Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Female Pirates

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Yo ho ho, a pirate’s life for me - but what is a pirate’s life, and what was it like for women?This is the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, a pair of reputably vicious pirates, and their journeys onto and across the seas.With the help of Julie Walker, author of 'Bonny & Read', find out whether Bonny and Read's fellow crew mates knew that they were women, their reasons for being there, and what life was actually like for them.*WARNING this episode contains naughty words and adult themes*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Matthew Peaty.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit. For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters, this is Kate Lister, jumping in to say this is your fair do's warning. Fair do's, we are talking about adult themes in an adult way. Actually, today we're talking about pirates, so we're kind of a bit of a nautical naughtiness today. But this is your fair do's warning. If this isn't your cup of tea, just give this one a miss. And for those of you that are still with me, have asked me hearties, let's give you.

into it. This is the story of two noteworthy pirates. Noteworthy because they were bold, they were brash, they were violent. I mean most pirates were I suppose, but most importantly for this story, they were women. Join me Kate Lister, but twigs the sheets to find out more. What do you look for a man? Oh, money of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time.

Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Hello and welcome back to the Twixer Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. Let me paint you a picture. You are out on the ocean, sailing the high seas with your precious cargo, minding your own damn business, when suddenly the call goes out. Pirates and you see the Jolly Roger, hurtling towards you,

sailing towards you actually, wouldn't that just to do? Wouldn't that just frighten you shitless? It would scare me. And as the ship gets closer and closer, you can see the pirates, you can hear them and no doubt you can smell them. But what do you think a pirate looked like? I sent my producers out and about,

not quite on the high seas, but round London, to try and get some questions answered. Dishevelled, bearded with a bandana. Pirates quite dirty, long hair, Captain Jack Sparrow kind of vibe. That's mud, I think. eye patch, beard, tricorn hat, parrot. Bonnie and Reid were a pair of swash-buckling pirates from the start of the 18th century,

but just how close to your descriptions were their lives? Today I'm joined by Julie Walker to find out how Bonnie and Reid became pirates, whether the fact that they were women was really an issue for the rest of the crew, and how did they hide that? And also, did they really fight topless? Sords are they ready? Let's do this. Hello, or maybe I should say Avast.

Avast, Julie Walker. Thank you so much for joining me betwixt the sheets. Well, thank you very much. I should I see a hoi. Ahoi. O'oy, Avast. We just did the whole thing trying to talk like a pirate. Let's go out of the way now.

So you are the historian to talk to about Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, the female pirate duo. I am indeed, yes, that's right. This is such an unbelievably fascinating story. for so many reasons. First of all, pirates are just interesting and fascinating. And we'll talk a bit about why later. Yes, of course.

But the fact that they were women as well doing this and the fact that they were women pirates and not conforming to domestic servitude and all those things, they are just... How did you get interested in this story? Well, I first heard about it via adamant. I was a huge adamant fan, still am. When the Prince Charming album came out,

there was a song called Five Guns West. And on this song, he talked about, and Bonnie and Mary Reid, and I'd never heard these names before. And then in an interview, he talked about them being female pirates. And this completely blew my mind. At the time, I'm aging myself here,

but at school I was reading Jane Austen. And my view of women at the time was, you know, they sat at home, they embroidered. And they waited for men to knock at the door to marry them. And actually, here were two women, very, very different backgrounds who dressed as men, went out into the world

and accidentally met in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and became pirates. And I just thought this was so unbelievable. You really couldn't make it up and actually I didn't need to because that's what actually happened. And I'd just been absolutely fascinated by their story ever since.

How could you not be? But all right, so I didn't even know to wear a star with it. Who were they, first of all? Who were, and Bonnie? Mary Reid. Let's talk dates. Where did they come from? Anne Bonnie, her father and her mother came from Cork, an Irish girl. So her mother was a maid in the father's house and she got pregnant. And obviously, a massive scandal. And so they left Ireland and went to South Carolina where her father kind of

reinvented himself as a plantation owner. Anne was a plantation owner's daughter. She was an only child. a bit of a tear away by all accounts, very unhappy marriage that her father and a mother had. In her late teens, she ran away with a servant, much to her father's annoyance. Well, these want to talk. I know, absolutely. Well, it's one real for them and another for everyone else, I think.

