American History Tellers - The Age of Pirates | Women of the High Seas | 4

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

During the Golden Age of Piracy, two female pirates became infamous despite their short careers. Anne Bonny and Mary Read went down as some of the fiercest pirates in popular mythology.. Dr. Rebecca Simon is a historian of early modern piracy and lover of all things pirates. Her latest book is called Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. She joins host Lindsay Graham to separate fact from fiction about these women of the high seas and other pirate legends.Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's late October 1720 in the Caribbean Sea, just off the coast of Jamaica. You're slumped on the deck of a ship, your back against the main mast. A rope digs tightly into your bound wrists. An hour ago, you were paddling along in your canoe, minding your own business. But now you're a prisoner on board a pirate ship. At a distance, you can see some crew members skulking around the foredeck,

eyeing you like they're planning to slit your throat. And one pirate approaches. Squinting as you look up into the late-day sun, you see that they're wearing a shabby pair of trousers and a long jacket. But the fit of the jacket seems off. Looking more closely, you're shocked to realize this pirate is a woman. Her red hair falls loose around her shoulders as she frowns down at you, a pistol in her hand. Now don't bother struggling. There's nowhere to run. And you wouldn't make it far in those skirts anyways. Please, ma'am, don't let these men hurt me. Well, it's not them you've got to worry about. It's me.

The woman leans down and yanks you up by the collar of your dress. Jack doesn't know how to interrogate a woman. He gets all soft, but I can assure you I have no such problem. You assume Jack must be the name of the pirate captain who just questioned you and stormed below decks unsatisfied with your answers. I told you, Captain, I was just rowing across the Montego Bay. On your own. What kind of woman rows a canoe across a bay on their own?

Well, I could ask you what kind of woman works on a pirate ship. The woman puts her face very close to yours. Admit it. You were spying on us. I don't know what you're talking about. Your eyes dart toward the ship's railing. If you had half a chance, you could make a break for it. Oh, you want to jump?

Well, go ahead. You wouldn't last five minutes in these waters. No, I've lived here for years. I know how to handle the currents. Even with your hands tied? Oh, I'd like to see that. Just then, another figure emerges from below decks. And you can hardly believe your eyes because it's another woman. She says nothing, but stands menacingly in the distance, watching a cutlass sheathed in her

belt. No, no, no, don't look at her. Look at me. You want to be free of us, of this ship? Of course, please. Then go ahead. I'll even cut your ropes. It'll be good sport to see you try to swim for it in these heavy clothes. Why are you doing this to me? What did I do? The red-headed woman flashes a look to her companion, like she can't believe how stupid your question is. You didn't do anything, but you did see us,

and you could identify us to the authorities. She grins at you, showing a row of filthy teeth, and then takes out a knife. You close your eyes and try hard to swallow your terror. Any hope you had that these women might show you some mercy is gone. You start to mutter a prayer as the red-headed woman steps closer to you. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you'd die like this at the hands of women pirates. From Wondery comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Need to launder some money?

Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Nick. And this is Jack. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. In 1720, two women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, were captured and put on trial in Jamaica for piracy.

The women had spent several months plundering ships in the Caribbean with the crew of Captain Calico Jack Rackham. At the trial, another woman would take the stand against them. Dorothy Thomas had been paddling a canoe when she was spotted and taken prisoner by Rackham. Both Bonnie and Reed wanted her killed, but Rackham decided to spare her life and let her go. This would prove to be a mistake, as Thomas's testimony against the pirates helped seal their fate. Rackham was executed in November of 1720. Mary Read died in prison the following spring. Anne Bonny was sentenced to death as well, but what ultimately became of her remains a mystery.

The exploits of famous pirates like Bonny, Blackbeard, and Captain Kidd have become the stuff of legend. But it can also be surprisingly difficult to learn about the lives of the real people behind the myths. Pirates didn't write memoirs, and whatever records they may have kept have been lost or destroyed. Even in the time of pirates, newspaper accounts were often full of inaccuracies and exaggerations. My guest today has spent her career looking behind these myths to piece together a more accurate portrayal of pirate life. Rebecca Simon is a professor of history at Santa Monica College and a leading expert on the history of piracy and crime in colonial America. Her latest book is Pirate

Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Here's our conversation. Dr. Rebecca Simon, thank you so much for speaking with me on American History Tellers. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. So pirates, you have written that your interest in pirates before you discovered that there was an actual academic study of them was sparked in 2003 by a movie. I'm just wondering what was the movie and what hooked you about it, pun intended. The movie was Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl.

