Women Sailors & Sailors' Women by David Cordingly Page B

did dress as a man and spend time in the army and at sea. She certainly suffered from a wound of some sort in her leg, but whether this was received at the Battle of Camperdown, the Glorious First of June, or a shipboard accident is in doubt. It may be that when she fell on hard times she decided to embroider the experiences she had been through in the hope that she might make some money from her subsequent celebrity. Or it may be that Robert Kirby invented the entire story in the same way that the American publisher Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., and his hack writer invented the stories of Louisa Baker and Almira Paul.
    O F ALL THE women who went to sea dressed as men, the most fascinating must surely be the two pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny. As their biographer said, “The odd incidents of their rambling story are such, that some may be tempted to think the whole story no better than a novel or romance,” but he went on to point out that their story was witnessed by the people of Jamaica who were present at their trial in 1720. The transcript of that trial has been preserved, as have several other contemporary documents, so there is enough evidence to confirm the events that they experienced at sea. 23 However, a considerable stretch of the imagination is required to picture the life they must have led while members of a pirate crew. There is a wealth of information available about life on board naval and merchant ships in the eighteenth century but relatively few documentary sources for the pirates. Apart from occasional reports from colonial governors, the records of pirate trials, and some accounts by men who survived pirate attacks, the primary source for the lives of female pirates, and most of the other pirates of the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, is a book entitled
A General History of . . . the Most Notorious Pyrates,
first published in London in 1724. It was so popular that four editions followed within two years and it was rapidly translated into French, Dutch, and German. The author was Captain Charles Johnson, of whom virtually nothing is known. 24 At one stage it was suggested that this was a nom de plume for Daniel Defoe but this attractive theory has since been discredited. What is certain is that Captain Johnson must have attended several pirate trials in London and that he interviewed pirates and seamen who had voyaged with them. He assured his readers that “there is not a fact or circumstance in the whole book but he is able to prove by credible witnesses.”
    If we assume that Johnson’s description of the pirates is accurate, it is astonishing that Mary Read and Anne Bonny could have survived in such an alien world. 25 It was a world in which murder, torture, and casual violence were commonplace and where foulmouthed men indulged in drunken orgies that lasted for days on end. When pirates attacked a ship, they did not simply rob the passengers and crew of their money and valuables. They ransacked the ship, hurled unwanted goods and gear overboard, killed or mutilated anyone who offered opposition, and frequently finished the operation by setting fire to the vessel and marooning any survivors on some deserted, mosquito-infested island. In today’s terms, they were the maritime equivalent of the paramilitary gangs who have been responsible for massacres, rapes, and burnings in war-torn parts of Africa, the Balkans, and elsewhere. They were beyond the law and the normal decencies of human behavior, and among their number were men who took an active pleasure in killing.
    As far as the pirates were concerned, women were for recreation and pleasure and were not welcome on board their ships. Among the written articles that many pirates agreed to before a voyage was a rule that made the position clear: The crew of Bartholomew Roberts, one of the most formidable pirates, agreed: “No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man were to be found seducing any of the latter sex,