Mary Read.

Last week I told a story about a pirate called Anne Bonny and in it I made reference to another Woman Pirate called Mary Read. But who was Mary Read.

 

Mary Read.

Mary Read (died 1721) was an English pirate. She and Anne Bonny are two of the most famed female pirates of all time. She and Anne Bonny are the only two women known to have been convicted of piracy during the early 18th century, at the height of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Mary Read was illegitimately born in England, in the late 17th century, born anytime from 1670-1698 to the widow of a sea captain. Like Anne Bonny, no clear record of her date of birth seems to exist.

Her mother decided to disguise Mary as a boy after the death of Mary’s older, legitimate brother Mark. It has been suggested that this was done in order to receive financial support from his paternal grandmother. Apparently it worked and both Mary and her mother lived on the inheritance well into Mary’s teenage years.  It was in her teenage years that Mary still dressed as a boy found work as a footboy and later found employment on a ship.

She later joined the British military, allied with Dutch forces against the French. Read, in male disguise, proved herself through battle, but she fell in love with a Flemish soldier. When they married, she used their military commission and gifts from intrigued brethren in arms as a funding source to acquire an inn named The Three Horseshoes  near Breda Castle in The Netherlands.

Upon her husband's early death, Mary found that she couldn’t run the inn on her own so once again dressed as a man she signed up for military service in Holland. With peace, there was no room for advancement, so she quit and boarded a ship bound for the West Indies.  While en route to the West Indies, Read’s ship was attacked and captured by pirates. Read decided to join them and for a while lived the life of a pirate in the Caribbean before accepting the king’s pardon in 1718. Like many former pirates, she signed on board a privateer commissioned to hunt down those buccaneers who had not accepted the pardon. It didn’t last long, as the whole crew soon mutinied and took over the ship.

In 1720 she joined pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham and his companion, the female pirate Anne Bonny.  Captain John Rackham, often called Calico Jack because he loved to wear clothes made of calico.  Read continued dressing as a man and nobody seemed to notice until Anne Bonny took a bit of a fancy to this handsome young fellow. Mary was forced to reveal to Bonny that she was a woman, apparently it didn’t seem to matter to Anne as she still fancied her. Calico Jack was rather annoyed at this and became jealous as they seemed to be getting very close and he threatened to slit Read’s throat from ear to ear (he was still under the impression that Read was a man). To prevent Read’s death, Calico Jack was let in on the secret and he decided to allow both women to remain on board as long as they kept it their little secret.  It could only lead to trouble.

During their brief cruise in late 1720, they captured a number of ships and took several prisoners that they forced into useful service. Mary Read fell in love with one of the prisoners who was surprised to learn that she was a woman and eventually returned the affection. When one of the pirates challenged her lover to a duel, Read contrived a secret duel to occur a couple hours earlier. She killed the pirate before he could bring any harm to her lover, whom she called "husband" as they made vows to each other in absence of a minister.

In October 1720, pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet took Rackham's crew by surprise while they were hosting a rum party with another crew of Englishmen off the west coast of Jamaica. After a volley of fire left the pirate vessel disabled, Rackham's crew and their "guests" fled to the hold, leaving only the women and one other to fight Barnet's boarding party. Allegedly, Read angrily shot into the hold, killing one, wounding others when the men would not come up and fight with them. Barnet's crew eventually overcame the women. Rackham surrendered,  shouting things like

“Don’t hurt me, I’m only a poor pirate” He wasn’t a very brave pirate.

Calico Jack and his crew were arrested and brought to trial in what is now known as Spanish Town, Jamaica, where they were sentenced to hang for acts of piracy, as were Read and Bonny.

 However, the women escaped the noose when they revealed they were both "quick with child" (known as "Pleading the belly"), so they received a temporary stay of execution.  Later, in one of the most famous pirate quotes of all time, Bonny told Rackham in prison:

 "I'm sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man you need not have hanged like a dog."

Mary Read never got to taste freedom again, she developed a fever and died in prison in April 1721, but there is no record of burial of her baby. Official documents state that Read died of fever associated with childbirth.  How much of this story is true I don’t know. There is most likely a bit of embellishment but there is historical evidence that a woman called Mary Read did serve with Calico Jack Rackham and that there were two very able woman who were known as skilled pirates on his ship. They were every bit as brutal and ruthless as their male companions and in some cases even more so.

Read and Bonny have captured the public imagination as being the only two well-documented female pirates in the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy." In an age and society where the freedom of women was greatly restricted, Read and Bonny lived a life at sea as full members of a pirate crew.

As subsequent generations increasingly romanticize piracy and the likes of Rackham, Bonny and Read, their stature has grown even further. Calico Jack may have been a second rate pirate on a third rate ship but he did have a very cool flag. It’s very easy to imagine Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of The Caribbean as the modern version of Calico Jack.