I loved that movie. So a little bit of context. I am from Los Angeles. I'm an LA native and I love Disneyland. And I grew up going to Disneyland at least once or twice a year with my family. And my favorite ride was always Pirates of the Caribbean. And I wanted to go see the movie. So I saw it with some friends and we just thought it was the most fun movie ever. I thought the portrayal of pirates was quite interesting.

I love the characters. I love the scenery. I love the story. It was just great. And of course, I really enjoyed the little throwbacks to the ride that you'd see throughout. But it never once occurred to me that I could ever actually study them, let alone make a living off of it, until I started doing my master's degree. And in 2009, I was taking a course on Atlantic history, which covers the time period between about 16 and 1800, and you're looking at transcontinental relationships and colonization and the slave trade. And one of the books we read was called Villains of All Nations, Atlantic Pirates in the Golden

Age by Marcus Rediker. And this was about pirates and kind of how they helped shape the Atlantic world and also what pirate societies were like and laws against pirates. And up until then, my entire pirate knowledge was pop culture. So I found it really, really interesting to see what the realities actually were. And I wanted to explore it more. And I really wanted to explore that connection of how did the reality of piracy change into like Jack Sparrow, Black Sails, Our Flag Means Death, that sort of thing. So I began researching it. And in my master's, I argued that it was the book Treasure Island that changed our perception and that all pop culture came from that novel. That's kind of how I got started. I've been researching pirates since 2009, basically.

All right, researching pirates in 2009. But remind us about the timeframe here. What was the golden age of piracy years-wise? And then when did Treasure Island come out? The golden age of piracy lasted between about 1670 up until about 1730. That's kind of like a ballpark here. Now, the book Treasure Island won't be published for like another 150 years. It comes out in 1883, and it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, who, the book Treasure Island won't be published for like another 150 years. It comes out in 1883, and it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, who used the book A General History of the Pirates as his research. And this book was published in 1724, which was a collection of major pirate biographies, which also kind of helped shape how we view pirates because a lot

of those stories were very heavily exaggerated. but they really helped shape Treasure Island. And it changed the way we see piracy. Virtually every single thing a lot of people think they know about pirates is actually kind of made up for the novel Treasure Island. I'm sure we'll get to many of those things that are the myths of piracy. But first, I'd like to kind of investigate some of the remarkable stories about pirates that the general public knows little about. You name a few unusual sources in which you found these archival records. Tell us more about how you found the stories for your research. Yeah, there's so many different ways. And part of the reason is because pirates themselves didn't have records. They either didn't keep them or they were destroyed or they were simply lost. So it's very rare to actually get kind of a source

written down by a pirate. So the way we get those firsthand accounts from pirates are by reading the published trials. Pirates were put on trial and they were almost always found guilty. And these trials were published for public consumption. I also looked at what were called last dying speeches. So there was sort of like a theater of execution that happened. Pirates, when they were found guilty, were all hung and they were kind of required to give this last dying speech because public executions were basically theater for the public because people would attend these. And they would atone for their crimes, warn people against becoming pirates, and also begging for forgiveness. Not all pirates participated in this, but that was another good way to get information.

I also looked at what were called the Ordinary of Newgate accounts. And the Ordinary of Newgate was the spiritual advisor to criminals in Newgate prison in London. He would try to get them to repent for their sins and he would write down all of his observations. And those were also sold for public consumption.

So those are some major sources. So you have this plethora of sources, many of which are very official sources, trial transcripts or official records. But there are also these personal accounts, not just the last dying speeches, but sometimes correspondence from the pirates themselves. I think you have one such correspondence in front of you. Would you mind reading that for us? Yeah, absolutely. And for context, this is from a young man who was about to hang for piracy. And instead of giving a speech, he was allowed to write a letter to his mother because he was leaving behind two young children. So in his letter,

what he wrote to her is, I am very sorry, mother, to think that I should be called so soon out of this world by an untimely end, for I had always hope of helping you and should have done very well had it not been for these other pirates. It has cost me all my wages, venture, and life. Don't make yourself uneasy, for it cannot be helped. I'll send you home my shirts, buckles, and hat. Remember me. So that's all this mother gets, her son's shirt, buckles, and hat. So what that quote demonstrates is that these pirates are real people with real families and real concerns and emotional attachments to the world around them. But we have inherited, as we hinted at earlier, a completely fictionalized version of what real pirates were.

