Pirates

THERE HAVE BEEN women pirates throughout the ages, from Queen Artemisia to female Vikings to modern-day women pirates in the Philippines. Many of the stories about female pirates are just that: stories made up showcasing women pirates who are merely fictional. But there are several women pirates whose stories are verifiable, and who really did live and (in some cases) die a pirate’s life on the high seas.

CHARLOTTE BADGER

Charlotte Badger was a convicted felon when she was sent to Australia from England. She was found guilty of the crime of breaking and entering when she was eighteen years old and sentenced to seven years deportation. She sailed to Port Jackson, Sydney, aboard the convict ship The Earl of Cornwallis in 1801 and served five years of her sentence at a factory, during which time she also gave birth to a daughter.

With just two years of her sentence left, she was assigned to work as a servant to a settler in Hobart Town, Tasmania, along with fellow prisoner Catherine Hagerty. In April 1806, Charlotte, her daughter, Catherine, and several male convicts traveled to Hobart Town on a ship called Venus. When the Venus docked at Port Dalrymple in June, the convicts mutinied, and Charlotte and her friend Catherine joined in with the male convicts to seize control of the ship. The pirate crew headed for New Zealand (even though nobody aboard really knew how to navigate the ship), and Charlotte, her child, Catherine, and two of the male convicts were dropped off at Rangihoua Bay in the Bay of Islands.

Charlotte and her compatriots built huts and lived on the shore of the island, but by 1807, Catherine Hagerty was dead, and the two men had fled. The Venus had long since been overtaken by South Sea islanders, who captured the crew and then burned the ship. Charlotte and her child stayed on Rangihoua Bay, living alongside the Maori islanders. Twice she was offered passage back to Port Jackson, and twice she refused, saying that she preferred to die among the Maori.

What happened to Charlotte after 1807 isn’t entirely clear. Some stories have her living with a Maori chieftain and bearing another child; in other stories the Maori turned on her, prompting her and her daughter to flee to Tonga; still other stories eventually place her in America, having stowed away on another ship. Whatever happened to her, she was quite possibly the first European woman to have lived in New Zealand, and one of New Zealand’s first women pirates.

ANNE BONNY AND MARY READ

Anne Bonny, born in Ireland around 1700, is by all accounts one of the best known female pirates. She was disowned by her father when, as a young teen, she married a sailor named James Bonny; the newlyweds then left Ireland for the Bahamas. There, James worked as an informant, turning in pirates to the authorities for a tidy sum. While James confronted pirates, Anne befriended them: she became especially close with Jack Rackam, also known as “Calico Jack.” Jack was a pirate who had sworn off pirating so as to receive amnesty from the Bahamian governor, who had promised not to prosecute any pirate who gave up his pirating ways. In 1719, however, Anne and Jack ran off together, and Jack promptly returned to pirating—this time with Anne by his side. She donned men’s clothing in order to join the crew on his ship, the Revenge, and was so good at the work that she was accepted as a crewmate even by those men who discovered she was actually a woman.

When the Revenge took another ship during a raid and absorbed its crew, Anne discovered she was no longer the only woman on board: a woman by the name of Mary Read had also disguised herself as a man to be accepted as a pirate. Mary, born in London in the late 1600s, had spent nearly her whole life disguised as a man. Mary’s mother had raised her as a boy almost from birth to keep the family out of poverty. (Mary’s father died before she was born, and her brother, who would have been the only legal heir, also died. Back then, only men could inherit wealth, so baby Mary became baby Mark.) As a young girl living as a boy, Mary worked as a messenger and eventually enlisted in the infantry, fighting in Flanders and serving with distinction. She fell in love with another soldier (to whom she revealed her true gender), and they soon married, leaving the army to run a tavern called The Three Horseshoes. Sadly, her husband died in 1717, and Mary once again had to disguise herself as a man to earn a living. She put on her dead husband’s clothes, enlisted in the army, and went to Holland. She found no adventure there, so she boarded a ship for the West Indies. That was when her ship was captured by the Revenge, and her life intersected with those of Calico Jack and his mistress, Anne Bonny.

Anne and Mary became close friends, and once Anne knew the truth about Mary, she swore that she would never reveal Mary’s true identity. But Calico Jack, jealous of Anne’s attention, grew suspicious of their friendship and demanded an explanation. Soon the secret was out, but, luckily for Mary, Jack was relieved and not angered to discover she was a woman. He allowed her to continue on the crew, and just as Anne had been accepted by her crewmates despite being female, Mary was accepted too. Unfortunately for the crew of the Revenge, the Bahamian governor was not so accepting of pirates who flouted amnesty agreements by returning to pirating after promising not to, and he issued a proclamation naming Jack Rackam, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read as “Pirates and Enemies to the Crown of Great Britain.”

