The History of Women Pirates

I'm sure by now that you've all seen, or at least heard of, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The third one is coming out this year and seems to be all my friends can talk about. Thinking about the Pirates of the Caribbean made me wonder if there were ever any women aboard on these Pirate ships like Keira Knightley's character Elizabeth Swann. So I decided to find out.

For hundreds of years sailing was something that only males would do. Even local fishermen were all men while the women were regulated to watching the children and mending nets. There were many tragedies on the water and the males felt it was too dangerous for women. Boats were often wet, cramped, and smelled bad and the chores on deck were very physically demanding. Man people also believed that women didn't belong on board because a woman would cause a lot of jealousy and fighting among the crew, some sailors even thought that having a woman onboard was bad luck.

That didn't stop women from going to sea though. Often times the women on board were just passengers. Sometimes a captain would bring their wife or mistress along with them. But there are also many cases where women went to sea as sailors. In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Elizabeth Swan disguises herself as a man to get aboard a ship. That part of the movie is actually accurate because most women who did become sailors dressed as men in order to keep their identity a secret. These women were all very tough in order to be able to carry out the physically demanding jobs a man had to do, but they did it. The Captain of a ship called Robert Small, Captain Scott, once said that Mary Anne Arnold was the best sailor he ever had.

A woman becoming a sailor was one thing, but a woman becoming a pirate was even harder. Pirates had very strict rules against not having women on board and many pirates were so anti-woman that they didn't even allow married men to join them. That still didn't stop all women from becoming pirates but there are only a few known cases. There was a Scandinavian woman named Alwilda that became a pirate as well as an Irishwoman named Grace O'Malley and a Chinese woman Mrs. Cheng, but the two most well known women pirates were Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

One pirate captain by the name of Calico Jack was actually very fond of women. Calico Jack often took women aboard on his adventures. In 1719 Calico Jack met Anne Bonny and convinced her to leave her husband and join him on his next adventure. Bonny joined the crew dressed as a man, just so the other crew members would not know she was a woman. Calico Jack and Anne Bonny didn't realize it but another one of their crew members, Mary Read, was also a woman disguised as a man. Anne Bonny became very attracted to Mary Read and one night Anne Bonny took Mary Read aside and revealed to Mary Read that she is really a woman. Of course Anne Bonny was then surprised when Mary Read followed her by admitting she was a woman too. The two of them went to Calico Jack and let him in on the secret and Mary and Anne became Calico Jack's two right hand "men".

In 1720, Calico Jack and his entire crew were captured. Whenever a pirate was caught, they were given a trial and were usually found guilty and would be hung. When the Governor found out that two of the pirates were women they weren't sure what to do. A hanging was thought to be too cruel a punishment for a woman so they decided Mary Read and Anne Bonny would have a separate trial. At Mary Read and Anne Bonny's trial the court went over all the facts and even though Mary and Anne were women the court decided they had no choice but to hang them for the laws they had broken. But Mary Read and Anne Bonny had one more ace up their sleeve. They announced to the courtroom that they were both pregnant.

After the appropriate tests were done it was revealed that Mary Read and Anne Bonny were indeed pregnant. Now if the court was to hang them they would not only be killing the two pirates but also two unborn babies. The court decided not to hang the two women but send them to prison instead. Soon after the trial Mary Read contracted fever and never gave birth before she died. Nobody is certain what happened to Anne Bonny or her child.