Pirate queens: Nassau’s legendary female buccaneers

The power of a successful movie franchise is demonstrated by the impossibility of saying the word “pirates” without mentally adding “of the Caribbean”. And it is true, there was a Golden Age of Piracy in that region of many islands, which is generally accepted to have run from the 1650s to 1750s (Jack Sparrow operates in the latter decades of this span). But for at least part of the time the marauding corsairs moved from bases on Tortuga (now Haiti) and Jamaica to a new home port – Nassau in the Bahamas, which is not, of course, part of the Caribbean.

Why? As anyone who has cruised the beautiful, crystal-clear seas around the islands will know, this is shallow water. Without modern navigation aids, deep-hulled Men O’ War would have trouble navigating through the area’s often treacherous channels. With their sleeker, shallower draft vessels, the pirates could outpace and outmanoeuvre any warship sent by the British, Spanish, French or Americans.

From Nassau they could ransack rich Spanish coastal cities on the mainland, intercept the bullion ships bound for Spain and harass the British merchants once they had dropped off their cargo of slaves and loaded up with goods (especially sugar and tobacco) for the home market. No wonder these fast and furious freebooters were nicknamed “The Flying Gang”.

It was from the current capital, Nassau on New Providence Island, once dubbed the Republic of Pirates, that many of the famed buccaneers of the day operated – notably Edward “Blackbeard” Tench, Benjamin Hornigold and Stede Bonnet. The latter was described as a “gentleman pirate” whose transition from Bahamian landowner to maritime rogue formed the basis of the HBO TV series Black Sails. If a sea dog used Nassau as his home port, he was expected to be governed by the Pirate’s Code. This loose contract between ruffians often included the stipulation that no women be on board ship, as they brought bad luck and led to sexual tensions, jealousy and, ultimately, conflict.

There were, however, exceptions – notably Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who sailed out of the Republic of Pirates in the year 1720.

Historians have recorded around 100 examples of female pirates, although, as most chose to subvert the code by dressing as men, there were probably many more. Nor were they confined to the Caribbean or the Bahamas. Zheng Yi Sao, aka Ching Shih, was known as the Pirate Queen of the South China Seas and led a fleet of as many as 60,000 sailors in a “Pirate Confederation” in the early 1800s. Another Pirate Queen, Grace O’Malley, dominated the roiling seas off the west coast of Ireland in the mid-16th century, extorting tolls from ships that dared to cross or fish in “her” waters and plundering goods from others. (The king of Spain paid Grace an estimated £1,000 a year “protection money” for 21 years to let his fishing fleet have access to O’Malley’s watery fiefdom – a very tidy sum back then.)

But Bonny and Read best fit our idea of what a pirate should be, tropes and archetypes drawn mainly from two novels – Treasure Island and Peter Pan (both of which put “walking the plank” into the popular pirate imagination, although in reality it was quite a rare practice). The duo actually owes their immortality to another book – A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson, which featured the short but sensational career of Bonny and Read.

Why would women join a mostly male, entirely illegal profession that had a life expectancy of two years? Money, of course, in the form of booty, but also freedom and independence – it was one way of breaking out of the stifling conventions of being a woman in a patriarchal society. Pirates might be amoral and untrustworthy, but they were very egalitarian. They judged on results.

The record of the women’s early life is vague. We know both were illegitimate, we know that both spent some time disguised as males (Mary as a child, to replace a deceased half-brother in order to keep an allowance from his grandparents; Anne when she joined the British army to escape a life of domestic servitude). But details are scant, until they arrive in Nassau in around 1719, where they embarked on their new careers and sailed into notoriety.

Born in Ireland but brought up in what is now Charleston, South Carolina, something of a safe haven for pirates with goods to trade, the rebellious Anne Cormac had defied her plantation-owning father and married James Bonny, a sailor and part-time pirate. He became disillusioned with his bride when it became obvious no dowry would be forthcoming from the furious parent. Nevertheless, they sailed together, with Anne learning the ropes and earning the grudging respect of her husband’s crew. But once in Nassau, it became obvious that there was a permanent rift between the two and Anne left him, haunting the town’s taverns, eventually taking up with another brigand, John “Calico Jack” Rackham.

Mary, meanwhile, had married a Flemish soldier she had met in the army and had been widowed. Seeking a fresh start in the New World, she was working her passage on a Dutch merchantman, disguised as sailor Mark Read, when it was captured by English pirates. Revealing her nationality (but not her sex), she joined the crew who, like many in their dubious trade, headed for Nassau, where the governor was hiring “privateers” – officially sponsored pirates – to harass and exploit the belligerent Spanish.

Mary, who at 22 was around a decade younger than Anne, arrived in port just as Rackham was recruiting experienced sailors to man a stolen ship, once called the William but re-christened Revenge, which was reputed to be the fastest vessel in the whole Bahamas. Mary (as Mark) joined the venture, finding herself onboard with another woman, the captain’s “wife”, Anne Bonny. Here the legend dips into obfuscation. Was Mark revealed to be a woman by a fellow sailor or did the truth emerge when Anne tried to seduce “him”? Were the pair lovers? The latter has gained some traction in recent decades, but once again the evidence is threadbare (Rebecca Alexandra Simon, author of a well-researched joint biography, Pirate Queens, dismisses the notion).

Whatever the truth, by 1720 the pair were on the high seas in the Revenge, sailing under the feared Jolly Roger flag. Although they wore men’s clothes for ease of movement, they were openly fighting and plundering as women – they flaunted their long hair and even bared their breasts to taunt and confuse their male foes. One victim said the women ‘were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board’. It turned out that “anything” included waving cutlasses and firing pistols.

Incensed by Rackham’s activity, the British sent various pirate hunters after the Revenge. Rackham was surprised by them in Jamaica’s Negril bay when partying to celebrate his latest escapade. Hardly able to stand, let alone fight, and with Rackham too drunk to give coherent orders, the crew fled below, despite the women’s urging to stay and engage the enemy. Anne and Mary fought hard, impressing their captors with their tenacity and ferocity, but were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Taken, like Rackham and his scurvy crew, to Port Royal in Jamaica, they were turned over to the Admiralty and charged with piracy. The punishment for which was the hangman’s noose.

Their career had lasted a scant two months, but in that time they had forged a powerful, enduring narrative, turning them into feminist icons, potent symbols of female empowerment. Anne’s words to Rackham before he went to the scaffold with four of his men are often quoted as proof of their fortitude and grit: ‘If you had fought like a man, you need not hang like a dog.’

Anne and Mary were also found guilty of piracy, but they played an unexpected card. They both declared themselves pregnant. There was a stay of execution, but Mary died from a fever in early 1721, possibly due to complications from childbirth.

Anne Bonny, however, disappeared from history. There is no record of her execution. Theories about her ultimate fate (including living until 80, either in Jamaica or the US) are legion, but of the pair she has had the most storied afterlife, appearing as a character in Dark Sails and the Netflix docudrama, The Lost Pirate Kingdom. There is even a spiced rum named after her.

One thing is certain, the pirate queens still exert a powerful allure. If you find yourself in the Bahamas, cruising the azure seas between sun-dappled islets, on a J Craft Torpedo, perhaps, it won’t be hard to imagine the crack of canvas, the creak of wood and squeak of hemp, the roar of cannon fire and the snap of a Jolly Roger from the days when the Republic of Pirates ruled the waves and a brace of doughty women showed the men how it should be done.

Robert Ryan is a journalist, screenwriter and Sunday Times bestselling author