in like a movie, right. Of just like Downton Abbey kind of likes subtle digs, you know, the, like, needling little comments and snarky things. Right? And then to just have like, this, like, redhead pirate chick just be like, Oh, yeah? BAM. I enjoy this. I enjoy that. I enjoy thinking about it. It makes me happy. I'm sure that this woman probably didn't deserve to be punched in the face, but like, I'm sure that like any of us in Anne Bonney’s situation here would have wanted to do that and not had the balls to do it.

Pat [00:15:36] Yeah. Yeah. Talking with her fists.

Ben [00:15:39] You know, I talk about Woodes Rogers offered this pirate amnesty. So James Bonney ends up taking Woodes Rogers up on it. Right. And James Bonney, you really can't fault him too much for this because his options are to rat out your fellow pirates and get an amnesty or don't, and be arrested and or killed. James was a small time pirate right. He's not like a pirate captain. He's not a main guy. He's kind of a wannabe. And Anne is furious when she finds out. She is not happy. She likes the pirates. She does not like the high society dudes, and she decides she is going to leave him for a real pirate.

Pat [00:16:17] Oh, a real pirate! We are throwing shade.

Ben [00:16:21] So she meets up with a dude, a guy named Jack Rackham. And Jack Rackham is known as Calico Jack because he dresses in crazy, like, colorful clothes. So like a calico cat. So Jack Rackham is like, he's not a very successful pirate. Is not a very good pirate. Doesn’t have a lot of records to his name. He hasn’t taken a lot of enemy ships, but they meet at a party and he likes and and they decide they're going to get out of here and they're going to go sailing around in pirating on a on a beautiful career in nautical terrorism. So it's a romantic love story.

Pat [00:16:57] Yes. With pirates.

Ben [00:16:59] So they sail off on his ship, which is called the Revenge, which so many pirate ships are.

Pat [00:17:04] Wait, that's that's the name of the ship. The Revenge.

Ben [00:17:07] The name of the ship is the Revenge, which is what Anne wants anyway. And she goes out and starts to set sail with this pirate. And one thing that you probably know it that was it was considered bad luck for any sailor to have a woman on board the ship. They weren't working the ship. They weren't fighting. They weren't they were passengers typically. And for whatever reason, it became a thing. Bad luck to have a woman on the ship. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. So what does Anne Bonney do?

Pat [00:17:34] Yeah. What would you do? Would you just say, Oh, sorry. And then just quietly excuse yourself out? I suspect that is not what she did.

Ben [00:17:42] That does not sound like Anne Bonney.

Pat [00:17:43] No, it does not seem.

Ben [00:17:44] And Calico Jack wasn't exactly like, Here's my girlfriend. Guys, what do you think? You know, like, so she dressed as a man.

Pat [00:17:51] And she, as one does.

Ben [00:17:52] Tied her hair up and she wore a hat and she dressed as a man and she.

Pat [00:17:55] Wore pants.

Ben [00:17:56] She worked as a pirate. And the revenge starts to take a few enemy ships. And the pirate crew starts to really like this this this Bonney character who is the most violent and the most bloody and the hardest working and the toughest of all of these pirates and is really making a name for herself, not just as a great fighter and like a person manning the ship, but also she was a fantastic wearer. She could she could swear with the best of them, which I can really appreciate that because I, I rely on that quite a bit in my day to day life. I am trying to mitigate my swearing now that I have a baby who can repeat me. But generally I can appreciate a good a good swear word.

Pat [00:18:37] Yeah, it's an art form.

Ben [00:18:39] Yes. So eventually it came out, somebody noticed that she was actually a woman, but by that point, nobody cared. She would wear men's clothing during battle and on shore and all those things. But when she was just hanging out on the ship, she could wear women's clothing if she felt like it. You know, we do encounter throughout this time period of history 1600, 1700 women dressing as men and fighting as men. Right. It's a fairly common story. But for Anne Bonney, one thing she was able to do that was little different was they knew she was a woman and they didn't care. Which is different. Right?

Pat [00:19:16] They were like, you're contributing to the team.

Ben [00:19:19] Yes. And so there they are, having adventures, they're traveling around. And this is the most, like, Calico Jack was a pretty low level guy. And then once he brings, he brings on Anne Bonney, he starts to become like, successful. He's taking ships. He's making a name for himself as more than just like the dude in the bright red jacket. He's he's now like the commander of the Revenge. The most feared pirate ship and off the coast of Nassau in the Bahamas. And he is making gold, is making plunder, is making a name for himself, and he brings on a new pirate, which happens to be, as we've mentioned in the beginning, another woman. And when we come back, we're going to talk about her. So. So stick with us.