Anne headed to sea with James Bonnie. She did take his name, if nothing else. And they ended up in New Providence, where she'd intended to start having adventures. New Providence is in the Bahamas. It's one of the islands there. And it had been a very busy pirate port in the sort of late 1600s, early 1700s. The King's pardon had been given to pirates to sort of encourage them to stop being pirates,

which a lot of them had accepted because they didn't really want to be hanged, which is fair enough. What she hadn't realised was James Bonnie was a bit feckless, it actually only ever had been after her money. As any self-respecting woman would do, she just dumped this dead bit. Who amongst us has not? Well, absolutely. It's a sort of monthly occurrence, isn't it? Basically, Anne Bonnie meets Jack Wreckham, who had been a pirate captain, has a little word in his ear, and they steal a ship with a crew,

and they become pirates together. Right. Within a very short space of time, it's probably within a few weeks. She's been a plantation owner's daughter, and now she's a pirate. Wow. How old was she, roughly, when this happened? She was probably in her late teens at this point. Wow. About 19.

It really does show quite a spirit, I think. Quite remarkable story. And actually, Mary has an equally unlikely story. She was born in Plymouth, sort of end of the 1600s. Basically, she'd been dressed as a boy from childhood. Her mother had had her illegitimately. But her legitimate elder brother was being supported by his grandmother. And so when he died,

The mother thought, well, why waste that money? What we'll do is we'll not tell the grandmother that he's dead. We'll just pass Mary off as his brother. Wow. Literally, you know, just as a boy. And then when her grandmother actually died and the money stopped, her mother put her into service as a footman for a local woman, which really didn't suit her.

She was obviously very rebellious, had a lot of spirit. And she ran off to sea to become a sailor, but realised very quickly that actually a life in the... the Navy at that time was not a lot of fun. So she jumped ship in the Netherlands and she joined the army and she went to war in Flanders and so she basically just made her name as a soldier. Obviously still dressed as a man and she probably would have stayed there had she not fallen for the man she was sharing her tent with Arno. Basically the story goes that he had no idea he was sharing a tent with a woman until she chose to show him.

Okay. But actually, quite traditional was our Mary. She said, you know, clearly I'm a woman, but you're not touching me unless you marry me. And so he married her. And basically they had to come out to the platoon. Okay. Who apparently took it very, very well.

You know, they did think that Mary was one of their best men. And they took a collection for them and they opened an inn in in Flanders. So quite incredible. She became very famous there as, the woman who used to be a man. And, you know, she would sort of say, I'm Mary Reid, I was Mark Reed, I'm one and the same, and then she'd sell a lot of beer.

You know, so why not use that? Nice. Why do you think she kept dressing as a man? I mean, I understand, like, that a mum made a do it so they could get the money as a kid, but then there must have come a point where it's like that she didn't have to go back as living as a woman. Why do you reckon she did that?

Well, she really did come from extreme poverty. And I think at the time, there weren't a huge amount. of options for women at the time. You know, a lot of the port times, a lot of women fell into prostitution because they didn't have a lot of other options. It really seemed like, although she was in service,

that really didn't suit her, being subservient to people. And I think there's two reasons why women at the time would have dressed as men. The first of which is it would have protected them when they travelled. You know, a woman travelling alone would have been quite dangerous, so it was a safety thing. In Mary's case, it allowed her to get a much better paying job.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So she's got a bar in Flanders and a gimmick because she can go, I used to be Mark. Ha ha ha. How does she end up in a sea with pirates? Very sadly, Arnold died of a fever.

