Anne Bonny – ‘The Pirate Queen’

A glorious, red-haired wrecking ball, Anne Bonny was born to break all the rules. Rejecting a society that treated women as weak, the Irish-born badass created her own, roaming and robbing the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy with her (lesbian) lovers, becoming the most famous female pirate of all time. Sure, there were other she-pirates, some braver and more notorious than her. But there is something about Anne’s fiery spirit and the flair with which she defied sexual and legal rules that made her the archetype of female piracy. Say ‘female pirate’, and I see Anne Bonny in my mind’s eye: shooting and slashing her way to the loot, a gun belt slung over a stolen officer’s coat, a cocked tricorne hat barely covering her unruly red hair. The ultimate personification of ‘savage’ (sorry, Megan Thee Stallion). A woman on fire.

The legend of Anne Bonny begins in South Carolina with a shorthaired, 13-year-old tomboy who rules her father’s plantation with an iron fist – stabbing at least one maid! – after her mom’s passing. Anne is described as having a ‘wicked temper’, and sure enough: when her father disowns her for eloping with small-time pirate James Bonny, she burns down the plantation. Not long after arriving in pirate haven Nassau, Anne forms the ultimate pirate power couple with cocky pirate John ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham. Together, these lovers rule the high seas and are soon joined by a third lover: the infamous cross-dressing female pirate Mary Read, aka ‘Mark Read’. A swashbuckling ménage à trois; oh, the succulent scandal! You can just hear the voices of the ‘historians’ tremble with excitement when they describe how Anne Bonny would ‘bare her breasts before shooting men in the face’.

But who was the woman behind the myth of the lusty, halfnaked she-pirate? Well, I see a survivor; a cunning, violent woman who had one main loyalty: to piracy. Anne understood that in life, it’s either sink or swim. In 1720 the threesome was finally captured after a brutal battle – the women were the only ones fighting, the rest of the crew was too drunk – and they were sentenced to be hanged. Anne and Mary promptly ‘pleaded their bellies’ (they claimed to be pregnant) and were pardoned. During her final visit to Calico, Anne told her lover: “I am sorry to see you in this predicament, but had you fought like a man you would not now have to die like a dog.” We lose track of her after that. But I know one thing for sure: Anne Bonny was savage till the end.

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