John Rackham (Calico Jack)
John Rackham, called Calico Jack for the printed cotton clothes he wore, is remembered less for his piracy than for the two women who sailed with him. He appears in the record around 1718 as quartermaster aboard Charles Vane's sloop in the Bahamas. In November 1718 Vane declined to engage a French warship. The crew voted him a coward under the pirate custom that allowed a captain to be removed, and elected Rackham in his place. He operated mainly in the Caribbean against small merchant vessels, fishing boats and coastal traders, taking modest prizes rather than the large hauls associated with Blackbeard or Bartholomew Roberts. He accepted the king's pardon at New Providence in 1719 and there met Anne Bonny, who left her husband to sail with him. Mary Read joined the crew after a vessel she was on was captured. Both fought in men's clothing and, by the surviving testimony, were among the most aggressive of the company. In October 1720 the Jamaican governor sent a sloop under Jonathan Barnet after him. It caught Rackham's vessel at anchor off Negril Point while most of the crew were drunk below. Bonny and Read reportedly fought on deck alone and cursed the men for refusing to come up. Rackham was tried at Spanish Town and hanged on 18 November 1720, his body displayed on a small island at the entrance to Port Royal harbour. Bonny is said to have told him that if he had fought like a man he need not hang like a dog. Bonny and Read both pleaded pregnancy and escaped execution. He is credited with a version of the skull and crossed swords flag.
- Lived: 1682 CE – 1720 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: other, pirate
