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The best known woman pirate
was Anne Bonny, considered one of the most famous pirates of the
Caribbean. Anne Bonny was born in
Ireland. Moving to Charleston with her
father, Anne always proved to be difficult to get along with. As a child she stabbed a serving girl with a
table knife, and as a young woman she beat up a young suitor so badly that he
was in the hospital for a month.
Anne
married the penniless Jack Bonny and was disowned by her father. She and Bonny moved to the pirate haven of
New Providence, in the Bahamas. She soon
met a dashing pirate named Calico Jack Rackam, for whom she left her husband. She joined Calico Jack plying the pirate
trade. Aboard ship Anne wore men's
clothes and kept her gender a secret from all.
As she
and Rackam plundered coastal traders, Anne proved that not only could she dress
like a pirate but that she could fight like one as well, raging out of the
cannon smoke, flashing her cutlass and singeing the air with shrill curses.
The end
of Anne Bonny's pirate career came suddenly when a British Navy sloop swept
down upon the pirates as they were getting riotously drunk off the coast of
Jamaica. Calico Jack and his crew were
too drunk to fight and hid in the hold.
Captured and tried, most of the pirates ended on the end of a rope, but
not Anne. Anne Bonny's pardon was based
not on any hope of rehabilitation but on the fact that she was pregnant. No record of Anne's execution has ever been
found, and there is some reason to belief that her wealthy father bought her
release after the birth of her child.
Anne
Bonny buried a cache of gold and silver in the vicinity of Fort Caswell at the
mouth of Cape Fear. Other pirates also
used this area.
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