So let's do some myth busting then. Let's go through the most popular myths of pirates and tell me why they're wrong. So the number one myth about pirates is that they buried treasure. The reality is pirates never buried treasure. The only one where there is a solid rumor about it is the pirate Captain William Kidd. He was executed for piracy in 1701 after robbing a very large Mughal ship in 1698 in the East Indies. And he claimed he had taken thousands of pounds worth of jewels and gold and coins. And he wrote to the governor of New York and Massachusetts, Lord Belmont, who was a friend and financier, in order for him to try to get out of his sentence, you know, be released from prison.

He was trying to bribe him, basically. And he said, I hid these objects on Gardner's Island, just off the coast of New York. But when they went and searched for it, there was nothing there. And they even questioned Captain Kidd's wife. They questioned her servants. She was arrested and everything. But nothing was ever found. And it turned out, Lord Belmont later said, there actually is not anything. So this is kind of the most solid rumor we have. No pirate ever had the time to bury anything. In general, pirates weren't after things like cash, gold, and coins, and jewels. If they found that, it was a really nice bonus. But what they were after were goods they could sell. About 50% of all the loots pirates took was to replenish their own stores

and for repairs, and the other 50% would be goods they could sell, and these would be anything from wine, textiles, spices, sometimes even enslaved people, which were counted as cargo. And also what we need to know is that in the 1700s, the word treasure meant something very different. It just meant valuable. It didn't mean what we think. That's a later invention. So if there's ever a reference about treasure in a document someone's reading, they're just referring to this is worth money that we can sell. So what's myth number two? Myth number two is the eye patch myth.

Now, there is kind of the big thing that pirates wore eye patches and they did that so that way they could see in the dark below deck because they'd have one eye already adjusted. Now, the show Mythbusters actually tested this out, and I believe it was sort of an inconclusive result. There were some pirates who might have eye patches was sort of an inconclusive result. There were some pirates who might have eye patches because, of course, injuries would happen and they would need to cover the injured eye, something like that. But for eye protection, pirates would usually use like charcoal or something similar to coal and line their eyes with it because it reflects the sun back out. The eye patch was actually more of an invention from Robert Louis Stevenson

because he gave the character Long John Silver an eyepatch. So we think of pirates wearing an eyepatch. Maybe some did, again, because of injury. But I have never seen a single account mentioning anything about an eyepatch. I've never even seen a single illustration sketching, drawing anything from the 16 or 1700s depicting a pirate with an eye patch either. So eye patches are a myth, but it might be that Jack Sparrow's eyeliner is closer to the truth. Is there a myth three?

The other big myth is that women were bad luck on ships, and that's why women generally didn't sail very much. This actually was not really a thing. Now, there is sailor mythology, going back to the Middle Ages, of female creatures such as sirens and mermaids who would seduce sailors and lure them to the bottom of the ocean to drown them. Sailors are terrified of drowning. Most of their mythology is about danger at sea, and these creatures were known to be female. But the reality is the reason why women weren't allowed on ships is just simply because they felt that, A, women were physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of ever being able to work on a ship. And B, also, they felt that having women on board would actually cause

problems between the men, such as jealousy or fighting or that sort of thing, or even, unfortunately, violence. And so this is why, in general, women were not allowed on ships, not because they were unlucky, but because women weren't valued and they were seen as very impractical. So we've discussed three top myths here. Let's go to the reality of being a pirate. What was life really like aboard these ships? Pirates were anarchists of the sea. They had their own rules, which went against class differences and societal hierarchies of the time. So what were the politics and everyday life aboard a pirate ship?

