Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny was one of two women tried for piracy in the Caribbean in 1720, and the record of her ends with a reprieve. She was born in County Cork around 1698, the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer, William Cormac, and a servant; the scandal drove the family to Charles Town in Carolina, where her father prospered as a merchant and planter. The tradition, which comes almost entirely from Charles Johnson's General History of the Pyrates of 1724, has her dressed as a boy in childhood to conceal her parentage, and possessed of a fierce temper. She married a poor sailor named James Bonny against her father's wishes and was disinherited, and the couple went to New Providence in the Bahamas, then a pirate haven being brought under control by Woodes Rogers. There she met John Rackham, called Calico Jack, and left her husband for him — reportedly refusing an offer to be divorced by being sold to Rackham, which was a recognised if informal practice. She sailed with him from 1720, fighting in men's clothing. Mary Read, who had also lived as a man for years, was aboard the same vessel. When a government sloop under Jonathan Barnet caught them off Jamaica in October 1720, most of the crew were drunk below. Bonny and Read reportedly fought on deck and cursed the men for refusing to come up. Both were convicted and both pleaded pregnancy, which suspended the sentence. Read died in prison of fever. Bonny disappears from the record entirely.
- Lived: 1698 CE – 1782 CE
- Nationality: Irish-American
- Roles: pirate
