Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short stuff,
Speaker 1: uh ahoy, which is pretty appropriate, Chuck, even though you
Speaker 1: always say it not always most of the time it's
Speaker 1: not very appropriate. This time it fits very well. That's right,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about pirates with a Y, Pirates with
Speaker 1: the Y, and also pirates with two X chromosomes. That's right.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the TV show Our Flag Means Death?
Speaker 1: I did. I watched the first few and I just
Speaker 1: kind of fell out of it. But yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: very very cute show. Yeah, okay, did you watch Have
Speaker 1: you watched all of them? Yeah? Yeah, I like it
Speaker 1: a lot, but it kind of got me wondering because
Speaker 1: a big you know, it's kind of known as the
Speaker 1: most queer positive show on television and the show about pirates,
Speaker 1: so you might if you haven't seen it, you might think, well,
Speaker 1: that's odd. But on the show there as a female
Speaker 1: character who was masquerading as a man pirate, and then
Speaker 1: there I don't want to spoil anything, but there's also
Speaker 1: a budding relationship of the same sex, which is a
Speaker 1: very kind of fun reveal. On the show, and I
Speaker 1: was just kind of wondering if that's all made up
Speaker 1: for this show. And it turns out it looks like
Speaker 1: piracy and pirate ships were kind of a haven sometimes
Speaker 1: for gay women or now what we probably would know
Speaker 1: as trans people, because you could hide out and you know,
Speaker 1: I think as long as you did your work, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of uh well, I mean, who knows
Speaker 1: how they were really treated, but it seemed to be
Speaker 1: like a place that people could go in the queer
Speaker 1: community and the whatever sixteen hundreds, And I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think Chuck, um, you had to necessarily just identify
Speaker 1: as a different gender, um like you could you were
Speaker 1: if you were a woman in were out of the
Speaker 1: high seas, you were probably dressing like a man one
Speaker 1: way or another. Largely because ships, um it was considered
Speaker 1: bad luck to have a woman on a ship. But
Speaker 1: the two women that we're going to talk about, uh
Speaker 1: and Bonnie and Mary Reid, they were such b A's
Speaker 1: as pirates with a y or and I it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that they were openly women. Um who did still
Speaker 1: dress his men, but everyone on their ship knew they
Speaker 1: were women, and they were reputed to have been the
Speaker 1: um the toughest, most ready to fight pirates on on
Speaker 1: the ship, including the captain. That's right, and they were
Speaker 1: doing it in the middle of We love our Golden ages,
Speaker 1: and they were certainly active in the golden age of
Speaker 1: piracy from the mid seventeenth century to like the first
Speaker 1: quarter of the eighteen Uh. And we need to think
Speaker 1: a few people Britannica. We should just always think Britannica. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the s s Britannica and Mark Mancini from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com because they point out a very sort
Speaker 1: of truism, which is, Uh, there were books about pirates
Speaker 1: and stuff back then. One very notable one. Uh. The
Speaker 1: long title is a General History of the Robberies and
Speaker 1: Murders of the most Notorious Pirates with a y uh
Speaker 1: and or as it's generally known, a general History of
Speaker 1: the Pirates. And these books back then were hot sellers,
Speaker 1: so they were fun, but you couldn't count on them
Speaker 1: to be historically accurate necessarily. Uh. It seems like they
Speaker 1: kind of went with lore when they didn't know if
Speaker 1: it was fact or not, and they wanted to tell
Speaker 1: the good story and sell books. Yeah. So it's the
Speaker 1: same as true crime, as it's always been basically, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's a little better now, right, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's much better. But there there is a that book,
Speaker 1: in particular, the General History of the Pirates UM, It's
Speaker 1: it's it. It provides a conundrum for historians piracy, especially
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of piracy, because that's really what it covers. UM,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of stuff in there that probably
Speaker 1: is true. There's a lot of stuff in there that's
Speaker 1: probably embellishment, and if you read, you know, the actual text,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to differentiate one from the other. So
Speaker 1: you have to read the book basically as a historian
Speaker 1: and go through and find documentary evidence to back up
Speaker 1: this claim or or the other. And UM, in particular
Speaker 1: with Mary Reid and a Bonnie, they've had a really
Speaker 1: hard time to do that. So I have my hat
Speaker 1: off to Mark Mancini from How Stuff Works, because he
Speaker 1: didn't fall for any of it. And there stuff in
Speaker 1: the Britannica Encyclopedia entries that has been proven to have
Speaker 1: been made up by novelists as late as the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and it's being touted as fact. And it's not just
Speaker 1: Britannica Wikipedia. There's a ton of like reputable sources that
Speaker 1: that have just kind of fallen for these um, these
Speaker 1: inaccuracies that have been did as flourishes over the years.
