Short Stuff: Women Pirates

kind of fell out of it. But yeah, it's a very very cute show. Yeah, okay, did you watch Have you watched all of them? Yeah? Yeah, I like it a lot, but it kind of got me wondering because a big you know, it's kind of known as the most queer positive show on television and the show about pirates, so you might if you haven't seen it, you might think, well,

that's odd. But on the show there as a female character who was masquerading as a man pirate, and then there I don't want to spoil anything, but there's also a budding relationship of the same sex, which is a very kind of fun reveal. On the show, and I was just kind of wondering if that's all made up

for this show. And it turns out it looks like piracy and pirate ships were kind of a haven sometimes for gay women or now what we probably would know as trans people, because you could hide out and you know, I think as long as you did your work, there wasn't a lot of uh well, I mean, who knows how they were really treated, but it seemed to be like a place that people could go in the queer community and the whatever sixteen hundreds, And I don't I

don't think Chuck, um, you had to necessarily just identify as a different gender, um like you could you were if you were a woman in were out of the high seas, you were probably dressing like a man one way or another. Largely because ships, um it was considered bad luck to have a woman on a ship. But the two women that we're going to talk about, uh and Bonnie and Mary Reid, they were such b A's as pirates with a y or and I it doesn't

matter that they were openly women. Um who did still dress his men, but everyone on their ship knew they were women, and they were reputed to have been the um the toughest, most ready to fight pirates on on the ship, including the captain. That's right, and they were doing it in the middle of We love our Golden ages, and they were certainly active in the golden age of piracy from the mid seventeenth century to like the first quarter of the eighteen Uh. And we need to think

a few people Britannica. We should just always think Britannica. Yeah, the s s Britannica and Mark Mancini from how Stuff Works dot com because they point out a very sort of truism, which is, Uh, there were books about pirates and stuff back then. One very notable one. Uh. The long title is a General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pirates with a y uh and or as it's generally known, a general History of

the Pirates. And these books back then were hot sellers, so they were fun, but you couldn't count on them to be historically accurate necessarily. Uh. It seems like they kind of went with lore when they didn't know if it was fact or not, and they wanted to tell the good story and sell books. Yeah. So it's the same as true crime, as it's always been basically, well, I think it's a little better now, right, I'm sure

it's much better. But there there is a that book, in particular, the General History of the Pirates UM, It's it's it. It provides a conundrum for historians piracy, especially the Golden Age of piracy, because that's really what it covers. UM, because there's a lot of stuff in there that probably is true. There's a lot of stuff in there that's probably embellishment, and if you read, you know, the actual text,

it's really hard to differentiate one from the other. So you have to read the book basically as a historian and go through and find documentary evidence to back up this claim or or the other. And UM, in particular with Mary Reid and a Bonnie, they've had a really hard time to do that. So I have my hat off to Mark Mancini from How Stuff Works, because he

didn't fall for any of it. And there stuff in the Britannica Encyclopedia entries that has been proven to have been made up by novelists as late as the nineteen sixties, and it's being touted as fact. And it's not just Britannica Wikipedia. There's a ton of like reputable sources that that have just kind of fallen for these um, these inaccuracies that have been did as flourishes over the years.

I wonder if Mark Mancini read the book and said, hey, wait a minute, I think everywhere it's italicized, it's still will be its. There's a lot of italics in there too, giveaway. Yeah. So the book itself is written by a guy named Captain Charles Johnson, who did not exist. That's a pen name, And I've seen it attributed typically to Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, and then alternatively there was a publisher named Nathaniel Missed, and they think that it was

probably one of those two guys who wrote it. Yeah, apparently Defoe worked for Missed. So I think it's just one of those things where their professors and people in the literature community that like to pull up their sleeves and battle it out on that when the rest of us don't really care. But the point is the general history or a general history of pirates with a Y has some stuff that we should go over either way.

I agree, And Bonnie, should we take a break first? Uh? Yeah, Well, we'll take a break, and we'll come back and introduce the world to Anne, Bonnie and Mary. Read alright, what a great cliffhanger, as I was saying. And Bonnie Uh born in Ireland near Cork, Ireland and apparently had a pretty rough childhood, as I bet a lot of kids back then had, and was the illegitimate daughter of an

attorney who was married. But this was the baby he had with his maid servant lady, and supposedly he would dress her as a boy as a kid to sort of deflect from the fact that she was illegitimate and just say no, this is my my boy servant who's going to be my assistant training at this point. Um. And eventually the the scandal got out, the whole thing was was known to the county, and um the guy lost his practice. Her father, who's sometimes identified as William Cormack,

James Cormack, and a bunch of other names. But the upshot is her her lawyer father basically lost his practice because of the scandal, and so he moved his daughter Uh and and um the servant made her and mother to Carolina and probably to Charlestown, which is now known as Charlestown is if they moved to Carolina at any point from Europe, that's probably where they settled. Yeah, like

Bill Murray exactly, anybody who's anybody ends up in Charlestown. Uh, so they end up And this was he said Carolina. This is before there was a North and South Carolina, and A think they just said that we shall be Carolina in one day there would be an NFL team that represents us both. That's right, although I think they're more The Panthers are definitely North Carolina, so that's where

they're base. But I think they did that in a bid to get South Carolina people to root for them too, Yeah, and to cough up some money, like the New England Patriots are like just all of New England should root for us exactly or well green Bay Packers is like the opposite of that. Why because it's specifically in Green Bay. Yeah, they said no one else in Wisconsin root for us exactly. It's specifically in a very small town and it's I think the team is owned by the town too. Yeah.