And then actually, the war in Flanders actually dried up. Peace came. And she found that the soldiers who were kind of coming to her inn stopped coming. And so fundamentally what she thought was, well, I may as well try and make a new life for myself in the new world. So she went off to become a sailor again, joined a merchant ship,

passed herself off as a seaman, and off she went to sea again. She was in the Caribbean, you know, off to the Americas. That ship was boarded by a pirate ship, which just happened to have Anne Bonnie there as one of the pirates. Ah, and that was how they met. And that was how they met in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, so unlikely. But what a fantastic story. How do we know about this story? Like, was their first-hand accounts? Like, do we know what it was like when they first met? How did they discover that each other is a woman? So 1724, a book was published by Captain Johnson, his history of the pirates. No one quite knows who Captain Johnson was. There were rumours it might be Daniel DeFour. But fundamentally, he clearly had firsthand knowledge of a lot of the

pirates, you know, short essays about each of the key pirates of the time. You know, so you've got your black beers, you've got your captain kids, you've got all of those people in there, and you've got Jack Wackham. And then Captain Johnson says, but you'll never guess who he was travelling with. And then you get Anne's story, and you get Mary's story, but also the thing that really kind of made their name at the time, because obviously this was really big news, there were etchings in the book of some of the pirates. Just obviously for no other reason than he didn't want anyone to be confused about this,

Anne and Mary were shown bare-breasted. Of course they were. Some things never change. That was kind of really when their story came out. Wow. If you do read Captain Johnson's accounts, there's definitely a little bit of male fantasy going on. Oh, of course there is.

Yeah. If you're a female pirate, there's no way that you're going about your day-to-day business with your tits out. No sensible woman's doing that. If you're having a battle with a cutlass, they'd just get in the way, quite frankly, wouldn't they? It's not happening. Well, they would.

And men writing women like that, it's something that still persists to this day. In fact, there's a whole trope of that on social media, isn't it? Of women laughing at men writing about them. There's just this fabulous bit where Captain Johnson has it that Anne didn't realize that Mary was a woman and had tried to seduce her. And the way that Mary sort of shored herself to that was to expose her breasts. Because that's what we do. That's absolutely what we do, isn't it? You don't just say, actually, you're barking up their own tree, love.

I'm a woman. You don't say that? You just flash them, don't you? So it's... You just strip to the waist. It's just to behold my breasts. Yes, exactly. And it's, aha, said Anne, at that point.

So, yeah, I don't think that's how it happened, quite frankly. I don't think that's how it happened. I mean, I wasn't there. I think it would be much more likely that they just sort of clocked each other and just when I know your game. Yeah, absolutely, yes. And I think also, because Anne was living quite openly as a woman on the pirate ship, pirate ships were this great socialist utopia. They didn't care what sex, sexuality, colour of skin you were, what your religion was. As long as you did your job, you got a fair share of the spoils. It was probably the first time they'd ever truly experienced, both Anne and Mary, true sort of equality.

It's just ironic, really, that they had to join a pirate ship. to experience that. This seems like a good point to sort of talk a bit about piracy in general and like, what the hell was going on? We still have pirates today, Somalian pirates, I suppose, you know, you hear about them in the news, but this kind of golden age of piracy, like what the hell was happening? The kings of England were really quite happy to say to lots of those sort of famous sea captains that we hear about in history.

Either way, if you wanted to sort of intercept a Spanish galleon or two and, you know, sort of share the spoils back home. We'd turn a blind eye to that. And actually, I think that Captain Kidd is quite an interesting story because he really fell foul of that because he had been a privateer and then at one point there was a bit of a change of heart which he wasn't really aware of. So when he came home expecting, you know, to be welcomed with open arms, he was actually hanged. Oh, that's unfortunate. It is a bit of it. Yes. It's like, oops, that's a bit of a mystique, isn't it? Do we not let you know? Did you not get the memo? The newsletter that goes around. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're not. You know, we texted you, but it didn't get through.

Also, you had, you know, these incredibly rich trade routes kind of going through the Caribbean. And if you were in the British Navy, particularly at the time, actually you had a miserable existence. You weren't almost nothing. Your wife was left behind absolutely poverty string. She may well have to turn to prostitution just to sort of keep herself going back home. And actually, a lot of them, if they were boarded by pirates, they'd be quite happy to join. because fairly keeping body and soul together and having these ridiculous rules

that they could be whipped for or anything, the pirates saying, join us, we share everything equally. It was a very attractive proposition. And of course, because those trade routes were always open, there'd always be somebody knowing that if they just lay in wait, the next very rich ship would be along very soon. So I think it just became a huge problem.