So life at sea in general, of course, was very difficult and had lots of dangers. And pirates in particular were always at much higher risk. And this is because they were pretty much guaranteed to be arrested if they were caught. And if they were arrested, they were almost guaranteed to hang. And so as a result, pirates actually did have a set of articles that they followed. And in pop culture, we think of it as the Pirate's Code or the Pirate's Code of Honor. This was something real, but it's not like what Jack Sparrow says or Pirate's Caribbean. They made up their own version for the movie.

But the Pirate's Code is really interesting because it sort of lays out how ships operated. So these articles that pirates had to swear to stated that everyone would get an equal share. The captain had his share. Then the lieutenants all got the same share, kind of working down the hierarchy. It showed everyone got the same share. No one would get any wages withheld, which did happen on merchant and naval ships quite often. It also showed how if you got injured, especially if you lost a limb, then you would get compensation for it. If you lost a right arm or right leg, you could get anywhere between 600 and 800 pounds in 18th century currency, a huge load of money. The codes also laid out how if someone had to be punished,

the punishment had to be decided by a unanimous vote of every single crew member. So this meant all major decisions were very collective and had to be unanimous, showing a very egalitarian way of running everything. The captain could also be voted out. They might oust the captain through a vote and vote someone else in, probably the person who initiated getting the captain out or maybe the second in command would usually get put in. Probably the person who initiated getting the captain out or maybe the second in command would usually get put in. And so as a result, what pirates are doing is they're really keeping their ship under a very strict order. And it did have a more egalitarian society, a more democratic society than you would find on a lot of merchant and naval ships. Now,

this wasn't always perfect. Of course, you did have quite corrupt pirate captains and everything like that. But in general, we do see more of this flexibility and we do see a lot of this equal order and also equal payments that we don't see on other ships during this time. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time

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recognize Ghost Story being chosen as the first series essential, Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself. So we've hinted at women's role in piracy at sea. Of course, we know that women were on these ships, but also we know that women were pirates themselves. So I want to ask you about your new book, which came out this June, called Pirate Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. In it, you write about these two famous women pirates during the golden age of piracy who had quite the reputation. Considering women were often not allowed or even banned altogether from pirate ships, how did you find their story and what inspired you to center them in your book?

Their story is really fascinating because there's a huge mystery about their early life and so much about the life that we know of, especially as they were pirates, has become so mythologized. And I began kind of researching them several years ago. And for a long time, the research I knew about them was a lot of the myths behind them. And so when I began to dive deep, no pun intended, into my research to write this book, I found that their history was much more complicated, but they also really kind of give us a window in what life was like for women, not just in general during the 18th century, but also at sea. They only sailed for two months as pirates between August and October of 1720, and yet they became some of the most famous ones in history. Now, the big question is how they became pirates. We actually don't know, but Anne Bonny was married to the pirate captain Jack Rackham. And there were cases of captains in general who might bring their wives and the wives

would have sort of a special status being the captain's wife. And this was kind of the case for Anne Bonny. Mary Read is interesting because we know less about her. It's long been believed that Mary Read had disguised herself as a man, but that's not true. In fact, the women, they did not disguise themselves as men. They only wore men's clothes for practicality in battle, and otherwise, according to witnesses, they wore women's clothing. So what's so interesting about them is because there is some documentation about them because of their trial after they were arrested,

we can kind of get a window into what life was like for women during the time period and how they really kind of threw those social norms back in the face of society. So women in the 18th century, they were expected to get married or maybe go into domestic servitude. That was basically your entire choice. And if you're upper class, you actually have even less choices. You have fewer. You're basically just going to get married and have children or be a spinster. And so these are two women who are able to kind of make their own life in a way by going at sea where they have more independence and they can fight and they can get wealthy. And even though their career was really short, it was so fascinating and also quite abhorrent to people just because of how much they were really going against the grain here. People were afraid that if women knew about

them, it might corrupt them. But at the same time, they're not the only women who were pirates in history. We actually have seen a lot of female pirates before them, although the vast majority of those that we knew were very powerful women, married to kings or governors or clan chieftains. So this is also why Anne Bonny and Mary Read are even more unique because neither of them came from powerful positions. Neither of them came from really wealthy families. So they really just broke the mold in every way. Who was the real Anne Bonny? Can you describe what her life might have been like on land before becoming a pirate? And just physically, how did Anne Bonny appear? So we don't know all the details about her life. A lot