I gotta go to a game there. I bought my friend Adam one share of Green Bay Packers stock last year. That's a great Christmas present. It is, but it's meaningless apparently. Uh so where are we here? Um, they moved to Charlestown.

That's right, they moved to Charlestown. Historical records are very fuzzy, but it may have been born and full Ford with the alias of Bonnie and supposedly got that name from being married to another pirate, uh named James Bonnie, but then went and married and I don't know about Mary, but at least went off with a pirate named John Rackham who she definitely worked with. Like, we have records that prove that she worked for John, and I think I don't know if this is a speculation or not

that they were kissing and stuff. Yes that I think that's pretty much proven. But yes, documentary evidence shows that she was a pirate with John Calico Jack Rackham. It is a great name. So um again, it was weird that Rackham would have a woman on board with him is considered extremely bad luck. But Rackham had not just one, but two women on board with him because in addition to an Bonnie, he had another woman pirate named Mary Reid, who also had a kind of a strange um early

life as well. That that landed her on the high seas. Eventually, I wonder if it was like one is bad luck and two a party. Yeah, well that was one thing. So Mary Read in particular, Um she was, so I read the Ambonnie was not Um as chased as Mary Read was. But Mary Reid would fall in love really easily and be like, let's get married, and so she did that a few times. But there was one man who tried to have his way with Mary Read, and according to the history of the Pirates Um, she beat

him nearly to death. So she she she could definitely handle herself for sure from an early age. Yeah. And there was also this story that they both were aboard UM dressed as men, and this almost certainly seems like it's probably made up, but both dressed as men, and Bonnie crushed on Reid as a woman masquerading as a man, thinking it was another man. And then it sounds like straight out of a TV show. They go into a side room and both I guess, like pull off their

fake mustache at the same time. Yeah, and the ace bandages exactly uh and went ah, we're both women. But that that definitely sounds like it's in italics, right, for sure. I also saw though, that there was a book as recently or as early as like the seventeen fifties that that supposed that they were actually lovers. Okay, well, that sounds like overactive imagination of a male writer to me, right.

So the upshot is, though, that we do know from the scant documentary evidence that Mary reid And and Bonnie were both pirates with Calico Jack Rackham on the ships that Rackham stole, and they engaged in piracy. Witnesses at their trial spoiler alert, they were, and they ended up caught and tried said like these women would curse and

spit at the men. There was one person who said that the men were hiding below decks, and Mary reid And and Bonnie were above deck fighting and the men wouldn't come out, so and Bonnie shot into the into the lower decks and actual one guy because she considered them being cowards like they were. They were definitely known to have fought as pirates. They weren't captured, they weren't there against their will. They were swash buckling with the

best of them. They were there for the booty. They were uh so they were collecting booty all over the place, and eventually a um, I guess you would call it sort of a most wanted sort of declaration was put out naming them as pirates and enemies to the Crown

of Great Britain. And this was in September of seventeen and this is because well they were pirating everywhere, but a few weeks before, in August of that year, they stole a ship named the William and really sort of went to town, uh, basically through October, so they had a nice run through the fall. And then in late October seventeen twenty, Uh, they were entertaining some gentlemen, not just the ladies, like the whole crew. I think they were what like five or six of them total. I

saw a dozen, Okay, let's say a dozen. Then uh, and they were entertaining some guys, uh, mariners from the Port Royal and apparently he got a little out of hand, turned into a big fight and drew some attention, and a pirate hunter named Jonathan Barnett snagged them into custody and that was it. They had actually slipped if you read the pirate history, Uh, they'd slipped through the hands of other pirate hunters. A few times and some really

amazing daring dues. If they're true, even if they're not true, it's still worth reading. Yes, exactly, Chuck, thank you, Williams Sapphire. Um, they they this time though, they were caught and they were tried in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and apparently every single person ended up being found guilty. They had a couple

of different trials. A couple of guys really were abducted. Um. They were French like hunters on an island and they were abducted and full worst into this and they were still tried and um convicted and every single male crewman was hanged. Right. But there's a good final twist another TV scene moment. Uh. In court as they were being I guess uh read their verdict, Marian Anne looked at each other and winked and at the same time said threw their arms up and said we're pregnant. Uh. And

apparently that was the deal they were not. It was called pleading the belly, which will get you out of being put to death at least and being hanged. But they were not making it up. They were uh, you know, inspected I guess I hope by a doctor and found to be really pregnant, and so they avoided the gallows. Yeah. Um,

they were probably in their second trimester. Later historians said um Mary Reid died fairly shortly after the following April, and some historians have said that probably coincide with childbirth, so she might have died in childbirth. Her grave is in St. Catherine, Jamaica. You can go visit it. And um and Bonnie though she became more obscure according to the history Captain Johnson's history. Um, she was let go at some point. Uh, and we don't know where she went.

But all only this we know that she was not executed. What a great ending. Yeah, I also saw that after that. Some people suppose that she went back to Charleston, married another man, had eight kids. And it would be possible then that there are descendants of Ambonnie out there running around on the Isle of Palms. Perhaps probably maybe they'll find my tooth. It's that's some booty right there. That some boy. I'll give you some other booty. Short stuff

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