Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lorn Volga bam Here and Bonnie, Convicted
Speaker 1: of piracies, felonies and robberies on the High Sea in
Speaker 1: the seventeen twenties, was a real life pirate of the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: Like Blackbeard, she took part in the Golden Age of Piracy,
Speaker 1: a time when Europe's colonial powers had to constantly contend
Speaker 1: with pirates, buccaneers and privateers. It lasted from about sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty to seventeen twenty six. Even back then, true crime
Speaker 1: narratives were popular among readers, and the public was hungry
Speaker 1: for stories about the exploits of criminals and plunderers who
Speaker 1: terrorized the sea ways. Some books were written to meet
Speaker 1: this demand, and a great deal of inc was spent
Speaker 1: recounting the lives of and Bonnie and other female pirates
Speaker 1: from the Golden Age. Unfortunately, in Bonnie's case, rumors tend
Speaker 1: to shadow the facts. It doesn't help that the latter
Speaker 1: are somewhat few and far between. Very little information about
Speaker 1: her life was documented firsthand, leaving ample room for speculation.
Speaker 1: A legend has obscured reality. The seventeen book A General
Speaker 1: History of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates,
Speaker 1: sometimes just called a general history of the pirates, popularized
Speaker 1: buried treasure, wooden legs, plank walking, and just about every
Speaker 1: other pirate stereotype you can think of, aside from the
Speaker 1: voice that we think of today for pirates, which was
Speaker 1: popularized by English actor Robert Newton. But that's a different
Speaker 1: episode anyway. The authorship of this book is a mystery.
Speaker 1: The listed author is Captain Charles Johnson, which is almost
Speaker 1: certainly a pen name, but historians have never been able
Speaker 1: to pin down the writer's true identity. Whoever he was.
Speaker 1: Our so called captain helped reshape the popular outlook on piracy.
Speaker 1: The creators of works like Peter Pan and Treasure Island
Speaker 1: cited his book as a major influence, but it's not
Speaker 1: a perfect resource. Today's scholarly consensus on the book is
Speaker 1: that it blended verifiable research with hearsay and misinformation. Pirate
Speaker 1: historian David Accordingly wrote in his introduction to a print
Speaker 1: of the classic book, quote, A question mark must hangover
Speaker 1: Johnson's account of the extraordinary early lives of Mary Read
Speaker 1: and a Bonnie until some corroborating evidence is discovered. Johnson
Speaker 1: indeed had a lot to say concerning and Bonnie and
Speaker 1: her shipmate Mary Read, another Golden Age pirate woman. The
Speaker 1: book claims that Bonnie was born near the city of Cork, Ireland,
Speaker 1: and that she had a rough childhood. Said to be
Speaker 1: the illegitimate daughter of a married lawyer and his servant Maide,
Speaker 1: Bonnie was supposedly dressed in boy's clothing. That way her
Speaker 1: father could avoid unwanted gossip by passing the girl off
Speaker 1: as his personal assistant in training. At some point she
Speaker 1: relocated to Carolina, North American territory later split into the
Speaker 1: separate colonies of North and South Carolina, with her father
Speaker 1: and his mistress, or so the story goes. Historians don't
Speaker 1: know what the future outlaws original birth name was seventy.