of that information is kind of like in the context of the time, what would her life have been like? So she was born in Ireland. We know this because of birth records to a man named William Cormick in County Cork in Kinsale. And at some point, they did move to the American colonies because of records that we know. Her father was a lawyer and then a plantation owner. So as a plantation owner's daughter, he would have tried to arrange a marriage with her to probably another plantation owner's son. But for whatever reason, she wasn't into this. She probably didn't have very much supervision being on the plantation, depending on what life was like there. It's possible that she spent a

lot of time in town because they were near Charleston, and that was a major port city where a lot of pirates were. So she probably had a huge pirate connection growing up because of it. And this would have kind of inspired her love for sailing until she was finally able to run away from her home and join the sailor's life. In terms of her physical looks, the only images we have of her come from etchings from a general history of the pirate, which portray her as seemingly to be quite tall with very long, curly hair. And some other sources described her hair as being red, probably because she's Irish, but we don't know the actual color. In reality, most likely the average woman, she would have been much shorter. She would have been a lot slimmer. In terms of her hair, her hair would

have been long because that was kind of the style for women, unless maybe she cut it off at sea. But again, that's the only image we have of her. Now, you mentioned that Anne was married to Captain Rackham, but she was also married to James Bonney on land. Do we know the motivations for Anne's running away to become a pirate at sea? Was it to escape her marriage to James? And what was James's reaction when he heard that his wife had married a pirate at sea? Was it to escape her marriage to James? And what was James's reaction when he heard that his wife had married a pirate at sea? So this is a really interesting story. So yes, Anne Bonny was married to a man named James Bonny, who was also a sailor. And they were

in Nassau for some time, but the two of them did not have a very good marriage. What happened is that when they got to Nassau, James Bonney wasn't really interested in being at sea very much anymore, although he was hired by Woods Rogers, the royal governor, to become a pirate hunter. And this was actually quite a lucrative career for a lot of people who had sailed and had even dabbled in piracy because they would know kind of the ins and outs and where pirates were. And he and Anne Bonny were separated, and we don't really know why, but Anne Bonny became known to have affairs with other sailors that came through the taverns, including pirates. And it was there that she met Jack Rackham. And somehow the two of them fell in love. We don't really know the whole story of their romance, but what we do know is that Jack

Rackham tried to convince James Bonney to sell her to him. Wife sales weren't that uncommon in the Caribbean because there was a huge imbalance of men versus women. So a lot of times men would literally buy wives and some women would offer themselves for sale so they could have a new opportunity or get money for their family. And in some cases, this was also the best way for a woman to be able to get a divorce. But the problem is, Woods Rogers, A, he liked James Bonney. He thought James Bonney was a good employee for the island. But also, Woods Rogers really hated the custom of wife selling, and he

was trying to ban it. And it got to the point where he threatened to have Anne thrown in jail and be publicly whipped if they went through with it. So Anne and Jack Rackham ended up literally running away in the night. Jack Rackham ended up literally running away in the night. Jack Rackham stole a small ship called the William, renamed it the Revenge, and then they took off in August of 1720. In the meantime, James Bonney actually did try to go after them. And then he got distracted and went after the pirate Charles Vane, probably because Jack Rackham and Charles Vane actually used to sail together before Jack Rackham met Anne Bonny. And in this process, it's believed that James Bonny died in a storm

because after that, the record of his life completely disappears. So we've discussed the political order on a pirate ship, but introducing Anne and Mary as women captains certainly is something different. How did they assert their authority as women on the ship? Anne Bonny would have been respected for being the captain's wife, but the two of them didn't actually have any authority, but they were considered equals. And they took place in all the battles, and they were known according to eyewitnesses who survived their attacks and spoke out against them at their later trial. According to them, Anne Bonny and Mary Read fought harder and swore more and cursed more and were a lot deadlier than most of the men. They would fight wearing men's clothing, but at the same time, their hair was loose

and, you know, flying around their face in the wind. They would even sometimes fight with their shirts open, exposing their breasts to their victims. And this was done as an intimidation tactic. This actually is not the first time pirates use nudity as an intimidation tactic. The pirate Sam Bellamy would lead his pirates onto their victim ships completely naked as a way to intimidate people into submission. And so this was kind of one of the tactics that Anne Bonny and Mary Read were using in a way, and they were pretty well respected on the ship. of committing war crimes look no further than Paul Bergeron. All the big guys go to Bergeron because he gets everybody off. You name it, Paul can do it. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel?