Back in Britain, they suddenly realised that this wasn't a great idea overall, which is why actually they started to really sort of clamp down on piracy. Just after sort of 1710, 1715, that's when they basically said to the pirates, OK, we're going to have an amnesty here. We will grant you a pardon if you give up your piracy ways. Okay. And just live peacefully.

But it really didn't suit a lot of these men. Certainly, rackham ship, a lot of his crew, were Newgate men, Newgate prison, who were actually being sort of sent over to the colonies to work on the plantations as well. And he'd intercepted this ship and he'd taken them on. So not exactly lower Biden citizens, as you might expect. So what you've kind of got here is this perfect storm of

there's all these very, very wealthy ships making the journey between like Spain and America and France and America. And if anybody happened to intercept them and get, all the golden spices, that would be quite lucrative. And the British Navy for a good while, half encouraged, half turned a blind eye to it. Yes. And then all of a sudden tried to go, oh, no, no, don't do that. Yes, absolutely.

So they've gone from being privateers to being pirates just because suddenly they're not sanctioned by the king. Right. Very murky, very grey areas. But really fascinating to read about actually. They're kind of like muscle for hire, aren't they? Yes. And then, as you said, the condition on these ships was just, it was horrendous. I'd see for months and months and months.

They were worked all the time. They were flogged. They had like these dried biscuits with weevils in. Scurvy was off the charts. And you get paid absolutely bugger-all at the end of it. So then a pirate ship turns up and says, we'll look after you, lad. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you do that? So, I mean, obviously, you know, you were risking your life if you were caught, but actually what sort of life was. it if you didn't. Yeah. You can absolutely understand why people were so willing to become pirates, really.

Yeah, I mean, I think that I would turn pirate. Yeah, definitely. I'll be back with Julie after this short break. Did Edison really take credit for things he didn't invent? Were treadmills originally a form of corporal punishments? And would man have ever got to the moon without the bra? You can expect answers to all these questions and more in the brand-news. podcast from history hit, patented history of inventions. Join me, Dallas Campbell, as I uncover

what really sparked history's most impactful ideas. Each episode, I'll be recruiting the help of experts, scientists, historians, and even a few real-life inventors. Subscribe to patented history of inventions wherever you listen to your podcasts. Let's talk. So Anne and Mary have met each other on this ship. They've obviously exposed each other, their breasts to each other in order to prove definitively. Obviously. Because that's what women do. Yes. What happens from that point on? What did they do? Just became crewmates on the ship and they work together. Basically, Mary would have taught Anne how to fight because, you know, her upbringing definitely wouldn't have taught her how to

fight. And actually, Mary was a very disciplined soldier. You know, she was a very good soldier, a very good fighter. So she'd have shared those experiences with Anne. They would then take part in raids. They would raid other ships. They would fight. They would kill people. They would steal. And so they would have become really kind of very, very close friends because the ships that they sailed on were really quite small. They would have been thrown together in very close proximity. And I think they'd have been absolutely fascinated by each other because they were just diametrically opposite. But fundamentally, you know, they've never had this sort of freedom before. And I think that whilst Mary was very clear about what she'd wanted,

she'd known a lot of want in her life, a lot of lack. Bizarrely, she's actually quite a traditional woman. You know, she wants to settle down. She wants to have a family. She isn't, Julie. She can't be on a pirate ship, having run a bar in Flanders, having disguised herself as a man called Mark,

and shacked up with the soldier in your tent, and then give it all, I'm actually quite a traditional kind of girl. Well, actually, it's really funny. There is, if you look at the trial records, The only time that Mary gets very upset, because she's quite happy to say, yep, I've killed people, I've robbed people. I think it should be right that pirates are hanged because then actually any old coward could become a pirate. You know, it's important that you're brave. Standards.

She does have standards, but the time she got very, very upset was the judge referred to her as a spinster. And she said, no, no, no, I'm married just as if I'd been married in a church. You know, I'm not a spinster. I'm a married woman. So it's really strange that, you know, she's. she does have this sort of very sort of traditional. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Murder, a fine, burglar, pirate.

Yeah, absolutely. Criminal, not a problem. Spinster. Yes. Yes, exactly. So I think that's really fascinating. Whereas I think, to be honest, I think Anne never really quite knew to start with what she was trying to do.

