English practice 51

The Pirate Queen

Legends of female pirate Anne Bonny popular today. As piracy was a male-dominated

story has fascinated generations of feminists and pirate enthusiasts alike. Everyone wants to believe that her deeds were as fabulous as our collective imagination makes them, but the truth is that, although we know Bonny existed and

spent some time on a pirate ship,

The famous pirate queen is said to have been born

Anne Cormac, around 1700 in Kinsale, in the south of Ireland. Supposedly disowned by her family as a teenager after stabbing another girl in the gut with a table knife, the

is said then to have eloped to the Bahamas with a sailor named James Bonny, after

burning down her estate in vengeance. But aside from the fact that she arrived in Nassau, Bahamas, as the wife of James Bonny, none of the

other the identity of her family—can be verified, and may all just be romantic wishful thinking done after the fact.

It is known that, while living in Nassau, she became romantically involved with the pirate “Calico Jack” Rackham (there are records of her having been charged with adultery by Bonny) and sailed off with him on his ship, the Revenge. Their endeavors were

successful , with the Revenge

taking several ships. She apparently participated in the fighting when there

(less often than people imagine, as most ships overtaken by pirates surrendered immediately), but contrary to popular belief, she never captained her own ship or commanded her own crew.

The pirates of the Revenge were captured in port

by authorities in while all but Bonny and the one other female in the crew, Mary Read, were drunk, forcing the two women to fight alone (likely another embellishment). Every pirate was hanged aside from Bonny and Read, who both claimed to be pregnant

and were spared. Read subsequently died in prison of a fever, but there is no reliable record of what became of Anne Bonny. She may have been executed after delivering her baby—if she really was pregnant—or she may have convinced

the law a prisoner on Rackham’s ship and been

released. We’ll probably never know any more about the story of Anne Bonny than we already do, but as with King Arthur, Robin Hood, or the many other larger-than-life figures whose legends have little basis in fact, this will surely not stop people from telling it.