Speaker 1: Proclamation issued by Woods Rogers, the governor of the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: refers to her as Anne Fulford, alias Bonnie. It's been
Speaker 1: said she was briefly married to a pirate named James Bonnie,
Speaker 1: only to leave him for another pirate, englishman, John Rackham,
Speaker 1: also known as Calico Jack. There's no doubt that Anne
Speaker 1: Bonnie worked for Rackham. Contemporary documents prove it, and she
Speaker 1: wasn't the only female pirate who joined his crew. Like
Speaker 1: Anne Bonnie, Mary Read is an enigmatic figure. If Johnson's
Speaker 1: book is to be believed. She was born in England
Speaker 1: and lost her father, who anished one way or another
Speaker 1: at an early age. The book describes Read's first meeting
Speaker 1: with Bonnie as a comedy of airs. At the time,
Speaker 1: they were both allegedly dressed as men aboard Rackham's ship,
Speaker 1: and none the wiser. Bonnie developed a crush on Read,
Speaker 1: pulled her aside, and then revealed her true gender. In
Speaker 1: Johnson's telling, Mary Read was quote forced to come to
Speaker 1: a right understanding with her, and so, to the great
Speaker 1: disappointment of Anne Bonnie, she let her know she was
Speaker 1: a woman. Also, historians are pretty skeptical about this anecdote,
Speaker 1: and despite insinuations to the contrary, there is no outside
Speaker 1: evidence suggesting Bonnie was ever attracted to or romantically involved
Speaker 1: with Read. But we do have eyewitness accounts confirming that
Speaker 1: they both wore traditionally male garb while at sea. And
Speaker 1: let's not forget Governor Rogers proclamation released on September five,
Speaker 1: seventy This document branded Read, Bonnie, Rackham, and five of
Speaker 1: their crew mats as pirates and enemies to the Crown
Speaker 1: of Great Britain. You see. A few weeks earlier, August two,
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty, the gang had stolen a ship named the
Speaker 1: William and set out on a Caribbean crime spree. Over
Speaker 1: the next few months, Rackham's crew certainly kept busy. The
Speaker 1: pirates seized more vessels, stole from fishermen, and made off
Speaker 1: with valuable cargo. Their reckoning finally arrived on the night
Speaker 1: of October twenty second, seventeen twenty. Off the Jamaican coast,
Speaker 1: Rackham and company found themselves entertaining some Port Royal mariners
Speaker 1: aboard the William. This event soon devolved into a brawl.
Speaker 1: Suddenly their ship was spotted by the pirate hunting captain
Speaker 1: Jonathan Barnett. In short order, Barnet's been crippled William and
Speaker 1: took her crew into custody. Next came a series of
Speaker 1: trials held in what's now Spanish Town, Jamaica. Rackham was
Speaker 1: found guilty of various crimes. Before these, he and the
Speaker 1: majority of his male crewmen were hanged that fall. The
Speaker 1: trial of Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid was set for
Speaker 1: November seventeen twenty, but this one had a twist ending.
Speaker 1: It was established that both women had committed felonies, robberies,
Speaker 1: and of course piracy. A one victim who testified against
Speaker 1: them was one Dorothy Thomas. She said she had been
Speaker 1: in a canoe minding her own business when the pirate
Speaker 1: gang robbed her, and Thomas told the court Bonnie and
Speaker 1: Read were each armed with a machete and a pistol,
Speaker 1: and that they had cursed and swore at the men,
Speaker 1: encouraging their cohorts to murder Thomas on the spot. Things
Speaker 1: didn't look good for Bonnie and Read, but the pair
Speaker 1: dropped a bombshell after their verdict was reached. Without warning,
Speaker 1: Mary Read and a Bonnie both announced they were pregnant.
Speaker 1: An inspection confirmed this. Judging by the timeline of events,
Speaker 1: historians think they'd both entered the second trimesters of their pregnancies,
Speaker 1: known as pleading the belly. This legal tactic saved the
Speaker 1: two pirates from the gal those. A woman by the
Speaker 1: name of Mary Read passed away on April seventy one
Speaker 1: and was buried in Sat. Katharine, Jamaica that same day.
Speaker 1: It's likely this was the very person who had sailed
Speaker 1: and fought with Anne Bonnie. Bonnie's own fate is more ambiguous.
Speaker 1: Nothing concrete is known about what the former pirate did
Speaker 1: with the rest of her life. Captain Johnson wrote, she
Speaker 1: was continued in prison to the time of her lying
Speaker 1: in and afterwards reprieved from time to time. But what
Speaker 1: has become of her since we cannot tell? Only this
Speaker 1: we know that she was not executed. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article in Bonnie, a Real Female Pirate
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts my
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