She was just sort of like, this is an adventure. This looks fun. I'll do this. Let's see what happens. And I think that one of the things, that Mary would have done for Anne is to sort of grind her a little bit more and kind of go, you know what?

You can't always just be jumping onto the next adventure. You need a little bit of a plan for yourself because, you know, the good times may not always be here. That's the thing. You always got to save your money, kids. That's the thing. Exactly. Always. And I think that money actually becomes very, very important. You know, from Mary, who's been very poverty-stricken,

to Anne, who's not even had to think about where the next money is coming from. And this fundamentally does become a very, big issue in the book. Anything like that, if you turn to criminality that has very lucrative payoffs, it becomes very hard to leave that life.

It's a major issue that still today, people are trying to confront, you know, when they're being rehabilitated from crime or even sex workers. I regularly hear sex workers saying to me that, you know, I used to be, I make a thousand times, just now I have to go and work on minimum.

It's like, how do you bridge that? It's always going to be there. Yeah. And if you come from nothing, and now you've got some serious dollar coming in. It's difficult to leave that, isn't it? It really is. And I think it's really interesting, you know, because I think as well, if you do have that mindset, you've seen what it is to have no money, it becomes that real security to kind of have it. And as you see, it's not easy to replicate

that in a sort of more legal way. Like what other possible jobs out there for women were there that could earn them that kind of money? Piracy, being a professional mistress. Yes. Yeah. I think that's your lot, isn't it? That's kind of, that's it. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, they sort of forged their own opportunity within piracy, I think. Yeah. But they broke the glass ceiling of piracy. They sort of booted it through. Yeah. It's like, I keep having to remind myself, it's like, they are hardened criminals.

Because I do feel this begrudged like, well played ladies. Yes, yes. But then I wasn't chased bare-assed round a ship deck by Anne and Mary, which may have changed my perspective on what they do. Absolutely. But there is still that sort of inappropriate. join at what they're doing because, wow, you know, fair play. But it's wrong. It is absolutely wrong. It plays with your morality. And it's not just with Anne and Mary. I think pirates in general,

we have this very romanticised. Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp, where's the rum gone, and all this stuff. But they were basically criminals. They were basically burglars on a boat. Yes, absolutely. They are no more romantic than the guy that would mug you in the street or would sneak in through your window and yet we have this whole fantasy about them like Disney movies Pirates of the Caribbean you'd never get muggers of the Caribbean that was written

but it's the same thing I think it's really interesting because I think actually some of the sort of more famous captains a lot of it was about the image so one of the reasons that they built at this really fearsome image was so that they'd turn up people would go oh I recognise that as black beard and then they'd just put down their swords and he could just take what he wanted.

Fair play. He was a little bit mad. He did the call around the eyes, you know, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. He actually tied lit fuses into his beard. So he just looked absolutely terrifying. Whatever you want, mate, that's fine. You just type of time. Yeah, can I help you carry it?

You know, it's like... He set his own head on fire. Yeah, don't mess with him. Don't mess with him. You know, Jack Rackham, he had himself known as Calico Jack. He always wore this sort of long red frock court. so that people could kind of recognise them. They had different jolly Roger flags.

You know, they really did have their own branding. Branding? Yeah, it really was. You know, and to be able to say, ah, okay, I know who's coming for me. I'm not putting up any resistance whatsoever. Not my problem, not my stuff. On the whole, they would leave them with enough water,

enough food to make sure that they could make it to the next port. So, you know, if you played nice on the whole, you might get away pretty unscathed, but it did depend which pirate you came. up against because Black Bart Roberts, who's one of the characters who actually appears in the book, supposedly a very religious, god-fearing man. But he was absolutely horrific. You know, the stuff that he did to people when he captured them, even to his own crew, slitting them open, tying their entrails to a mast and making them dance until they died. Don't do it. Not pretty. In a way, you'd hope that you'd