In 1720, the Revenge was attacked by a pirate-hunter eager to capture an enemy of the Crown. Calico Jack, along with nearly the entire crew, was drunk at the time, and the men quickly retreated to hide below deck and wait out the attack. Only Anne and Mary stayed above, fighting for the ship. It is said that Anne shouted to the crew, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come out and fight like the men ye are thought to be!” Enraged by the crew’s cowardice, Anne and Mary shot at them, killing one man and wounding several others, including Calico Jack. Despite the women’s efforts, the ship was captured.

The crew was taken to Jamaica and tried for piracy in November of 1720. All of them were hanged, save for Anne and Mary, who were granted stays of execution due to the fact that they were both pregnant. Mary was brave in the face of her punishment, telling the court, “As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the sea, that men of courage must starve.” But as it turned out, Mary never had to face the gallows: she died in prison of a fever. As for Anne, after the piracy trial, the historical record is silent. Rumors say alternately that she was hanged a year later; that she was given a reprieve; that she reconciled with the father who disowned her, or with her first husband, whom she had left; that she gave up the pirate’s life and became instead a nun. We may never know for sure what happened to her.

CHING SHIH

Ching Shih—also known as Shi Xainggu, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou, or Zheng Yi Sao—ruled the South China Sea in the early 19th century, overseeing about 1,800 ships and 80,000 male and female pirates.

She became the commander of the infamous Red Flag Fleet of pirates after her husband Cheng Yi, the former commander from a long line of pirates, died in 1807; she went on to marry Chang Pao, formerly her husband’s right-hand man. To say that Ching Shih ran a tight ship was an understatement: pirates who committed even innocuous offenses were beheaded. Her attitude in battle was even more intense, with hundreds of ships and thousands of pirates used to engage even a small target.

Ching Shih was also a ruthless businesswoman. She handled all business matters herself, and pirates not only needed her approval to embark on a raid, they were also required to surrender the entire haul to her. She diversified her business plan by expanding beyond the raiding of commercial ships, working with shadowy businessmen in the Guangdong salt trade to extort the local salt merchants. Every

ship passing through her waters had to buy protection from her, and Ching Shih’s fleet of mercenaries torched any vessel that refused to pay up.

The Red Flag Fleet under Ching Shih’s rule could not be defeated—not by Chinese officials, not by the Portuguese navy, not by the British. But in 1810, amnesty was offered to all pirates, and Ching Shih took advantage of it, negotiating pardons for nearly all her troops. She retired with all her ill-gotten gains and ran a gambling house until her death in 1844.

RACHEL WALL

Rachel Schmidt was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1760. When she was sixteen, she met George Wall, a former privateer who served in the Revolutionary War; against the wishes of her mother, she married him. The two moved to Boston, where George worked as a fisherman and Rachel worked as a maid in Beacon Hill. George, whom Rachel’s mother had considered more than slightly shady to begin with, fell in with a rough crowd and gambled away what money they had. Unable to pay the rent, and lured by the fun of his fast-living fisherman friends, he hit upon pirating as the answer to their financial woes and convinced Rachel to join in.

George and Rachel stole a ship at Essex and began working as pirates off the Isle of Shoals. They would trick the passing ships by having the blue-eyed, brown-haired Rachel pose as a damsel in distress, standing at the ship’s mast and screaming for help as the ships came near. Once the rescuing crew came aboard to help, George and his men would kill them, steal their booty, and sink their ship. Rachel and George were successful as pirates, capturing a dozen boats, murdering two dozen sailors, and stealing thousands of dollars in cash and valuables.

Their evil plan was cut short in 1782, when George, along with the rest of his crew, was drowned in a storm. Rachel, who really did need rescuing in that situation, was saved, brought ashore, and taken back to Boston, but it was hard to leave her pirating ways. She spent her days working as a maid, but by night she broke into the cabins of ships docked in Boston Harbor, stealing any goods she could get her hands on. Her luck ran out in 1789, when she was accused of robbery. At her trial, she admitted to being a pirate but refused to confess to being a murderess or a thief. She was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. She died on October 8, 1789, the first and possibly the only woman pirate in all of New England, and the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts.