“We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.”
I kinda wish they had added THINN Kul Tiran Females like they did with the males. I mean, I guess the normal human females are already pretty thin but it would’ve still been cool.
On This Day in Herstory, November 15th 1720, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two pirates, were captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica for trial.
Anne Bonny was born Anne Cormac c.1698, near Cork, Ireland; she is thought to be the illegitimate daughter of an Irish lawyer, and one of the maids who worked in his house. When her father’s wife found out about his affair he took Bonny and her mother, and the family emigrated to Charles Towne, South Carolina. When she was 13 her mother died, and shortly thereafter her father betrothed her to a local man, which she heavily opposed. In an act of rebellion in 1718 she ran off and married a sailor, called John Bonny, and the couple moved to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, where her husband acted as an informant for the governor of the Bahamas. Bonny was less than thrilled by her new husband, and she became involved with pirate John “Calico Jack” Rackham, Calico Jack offered Bonny’s husband money for a divorce, but he refused.
In August 1720 Bonny abandoned her husband and helped Calico Jack in commandeering a ship, and along with a crew of a dozen people the pair began pirating merchant ships along the coast of Jamaica. Bonny’s presence aboard the ship was unusual, as many people thought women on board brought bad luck; but she was fierce, one story said that in her youth she beat an attempted rapist so badly he was hospitalized. Bonny made no attempt to conceal her gender from her shipmates, but when pillaging she disguised herself as a man and participated in armed combat. At some point, it’s not known when, another pirate, called Mary Read joined Calico Jack and Bonny’s crew.
Mary Read was born c.1695 in England, and relatively little is known about their early life. Read’s mother was married to a sailor, and together they had a son; the sailor deserted the family and Read’s mother had an affair that resulted in Read’s birth. Not long after, Read’s half-brother Mark died, and their mother decided to pass Read off as Mark to continue to receive money from his paternal grandmother; and so from then, Read was known as Mark Read. When they were 13 the grandmother died, but they continued to live as Mark, and eventually joined the military. While in the military they met another soldier, and after revealing their sex to him they married, the couple moved to the Netherlands and opened an inn, but their husband quickly died. Following this, she went back to living as Mark, and found work as a sailor, and when the ship was seized by pirates they decided to become a buccaneer. In 1717 they sailed to the Bahamas, and at some point thereafter joined Calico Jack and Bonny, as a member of their crew. Read continued to live as Mark, though the crew soon realized their sex, and so they lived as Mary on-board the ship.
Together Bonny and Read earned a reputation for ruthlessness, and were described as “very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board.” In September 1720 the governor of the Bahamas declared the pirate crew, and Bonny and Read specifically, as “Enemies to the Crown of Great Britain.” On November 15th 1720, law enforcement caught up to them at Negril Point, Jamaica. The entire crew except for Bonny and Read were drunk, entirely useless, and couldn’t help fight; so Bonny and Read fought until they were finally overwhelmed, and Calico Jack surrendered. The crew were captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica for trial; Calico Jack and all other men from the crew were immediately found guilty and hung. On November 28th Bonny and Read were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death; however, it was discovered that they were both pregnant, and this caused their executions to be postponed. In April 1721 Read died in prison after developing a fever, and was buried on April 28th 1721. Bonny, however, was released (probably due to her father’s influence) she returned to Charles Towne, she got married, had children, and died c.April 25th 1782, she was 84.