get a Jack Wreckham or even a Blackbeard, to be honest, rather than a Bart Roberts, yeah. So what happened then to marry down to their ownership? What's their story? What happens next? I think good at what they do? They are very, very good. You know, they are supposed to be two of the best. The sort of first person sort of accounts of being raided by Jack and the women, they very much were up there. They were doing their swearing, they're fighting, they're doing everything else. Jack Wackham actually isn't that impressive, a pirate, all mouth and all trousers. He wasn't particularly successful. And I think that that was something that Anne would not have been very happy with. He took a lot of fishing boats, for instance, you know,

just to sort of keep them in drinking water and fish. It didn't take a huge amount else. You know, there were one or two big wins. But I think that that relationship between Jack and Anne would have soured very, very quickly. It's not very heroic that, is it? Is nicking the water off fishermen's boats? It's really not. It's really not.

And I think she'd have started to see him as a man rather than, this sort of creation of his own. Isn't that always the way? Yes, starting to sound very familiar, isn't it? Oh, you're a dickhead. Oh, you're just all talk. Oh, that's a bit of a ship. Yeah, you've got a red court. Well done. But I think that Mary was never meant to sort of stay and there are reasons which the book goes into that, you know, it becomes much more urgent for them to leave the boat. So at the same time, as all this is happening, the British Navy knows about them and the British Navy is coming for them. If they catch up with them, they're going to be hanged. So you've got a lot of tension there.

That would create tension, wouldn't it? So where do they go? So they end up in Jamaica. They do end up on trial. But it's quite interesting about women versus men that, you know, obviously they've kind of embraced the fact that they are pirates and they are part of the crew. but as women, if for instance you were pregnant, you can't be hanged because you can't. Oh, that old chestnut. If they were to plead their bellies, for instance, then they escape execution,

or at least until the baby is born. So it's a really interesting story that I think is quite complex in terms of the roles of these women, the roles they adopted, and then actually the way that the law kind of has to decide how it deals with them, as pirates or as women. Were they charged with piracies? They were indeed, yes. Yes. It's not the happiest of endings for them, but it's sort of the only natural outcome for it. Fundamentally, we don't know what happened to Anne. And I think that that is just absolutely fascinating because, you know, she does have this rich father elsewhere. We know that.

Oh, God, yeah, she did what happened to him. Yes. And she just disappears from history. And I think that that's a really interesting area, you know, because it's, well, you can only imagine a woman who's been a pirate who's taking. in life by the throat like that. What did she get up to next? God, there's a mystery. So have you found other women pirates? Because I'm aware that there was a Chinese lady called Shi Yang who was the leader of the Red Fleet.

Yes, that's right. And it was more akin to like a floating mafia than kind of beloved pirates of imagination. Yes, absolutely. And there was an Irish pirate called Grace who was sort of operating earlier than Anne and Mary. There's also quite a history of women joining the forces dressed as men. A woman called Christian Davis, who you can still get reproductions of her autobiography,

of her dressing up as a man supposedly to go and follow her husband to get him back from the press gangs. You know, whether or not we believe it, you've always going to take these stories with a pinch of salt. Because there's the, you know, that thing about, oh, I still need to be respectable. You know, so this is the story that I'm going to tell you. there's also a fascinating woman called Hannah Snell who went to see dressed as a man and was one of the first Chelsea pensioners I did not know that so really fascinating

you know it's strangely it wasn't completely unusual for this to happen but what tends to happen I mean Hannah Snell actually had a really sad end you know because she was up on stage you know she was toured around you know there'd be ballads sung about her and then she did get sort of a small pension but she ended up in Bedlam, very sadly, died in poverty. So there you go, that's a bit of a downer, isn't it?

But fascinating woman, again, you can get a hold of her story and certainly sort of some of the aspects of just how these women would pass themselves off as men on ship because, you know, there's practicalities like going to the loo. God, yeah, thinking about that. How could you disguise that, actually? Like, the day-to-day living must have been quite tricky. It's just at the bulkheads.

You know, it's not that you've got like a nice private little toilet to go to. What Hannah Snell did, which was she got a horn, strapped it to herself with leather, and she basically used that to weed through. That's clever. Absolutely. A shewee. A shewee. Indeed, one of the earliest examples.

And then also, if she was having her period, well, basically the way that they would explain that away, it would be very similar to the sort of the sores from syphilis. so she'd have just sort of basically told some of her crewmates that she had syphilis. Every month. I have syphilis once a month and they kind of went, oh yeah, fair enough. At the same time? At the same time, yeah. But I suppose it just wouldn't occur to anybody. It's probably one of those things, isn't it?

It's like once it's been revealed, it's really obvious. Yeah. But there is like human bias is that once we believe a story, it's not until it's been revealed that you're suddenly going, how did I not recognize that? How did I not know? Either that or they knew perfectly well that she was a woman and that they were all there going syphilis again, is it?

All right, Lance. Yep, yep. Yeah, good. And everybody knew perfectly well what she's doing. Oh, yeah, of course, it is, love. Yeah. I suppose they'd have to be like binding their breasts to try and disguise that. Yeah, absolutely.

So I think that Mary had her hair cut very short. You know, she'd have been quite sunburn. You know, she'd have been in men's. clothes as well. They would have been pretty filthy, you know, I mean, sort of out on ships. You know, we were talking about the conditions. You basically had to wash your clothes in urine if you were washing them at all. To be honest, I think people wouldn't have wanted to get that close to one another because they must have stunk. It was not going to be nice conditions. And they were quite young. And I say that as in like if you're a teenager, your body is remarkably

different to the way it looks like when you're, you know, in mid-lady. And you are a bit more lies and I suppose everyone would have been skinned. I'm just trying to like just think to myself, how did they manage to get away with this? And nobody noticed. I think Anne would have been very different because when she boarded the ship, yes, she'd have had men's clothes, but everyone knew she was a woman from the start. Whereas Mary would have been quite adept at passing herself off as a man. And none of us need to be, but presumably she was no great beauty. You know, and if she just sort of kept her head down and just kept herself to herself, she probably did. find it fairly easy to pass herself off. And as you say, to be honest, the food would have been

appalling. So it's not like she'd have been putting a lot of weight on. No, they've all been really skinny, wouldn't they? And I suppose, well, like, how often just see you work colleagues naked, I suppose. Hopefully not very often. Depends on your line of work, I suppose. But there are like number of cases of this happening where women are revealed to have been living as men with quite a successful careers, which kind of makes you think, well, like, who got away with it? Yeah, well, I think that that's exactly right. I think that, you know, these are the people that we know about, and there must have been an awful lot more who just got on with it, did their own thing, had very successful lives. But I think it's actually a wonderful thing because, you know,

I'd much rather hear a story like this than, reader, I married him. You know, there's nothing wrong with those sort of books, but it just, you know, it's nice to know that women had that, of a spark and just thought, no, you know what, not doing it. Not doing it at all. And it makes perfect sense that you would disguise yourself as a man to do that because that's where the options are. That's where the adventure is. Yeah.

But what's kind of interesting is obviously, like, this is kind of what his stories, and it's really tricky to do it, like retrospectively, read people because they're not here to talk about it. But I have heard people try and make the case that Mary and Anne were lovers, that they were lesbians because they dressed as men that they must have been butch lesbians. I don't think that they weren't. Now, I don't think that Anne would have been a verse to the idea. But as I see, I think because we know from Mary's own mouth,

she was actually very traditional. And, you know, as far as she was concerned, she had two husbands. That was what she was about. I do think that it would have been a very deep friendship. We know that that doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't have, you know, been lovers. But I think actually the size of ship that they were on,

there was not really any hiding place there were no secrets from anybody else and I think we'd have known more about it if that had been the case and I think if you read the book and you kind of see what happens to the women I think that sort of bears out for me as I say I think that Anne would have been

completely amazed that a woman like Mary existed and I think that there definitely have been some attraction there for all sorts of reasons for a very good reason I mean such a character personally I don't believe that that's the case, but that doesn't mean that people can read it however they want to read it. I think for a long

time historians have been basically denying quite clear evidence in front of their eyes and going, look, they were just friends. They were just really, really good friends. And they're going, yeah, but they are buried in a grave together with love letters strewn. Yeah, well, that's, they just made. We've spent such a long time

doing just such, such good friends. But now, like, because no one wants to do that, we kind of want to be up to the possibilities, that it's almost like we felt like we're letting people down and going, well, they probably weren't lesbian. But they were pirates, which is still pretty cool. As I say, I think you can read it however you want. You know, my, as I say, my reading is that they weren't, but that doesn't mean that that's right. Well, let's face it, even if they were, they would hardly be breaking with tradition of life at sea. No, not at all. I mean, it was well known that same-sex relationships blossomed in these circumstances.