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was a short one. So what did they actually accomplish? What were these few months for them like? So the two months that they spent at sea between August and October of 1720 was kind of actually hit or miss for them.

They mostly sailed around Jamaica, so in quite a small area. And they only really captured about two large ships with a lot of goods with a lot of monetary value and items like wine and textiles and that sort of thing. But otherwise, most of the ships they were encountering were small fishing ships. And with those ships, they were usually capturing the hostages and keeping them on board. But then they'd let them go after just a few days. And according to one of the survivors, Dorothy Thomas, who was captured, and Bonnie and Mary Reid didn't want Jack Rackham to let go of any of the hostages because they claimed that these hostages could speak out against them. And, you know, they turned out to be right. But there was a little bit of discontent on board just because, again, Jack Rackham wasn't coming across very many good ships.

They weren't making very much. After their second big haul in October, they kind of parked in Negril Bay off the coast of Jamaica, and they all got drunk. They were celebrating. But what they didn't know is that there were two pirate hunters after them, Jean Bonnevae, who had been hired by the governor of Jamaica, and Jonathan Barnett, who'd been hired by Woods Rogers, the governor of the Bahamas. And they managed to find out where Jack Rackham was. There were survivors of their attacks, so it was easy for them to find the information of where they might be going. And sure enough, they came upon them while Jack Rackham and most of the crew were drinking, and Captain Barnett engaged them in battle. And Jack Rackham ends up ordering everybody below deck instead of fighting back,

leaving just Anne Bonny and Mary Read actually up on board. And the two of them were actually fighting single-handedly. And Captain Barnett would later say that he really kind of, he was very impressed by the way that they fought, you know, especially being women. And he said that they were some of the fiercest fighters that he encountered. But of course they weren't going to win because it was just two against an entire host of pirate hunters.

At the end of October of 1720, they were all arrested. And then they were taken to Jamaica in Santiago de la Vega, which is modern-day Spanish town outside of the capital city, Kingston. And they were thrown in prison, and their trials were in November of 1720. And Jack Rackham would be executed around November 18th, 1720, and Anne Bonny and Mary Reed's trial was just a couple of days later. But despite all the evidence against Anne and Mary, they plead not guilty. Still, they were sentenced to execution. But you wrote that they never saw the news.

How did they escape their end? So pretty much all pirates would claim not guilty and trying to get off as well as they could. But yes, absolutely. Anne Bonny and Mary Read were pronounced guilty and they were get off as well as they could. But yes, absolutely. Anne Bonny and Mary Reed were pronounced guilty and they were sentenced for execution. But the reason why they never actually saw the noose is because at their trial, they both revealed that they were pregnant. And they underwent an examination and it proved that, yes, they were telling the truth. They were indeed pregnant, which meant they were pregnant as pirates. And because they were pregnant, they asked for what was called a stay of execution, meaning

to delay it until after the children would be born. But now here's the thing. About 95% of women who were sentenced to hang or given a death sentence were never actually executed. A lot of them instead would sit in jail for quite some time and then maybe eventually be released or would be sentenced to transportation for labor or into indentured servitude. That likely would have been their fate, although since they were pirates, it's a little hard to say. Now, what happens is Mary

Reed dies of what's called jail fever in April of 1721. And jail fever is what we will call typhus today. It's also possible that she died of complications of pregnancy or even childbirth. Now, Anne Bonny is interesting because there's no record of what happened to her. It's been believed for a very long time that she somehow was probably just let go, like many women were, and that she went home to the Carolinas where her father lived. But in 2020, a young man, a YouTuber, he actually did some digging and found death records for St. Catherine's Parish, Jamaica, which is where the trial took place in Jamaica. And in it, he found the death record for Mary Read, sure enough, in April of