Speaker 1: I wonder if Mark Mancini read the book and said, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think everywhere it's italicized, it's still
Speaker 1: will be its. There's a lot of italics in there too, giveaway. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the book itself is written by a guy named
Speaker 1: Captain Charles Johnson, who did not exist. That's a pen name,
Speaker 1: And I've seen it attributed typically to Daniel Defoe, the
Speaker 1: author of Robinson Crusoe, and then alternatively there was a
Speaker 1: publisher named Nathaniel Missed, and they think that it was
Speaker 1: probably one of those two guys who wrote it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently Defoe worked for Missed. So I think it's just
Speaker 1: one of those things where their professors and people in
Speaker 1: the literature community that like to pull up their sleeves
Speaker 1: and battle it out on that when the rest of
Speaker 1: us don't really care. But the point is the general
Speaker 1: history or a general history of pirates with a Y
Speaker 1: has some stuff that we should go over either way.
Speaker 1: I agree, And Bonnie, should we take a break first? Uh? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll take a break, and we'll come back and introduce
Speaker 1: the world to Anne, Bonnie and Mary. Read alright, what
Speaker 1: a great cliffhanger, as I was saying. And Bonnie Uh
Speaker 1: born in Ireland near Cork, Ireland and apparently had a
Speaker 1: pretty rough childhood, as I bet a lot of kids
Speaker 1: back then had, and was the illegitimate daughter of an
Speaker 1: attorney who was married. But this was the baby he
Speaker 1: had with his maid servant lady, and supposedly he would
Speaker 1: dress her as a boy as a kid to sort
Speaker 1: of deflect from the fact that she was illegitimate and
Speaker 1: just say no, this is my my boy servant who's
Speaker 1: going to be my assistant training at this point. Um.
Speaker 1: And eventually the the scandal got out, the whole thing
Speaker 1: was was known to the county, and um the guy
Speaker 1: lost his practice. Her father, who's sometimes identified as William Cormack,
Speaker 1: James Cormack, and a bunch of other names. But the
Speaker 1: upshot is her her lawyer father basically lost his practice
Speaker 1: because of the scandal, and so he moved his daughter
Speaker 1: Uh and and um the servant made her and mother
Speaker 1: to Carolina and probably to Charlestown, which is now known
Speaker 1: as Charlestown is if they moved to Carolina at any
Speaker 1: point from Europe, that's probably where they settled. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: Bill Murray exactly, anybody who's anybody ends up in Charlestown. Uh,
Speaker 1: so they end up And this was he said Carolina.
Speaker 1: This is before there was a North and South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and A think they just said that we shall be
Speaker 1: Carolina in one day there would be an NFL team
Speaker 1: that represents us both. That's right, although I think they're
Speaker 1: more The Panthers are definitely North Carolina, so that's where
Speaker 1: they're base. But I think they did that in a
Speaker 1: bid to get South Carolina people to root for them too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to cough up some money, like the New England
Speaker 1: Patriots are like just all of New England should root
Speaker 1: for us exactly or well green Bay Packers is like
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. Why because it's specifically in Green Bay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said no one else in Wisconsin root for us exactly.
Speaker 1: It's specifically in a very small town and it's I
Speaker 1: think the team is owned by the town too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I gotta go to a game there. I bought my
Speaker 1: friend Adam one share of Green Bay Packers stock last year.
Speaker 1: That's a great Christmas present. It is, but it's meaningless apparently.
Speaker 1: Uh so where are we here? Um, they moved to Charlestown.
Speaker 1: That's right, they moved to Charlestown. Historical records are very fuzzy,
Speaker 1: but it may have been born and full Ford with
Speaker 1: the alias of Bonnie and supposedly got that name from
Speaker 1: being married to another pirate, uh named James Bonnie, but
Speaker 1: then went and married and I don't know about Mary,
Speaker 1: but at least went off with a pirate named John
Speaker 1: Rackham who she definitely worked with. Like, we have records
Speaker 1: that prove that she worked for John, and I think
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a speculation or not
Speaker 1: that they were kissing and stuff. Yes that I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty much proven. But yes, documentary evidence shows that
Speaker 1: she was a pirate with John Calico Jack Rackham. It
Speaker 1: is a great name. So um again, it was weird
Speaker 1: that Rackham would have a woman on board with him
Speaker 1: is considered extremely bad luck. But Rackham had not just one,
Speaker 1: but two women on board with him because in addition
Speaker 1: to an Bonnie, he had another woman pirate named Mary Reid,
Speaker 1: who also had a kind of a strange um early
Speaker 1: life as well. That that landed her on the high seas. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was like one is bad luck
Speaker 1: and two a party. Yeah, well that was one thing.
Speaker 1: So Mary Read in particular, Um she was, so I
Speaker 1: read the Ambonnie was not Um as chased as Mary
Speaker 1: Read was. But Mary Reid would fall in love really
Speaker 1: easily and be like, let's get married, and so she
Speaker 1: did that a few times. But there was one man
Speaker 1: who tried to have his way with Mary Read, and
Speaker 1: according to the history of the Pirates Um, she beat
Speaker 1: him nearly to death. So she she she could definitely
Speaker 1: handle herself for sure from an early age. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there was also this story that they both were aboard
Speaker 1: UM dressed as men, and this almost certainly seems like
Speaker 1: it's probably made up, but both dressed as men, and
Speaker 1: Bonnie crushed on Reid as a woman masquerading as a man,
Speaker 1: thinking it was another man. And then it sounds like
Speaker 1: straight out of a TV show. They go into a
Speaker 1: side room and both I guess, like pull off their
Speaker 1: fake mustache at the same time. Yeah, and the ace
Speaker 1: bandages exactly uh and went ah, we're both women. But
Speaker 1: that that definitely sounds like it's in italics, right, for sure.