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Pat [00:20:12] So, Hey, welcome back from the break.

Ben [00:20:14] Just to kind of get back to what we're talking about at some point during an Anne Bonney and Calico Jack's career and it's not a very long career. They're maybe pirating for a year or two.

Pat [00:20:27] Yeah, but what a year?

Ben [00:20:28] Pretty eventful year or two. And they pick up a new passenger and. And Pat, why don't you.

Pat [00:20:35] Yeah.

Ben [00:20:35] Tell us about.

Pat [00:20:36] Yeah.

Ben [00:20:37] This person.

Pat [00:20:38] So yeah. So at some point this guy named Mark Read shows up at the ship and says, Hey, can I join you? And they're like, Okay, yeah, but who is Mark Read? Mark Read is actually Mary Read. And Mary Read was born in England in 1685, just as Anne Bonney had kind of like an interesting kind of like unorthodox sort of entry into the world. So too, did Mary Read. Mary Read’s mom had been married to a guy who was a sailor and she had a son with that husband, the sailor. Her husband didn't come back from one of his sailing voyages. So Mama Read takes up with another another guy and gets pregnant. Now, here's the thing. There's an inheritance at stake here. Here's the problem. The son. This kid dies, too, because, you know. Yeah, you know. You know babies.

Ben [00:21:39] Because that's 1700, right? That's a thing.

Pat [00:21:41] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's there's a there's a high mortality rate among young humans. At this point. However, Momma Read gives birth to a kid. The kid happens to be a daughter. Okay? Momma Read manages to pass the daughter off as the deceased son.

Ben [00:22:01] To get the inheritance.

Pat [00:22:03] To get the. Yeah, totally. Yeah, to get the inheritance. And so Mary Read, who the rest of the world knew is Mark Read, is kind of raised in the boy in the sense that if anyone asks, this kid is a boy.

Ben [00:22:18] It's a it's like a insurance scam.

Pat [00:22:21] Yeah, okay. Apparently, this is a thing that people did in those days. It makes a difference if you are a male child, a male heir or a female offspring. So marry or quote unquote, Mark Read grows up. She kept passing as a man and she enlisted in the army. She fights for the Flemish. England was supporting the Dutch in.

Ben [00:22:42] Oh, I see.

Pat [00:22:43] At that time, they were allies. So she gets to meet all of these, you know, cool Flemish soldiers, falls in love with one of them. He falls in love with her.

Ben [00:22:51] Or as you do.

Pat [00:22:53] Yeah, as you do. And they get married and they live in the Netherlands. And for a bit what happens is they buy an inn and they run the inn.

Ben [00:23:03] So she must have revealed herself to him at some.

Pat [00:23:05] She must have, yes. Oh yeah, she must have. Yeah.

Ben [00:23:07] Because they met in the army, right? Which is not that common of a meeting situation for people in 1710.

Pat [00:23:13] Yeah. Her husband died relatively young. Now, this makes Mary a widow, so she puts back on her male clothing and re-enlist. But there were no actual wars going on in time.

Ben [00:23:30] So she's a mercenary with nobody to pay her.

Pat [00:23:33] Yeah. So she hops on a ship headed to the Caribbean, and this ship is captured by pirates because that's a thing that happens in those days. And if you can't beat em, join em. Or, like, maybe she doesn't even try to beat them. Was just like, Oh, this is cooler than the thing I'm currently on. And she joins up with our friends Calico Jack and Anne Bonny. And they at this point, they think she's a man.

Ben [00:23:57] I read a lot about women from history and one of the comments I get a lot when I'm doing the books and the and the website is like, you need to write about more women. And I'm like, you know, it's it's hard, right? Because I wonder how many Mark Reads were on privateer ships in the Caribbean at this time that we'll never hear about. I wonder how many famous men from history maybe weren't. That's an interesting thing to think about.

Pat [00:24:23] So, you know, we've got, you know, this like kind of group with two women whom we know are women who are pirates. And we know this because we have an account from someone called Charles Johnson who may or may not be a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, the guy who wrote Robinson Crusoe. But anyway, this is a source maybe maybe a kind of sensationalized, slightly fictionalized, very fictionalized source.

Ben [00:24:44] Yeah. Charles Johnson is an interesting one. The history of the most notorious pirates. Like that's the main source of information for this stuff. The Anne Bonney and Mary Read stories, But Charles Johnson is not a reliable narrator, generally speaking. But it's all we have, so it's what we got to go with.

Pat [00:24:59] Yeah. And he knows how to tell a good story.

Ben [00:25:02] Oh, it's great. Yeah, Definitely recommend reading.