Absolutely. And there's some same-sex relationships in the book amongst the, the crew, I've taken that sort of liberty of kind of putting it in there. But I do think that one of the wonderful things about piracy, that sounds like I'm trying to sell it as a lifestyle, the fact that actually there was just complete tolerance, just complete acceptance of it. And I think that, you know, a piratship actually would have been one of the freest places to be bizarrely. Yeah, what happens at sea stays at sea? Yeah, definitely. Why do you think we are so obsessed with pirates? This very romantic view that we have of them, which probably wasn't accurate. Obviously, they existed, but what does it say about us? Why are we so obsessed with them? In the same way as like highwaymen

and these kind of figures like that, what is it about pirates you think that appeals so much? I think we're always excited by something out of the ordinary, really. If you watch something like, who do you think you are, you're always sort of thinking, oh, I hope we get a murderer. You know, what you don't want. It's just such as somebody that's like, oh, they had a really quiet life and just really behaved themselves. It's like, oh, right, okay, whatever. I think that it's that sort of sense of it. But also, I think that, you know,

the pirates built these stories around themselves. You know, they deliberately built themselves up to become legends. Vivian Westwood, you know, she kind of fended her career on kind of pirate fashions after punk. And, you know, really kind of took inspiration from, you know, what these people were wearing. And I think it's just that sort of living outside the law, living your own life.

And actually, I'd love to think that part of it is this sort of freedom that actually if you came from nothing, you could have as much as, or almost as much as your captain, you can't got twice as much as you, which is fair enough, really. But you got the same as everybody else. And it was one of the ways that you could genuinely make a good amount of money and you weren't being exploited fundamentally. So I think that there's just that real kind of glamour about it. Yeah.

And I think that that's probably hit the nail on the head is this idea of freedom. because they're rogues, but they're lovable rogues, and we sort of live vicariously. Yeah. Don't we through them? Of like, you know, we're just going to go and join a ship and say goodbye to everything and just go head off.

I think there's just something really romantic about that, you know, because I think we all tend to be quite landlocked in our lives, you know, and just the idea that it's like, right, I've had enough, off to sea, I go, bugger this. I'll do what I need to do. And let's just see what's over the horizon. I think it's just there's something wonderful about. that. Speaking of who do you think you are, is it true that one of your ancestors was deported to

Australia? It is. Tell me about that. Yes. I researched my family history as much from my mom and dad as I did for me. But what was really lovely, my great-great-grandfather ended up in Australia. He was a bit of a brawler. He was a rioter. But the one I was really excited about in the mid-1850s, Anne Hobbs, she was again, brawling, thieving. She was actually quite a character in that the court appearance, the judge actually said she was one of the most unmanly ladies he'd ever met before he deported her. I almost applauded, I think, you know,

because it's like you want somebody with a bit of spirit, a bit of character. So we don't know what happened to Annie when she reached Australia, but I do love the fact that she just, she didn't go down quiet. She had a lovely swear. She told the judge exactly what she thought of him. Yeah, I'd really like to think I am carrying on that tradition of being unmanally. I am an unmanally lady. I love it.

Oh, Julie, you've been so much fun to talk to. If people want to find out more about you and more about the book, where can they do so? Just launched a website of my own called Julie Walker.com.ukau. I don't know where I get these ideas from at all. Or you can follow me on Twitter. my handle is nicer marmot but Bonnie and Reid is coming to bookshops near you on the 4th of August. Go and get it and don't be getting ideas jumping in a dinghy and heading off down the canal. Oh no, we don't have responsibility for that.

Oh Julie, thank you so much. You've been so much fun to talk to. Thanks so much, Kate. Thanks for having me. I hope you've enjoyed venturing around the Caribbean with myself and Julie. If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast. Join me again, Patrix the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.