Speaker 1: I also saw though, that there was a book as
Speaker 1: recently or as early as like the seventeen fifties that
Speaker 1: that supposed that they were actually lovers. Okay, well, that
Speaker 1: sounds like overactive imagination of a male writer to me, right.
Speaker 1: So the upshot is, though, that we do know from
Speaker 1: the scant documentary evidence that Mary reid And and Bonnie
Speaker 1: were both pirates with Calico Jack Rackham on the ships
Speaker 1: that Rackham stole, and they engaged in piracy. Witnesses at
Speaker 1: their trial spoiler alert, they were, and they ended up
Speaker 1: caught and tried said like these women would curse and
Speaker 1: spit at the men. There was one person who said
Speaker 1: that the men were hiding below decks, and Mary reid
Speaker 1: And and Bonnie were above deck fighting and the men
Speaker 1: wouldn't come out, so and Bonnie shot into the into
Speaker 1: the lower decks and actual one guy because she considered
Speaker 1: them being cowards like they were. They were definitely known
Speaker 1: to have fought as pirates. They weren't captured, they weren't
Speaker 1: there against their will. They were swash buckling with the
Speaker 1: best of them. They were there for the booty. They
Speaker 1: were uh so they were collecting booty all over the place,
Speaker 1: and eventually a um, I guess you would call it
Speaker 1: sort of a most wanted sort of declaration was put
Speaker 1: out naming them as pirates and enemies to the Crown
Speaker 1: of Great Britain. And this was in September of seventeen
Speaker 1: and this is because well they were pirating everywhere, but
Speaker 1: a few weeks before, in August of that year, they
Speaker 1: stole a ship named the William and really sort of
Speaker 1: went to town, uh, basically through October, so they had
Speaker 1: a nice run through the fall. And then in late
Speaker 1: October seventeen twenty, Uh, they were entertaining some gentlemen, not
Speaker 1: just the ladies, like the whole crew. I think they
Speaker 1: were what like five or six of them total. I
Speaker 1: saw a dozen, Okay, let's say a dozen. Then uh,
Speaker 1: and they were entertaining some guys, uh, mariners from the
Speaker 1: Port Royal and apparently he got a little out of hand,
Speaker 1: turned into a big fight and drew some attention, and
Speaker 1: a pirate hunter named Jonathan Barnett snagged them into custody
Speaker 1: and that was it. They had actually slipped if you
Speaker 1: read the pirate history, Uh, they'd slipped through the hands
Speaker 1: of other pirate hunters. A few times and some really
Speaker 1: amazing daring dues. If they're true, even if they're not true,
Speaker 1: it's still worth reading. Yes, exactly, Chuck, thank you, Williams Sapphire. Um,
Speaker 1: they they this time though, they were caught and they
Speaker 1: were tried in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and apparently every single
Speaker 1: person ended up being found guilty. They had a couple
Speaker 1: of different trials. A couple of guys really were abducted. Um.
Speaker 1: They were French like hunters on an island and they
Speaker 1: were abducted and full worst into this and they were
Speaker 1: still tried and um convicted and every single male crewman
Speaker 1: was hanged. Right. But there's a good final twist another
Speaker 1: TV scene moment. Uh. In court as they were being
Speaker 1: I guess uh read their verdict, Marian Anne looked at
Speaker 1: each other and winked and at the same time said
Speaker 1: threw their arms up and said we're pregnant. Uh. And
Speaker 1: apparently that was the deal they were not. It was
Speaker 1: called pleading the belly, which will get you out of
Speaker 1: being put to death at least and being hanged. But
Speaker 1: they were not making it up. They were uh, you know,
Speaker 1: inspected I guess I hope by a doctor and found
Speaker 1: to be really pregnant, and so they avoided the gallows. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: they were probably in their second trimester. Later historians said
Speaker 1: um Mary Reid died fairly shortly after the following April,
Speaker 1: and some historians have said that probably coincide with childbirth,
Speaker 1: so she might have died in childbirth. Her grave is
Speaker 1: in St. Catherine, Jamaica. You can go visit it. And
Speaker 1: um and Bonnie though she became more obscure according to
Speaker 1: the history Captain Johnson's history. Um, she was let go
Speaker 1: at some point. Uh, and we don't know where she went.
Speaker 1: But all only this we know that she was not executed.
Speaker 1: What a great ending. Yeah, I also saw that after that.
Speaker 1: Some people suppose that she went back to Charleston, married
Speaker 1: another man, had eight kids. And it would be possible
Speaker 1: then that there are descendants of Ambonnie out there running
Speaker 1: around on the Isle of Palms. Perhaps probably maybe they'll
Speaker 1: find my tooth. It's that's some booty right there. That
Speaker 1: some boy. I'll give you some other booty. Short stuff
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