Pat [00:25:04] Yeah. So. Anyway, so Charles Johnson quotes one of the victims, named Dorothy Thomas. Mary Reed, or the person we know is Mary Read and Anne Bonney quote “wore men's jackets and long trousers, and each of them had a machete and a pistol”. So that's what's going on during working hours. But off duty, what's going on? So Anne Bonney and Jack Rackham, Calico Jack are lovers. And so presumably this means that Jack knows that Anne is a woman who just happens to be wearing pants at this particular point in time.

Ben [00:25:36] Hopefully.

Pat [00:25:37] Yeah.

Ben [00:25:38] I mean, I hope he figured it out.

Pat [00:25:40] Yeah, but one day, you know, Anne dressed as a man and Mary also dressed as a man, you know, they're going out and they're like, Yeah, yeah, that was good. That was good. Yeah. Good plundering session there, right? Yeah. Yeah. And Anne Bonnie confesses to read “I am No Man”, and Read goes, I have something to confess toi. Actually, you know, “I am no man”. And the two of them were spotted in each other's company a lot on board. They're definitely BFFs. And, you know, many historians do interpret this as a lesbian or maybe bisexual relationship, because remember that Anne Bonnie was also involved with Calico Jack. And Calico Jack apparently is jealous of, to quote, Charles Johnson here, “this intimacy so disturbed Captain Rackham, who was the lover and gallant for Anne Bonney that he grew furiously jealous so that he told Anne Bonney he would cut her new lover's throat, therefore, to quiet him”. She eventually let him into the secret. Also, because apparently Calico Jack is okay with his girlfriend having two-timed him provided the side piece is a woman. And no one died. No one died from this little encounter.

Ben [00:26:55] When I wrote the book, I have a little side bit in there about like, you know, some people think that Mary Read and Anne Bonney were lovers and not just like comrades at arms. And I was like, these people, these historians need to stop reading so much porn. But then the way you describe it, I'm like, That sounds like the beginning of a porn, honestly. W”ell, turns out she's actually a girl….” Oh.

Pat [00:27:17] Yeah. Yeah.

Ben [00:27:19] So there's one story that I really like about Mary Read that I came across not too long ago and that I can't verify anywhere else except for this one source. But it was that Mary Read falls in love with the ship's navigator on the Revenge. He's younger than her and he's cute, and she likes him. And they become lovers. And then one of the pirates on the Revenge like, is trying to bully this navigator dude. Challenges into a duel, wants to fight and wants to kick his ass right to prove how tough he is or whatever. So he challenges this navigator to a duel and wants to fight him to the death. And Mary Read just starts insulting this pirate to the point where it's like, “No, I'm going to duel you right now”. So she's like, because the navigator has no chance against this pirate. And she's like, I think I could take this guy. The ship pulls over to an island and they get off the ship and they fight on land.

Pat [00:28:15] Oh, yeah.

Ben [00:28:16] She like swords him to death. She kills him with a sword. And then they get back on the boat and they leave his dead body there to be eaten by animals or whatever. But that's a Mary Read story that I like a lot.

Pat [00:28:30] Note to self, do not insult Mary Read's boyfriend.

Ben [00:28:33] Yeah Not a good idea. Not a good idea to insult, not a good idea to cross either of these women. But you know, we know how these pirate stories end, right? Like, as much as we love to romanticize piracy in the Caribbean at this time period, but in reality, they're thieves and murderers and they have violent ends. And that's how this goes and that's how it goes for the crew of the Revenge as well. Yeah. In October of 1720, the revenge has just taken a Spanish galleon. There's gold and it's also got a bunch of rum on it. And all the pirates start partying and drinking.

Pat [00:29:06] Yo, heave ho and a bottle of rum and, you know.

Ben [00:29:09] Right, Exactly. Everybody's partying. They got gold, they got rum. They're having a good time. And they pull off onto one of these islands and having a party. And then this British ship pulls up. Woodess Roger's is there. He's continuing his quest to.

Pat [00:29:20] Eliminate.

Ben [00:29:21] Piracy. Yeah, I remember when he knocked my my. Remember when you're not my brother's wife's teeth? Guess who’s back?

Pat [00:29:28] Yeah.

Ben [00:29:29] So he pulls up. The crew of the revenge is very drunk and they're outnumbered and they're taken by surprise. And there's only two crew members of the revenge who have the guts to fight back against the Royal Navy as they board the ship.

Pat [00:29:47] And who are those two members?