1721. But he also found a death record for a woman listed as Anne Bonny that took place in 1731. So if this is the Anne Bonny we're thinking about, it's possible that she lived out the rest of her life in some capacity in Jamaica, at least for the next 10 years. Now, of course, Anne and Mary lived on in popular perception longer than they lived on the planet. What made them mythological in the popular culture of the time? The real thing that really set them off into mythology was the publication of the book, A General History of the Pirates in 1724 by Captain Charles Johnson. He has a chapter for each of them. They each have their own biography. But what's interesting is that their biographies

up until they were actually pirates, and even then, pretty much all fiction. And the author himself said he deliberately kind of wrote many of the chapters to be like a novel and it was the case for this but in this story this is where we get the idea that mary reed was disguised as a man because according to charles johnson anne bonnie fell in love with this young man on board and was quote disappointed to find out it was actually a woman, Mary Read. Apparently, Jack Rackham saw the attraction and got so jealous he threatened to kill Mary Read, but then backed off when he saw that she was, in fact, a woman. Then the two of them fought as women openly.

Mary Read even married a member of the crew. But somehow this story over time was kind of turned around. And in the 20th century is where we started to see ideas that the two of them were actually lesbian lovers. And this was really put into play by a article written in the 1970s by a feminist essayist. And as a result, this has become kind of the accepted story about Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Now, there's no evidence of this. Both women were known to either

be married or have relationships with other members of the crew. But if they were having a lesbian relationship, we'll never know that because something like that would never have been recorded because female sexuality was not a concept at all, honestly, really until the 20th century. So this is kind of how the myth of them has sort of changed over time, and it very much permeates today. So we've discussed the development of the mythology of pirates as it changed throughout the centuries and turned into the Disney franchises that we know today. But piracy has a hand in shaping our real history. And in our series, we've talked about how it played a role in the 13 colonies establishing their independence from Britain. I wonder in your research, what other instances have you come across of examples of the true historical legacy of piracy?

So yeah, there's a lot more connections to the development of the British Empire. Thanks to pirates, we have illegal developments of the American colonies, especially in North America. So the American colonies, for the most part, actually had a lot of their own autonomy. Yes, there were royal colonies, there were commercial colonies, but they were allowed to run themselves. They had their own governors and they had their own laws

and they had their own courts and their own legal systems. They tried pirates as they saw fit with their own specific laws. But then at the turn of the 18th century, as Britain was really ramping up its persecution of piracy, they felt that American colonists were helping pirates too much and kind of allowing piracy to flourish. So what they said is that you have to practice laws exactly as they are done in England. And this really upset a lot of colonists because they felt they were

having a lot of their own autonomy stripped away. There were a lot of officials who protested this saying that it's impossible for us to practice the exact same laws because everything is just so different. The terrain is different. The culture is different. The economy is different. And so this caused a lot of resentment amongst a lot of the colonists and a lot of the governors as well by having this freedom taken away. And also even the Navigation Acts, you know, blocking all this trade. Merchants were angry about these laws and they were warning a lot of different governors and a lot of different officials that colonists are going to turn to piracy and it could get to the point where colonists will just become really angry in general. So a lot of these laws imposed

against trade and also laws specifically imposed against pirates ended up having quite a negative effect for the British because it was angering the American colonists so much. Well, Dr. Simon, what are you working on next? Is it more pirates? Yeah, more pirates. So I've just finished the draft of my third book. It's called The Pirates Code, Life and Laws Aboard the Pirate Ship. And it's basically about life on the pirate ship. Each chapter kind of covers what one of the different codes says. So I have a chapter about how the distribution of goods were handled, about how kind of the hierarchy was done, what laws about food and drink were and what they were used for. So it's kind of a deep study into literally the life of what it is on the pirate ship. And so that's kind of the biggest project that I've just finished right now.

And that'll be out probably sometime in 2023. Dr. Rebecca Simon, thank you so much for speaking with me today. You're welcome. Thank you again so much for having me. That was my conversation with Professor Rebecca Simon. She's the author of Why We Love Pirates, The Hunt for Captain Kidd and How He

Changed Piracy Forever, and Pirate Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. From Wondery, this is the fourth and final episode of The Age of Pirates from American History Tellers. In our next season, in 1793, a mysterious illness swept through the city of Philadelphia, then the temporary capital of a very young United States. As the epidemic spread, President George Washington and other national leaders were faced with a grim decision. Flee the city and let the government grind to a halt, or stay and risk infection and death. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now

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