Ben [00:29:49] Those are Crewman Bonny and Crewman Read. They do not want to go back to their old life. They do not want to deal with any of this. They are going to fight to the end. They attack the Marines with swords and with guns. They are captured. And as they're being hauled away to the prison or whatever, to the brig, they're so angry with the rest of the crew of the revenge for not fighting that Anne Bonnie pulls her guns and fires the last two shots, one in each hand, at her own crew members for being cowards and not helping her fight the British.

Pat [00:30:25] Oh.

Ben [00:30:26] I got two shots left. I'm not going to use them on these two dudes who are dragging me away. I'm just going to shoot at you guys because. Yeah, go to hell.

Pat [00:30:32] All right. Okay. That's that's one heck of a performance review. Okay. So she's used all of her bullets. She's being hauled off. What happens next?

Ben [00:30:42] Well, as you do, they're all sentenced to death by hanging for being pirates. But there's. But there's a wrench in the—

Pat [00:30:49] There's a twist.

Ben [00:30:50] There's a twist. Yeah. It turns out that both Anne Bonney and Mary Read claim that they are pregnant.

Pat [00:30:56] Ooh. And what does, what does that do for them? I mean, it sounds like it complicates things, or?

Ben [00:31:01] Well, the life that Anne Bonney and Mary Read would be like, came from was not as exciting as their piracy life. But it is still a culture that is not really cool with hanging a pregnant woman. So they are released from prison because you can't imprison and hang a pregnant woman. That's just against the rules. Nobody's cool with that.

Pat [00:31:23] Are we 100% sure they were pregnant or were they just a little bit pregnant, or?

Ben [00:31:27] We don't know.

Pat [00:31:28] They claim to be pregnant.

Ben [00:31:29] Okay. We don't know if there was. We don't know if they had to prove it. We don't know how they would do that. We don't know what it was. That's what they said. They. It's called pleading the belly. They pled the belly.

Pat [00:31:38] Pleading the belly. They pled the belly.

Ben [00:31:40] Mary Read dies in prison before she gets released, possibly through a wound she sustained. She yeah, maybe she was pregnant and that didn't go well for her. I don't know. We don't know why she died, but she dies before she gets released. People just drop dead in 1720 for no reason. And it's the reason why you would never want a time travel back in time to 1720, because these things just happen.

Pat [00:32:02] Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Ben [00:32:04] So we don't know the story on why Mary Read dies, but she dies and Bonney does not. She leaves and she walks out and on her way out the door, she stops by Calico Jack Rackham cell and she looks at him and he's like, “Oh, you got to get me out of here”. And she says to him, “I'm sorry, Jack, but if you had fought like a man, you would not now be about to die like a dog.”

Pat [00:32:25] Oh, snap.

Ben [00:32:27] And she leaves. Yeah. And she disappears from history forever. And we have no idea what happened to her. That's it. She walks out the door of that prison and is never heard from again. Calico Jack is hanged a couple days later and dies.

Yeah, well, and that's the story. They cut a very unique figure, a time that is very romanticized by our culture in a career that was exciting and bloody and dangerous. And so, yeah, if you want to read more about them, You said Charles Johnson, “A general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates” is the name of the book.

Pat [00:33:03] I like it. I like.

Ben [00:33:04] It. I like it, too.

Pat [00:33:06] A general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates.

Ben [00:33:10] Yeah. It's a it's a really fun read. It's not exactly fantastic. Historically accurate, but it's fun. Silly. Worth it.

Pat [00:33:18] Yeah, but if you want something a little more historical, what would we do?

Ben [00:33:21] Yeah. Yeah. So I really like Under the Black Flag by David Cordingley is one of my favorite books on pirates. Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodward is amazing for this. I used as a great Smithsonian article by Karen Abbott. It's called If There's a Man Among Ye, which I Like.

Pat [00:33:39] That's great. Total here.

Ben [00:33:40] Yeah. It talks about both Mary Read in and Anne Bonney. And I just bought a book. I just I just ordered a book called Pirate Queens by Rebecca Alexandra Simon off Amazon, but I haven't had a chance to read it, but it deals with both of them as well, so I'm looking forward to that.

Pat [00:33:55] Yeah. Okay, So until next time.

Ben [00:33:58] Yeah. We'll see you guys on the next one. Thanks so much for listening.

Pat [00:34:03] Badass of the Week is an iHeart radio podcast produced by High Five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Pat Larash, and Ben Thompson. Writing is by Pat and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Fibbs and Ali Lemer. Mixing and music and Sound Design is by Jude Brewer. Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based on the website BadassoftheWeek.com, where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out with questions or ideas, you can email us at badasspodcast@badassoftheweek.com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen and tell your friends and your enemies if you want, as we'll be back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.