Anne Bonny

Bonny's date and place of birth are unknown.^[6][b] Nothing definitive is known about her early life. No primary source including her own trial transcript makes mention of her age or nation of origin. No Anne Bonny born in the late 17th century has been found in the baptism records of Ireland. We cannot be sure she is even Irish, her name is more English: Anne, the third most common English given name of the era,^[7] and Bonny, an English surname common in Lancashire County.^[8] Bonny is not noted to have been a colonist of Nassau before 1713. Prior to 22 August 1720, little can be definitively said about Bonny's early life.

 

All details concerning Bonny's early life stems from Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates (a greatly unreliable series of pirate biographies).^[9] Johnson writes that Bonny was born in a town near Cork in the Kingdom of Ireland.^[10] She was the daughter of a servant woman named Mary, and her employer, an unnamed attorney. Later renditions of this story would refer to the attorney as William Cormac and the mother as Peg/Mary Brennan. These are fictional names first written down in the 1964 romance novel Mistress of the Seas.^[11]

The attorney's wife had become ill and was moved to her mother-in-law's home a few miles away to be cared for. Whilst his wife was away for four months, he began an affair with Mary. The attorney's wife discovered the affair following a comical mix up concerning silver spoons.

This theatrical misunderstanding began with a tanner Mary knew stealing three silver spoons and hiding them in her bed. Mary called a constable on the man, but they were not found. Upon the wife's return, the tanner told her the entire story about stealing silver spoons, but confessed it was only a joke. The wife found the three silver spoons in Mary's bed as the tanner had claimed. She became suspicious however, the tanner had noted he had hidden the silver spoons days ago. The wife questioned why Mary had not been sleeping in her bed.^[12] The wife then assumed her husband had been unfaithful the past four months. The wife stayed in the bed and waited for the attorney, who called for Mary and laid in her bed, confirming the affair. The wife then put the silver spoons back into the bed, and when Mary went to sleep, she found them and hid them in her trunk. The wife later accused Mary of theft and called a constable, who wrongfully arrested her. With the affair exposed, the wife separated from the attorney and moved to a different home.^[13]

Mary became pregnant from the affair and gave birth to a daughter, Anne, while in prison. After Anne's birth, Mary was let go out of pity. The attorney's mother in law died not long after, leaving a major source of income to be an allowance his estranged wife gave him out of sympathy.

How Johnson was aware of the theft of spoons and the exact nature of Anne's birth, is never revealed.

Because everyone in town knew Mary had given birth to a bastard daughter, the attorney raised Anne as a boy, claiming she was the child of a friend. The attorney even hoped to raise Anne as a clerk.^[14] The attorney's wife soon found out who the child was, and cut off any allowance she had been giving him. The attorney in response ended the ruse and openly lived with Anne as his daughter, but this scandal damaged his reputation and few locals wished to work with him. The attorney was forced to move elsewhere.^[15]

The attorney first moved to Cork, but this proved not far enough. The attorney then moved to the Province of Carolina, taking along Anne and her mother Mary. At first, the attorney attempted to continue his law career, but eventually became a merchant instead. He proved quite successful as a merchant, earning enough money to buy a large plantation. At an undisclosed period of time, Mary died, Anne Bonny was now grown up.^[15]

Johnson claims that Bonny possessed a fierce temper, such as supposedly stabbing a maid to death with a knife. A claim he immediately finds groundless. He also says she once beat a man severely for attempting to sleep with her.^[16]

There is no documented example of an attorney becoming a plantation owner in the Carolinas in the 17th and 18th century, not least of which one with a daughter named Anne Bonny and a history of violence.^[17]

The attorney expected Bonny to marry a good man, instead she married a poor sailor. The attorney was so outraged he threw her out. In the original volume of A General History, the sailor husband is unnamed. In A General History volume II released in 1728, the sailor is named James Bonny.^[18]

After being kicked out, Anne and James Bonny moved to Nassau, on New Providence Island, known as a sanctuary for pirates. Johnson claims that, after the arrival of Governor Woodes Rogers in the summer of 1718, James Bonny became a minor officer for the governor after taking a pardon. Anne cared little for James and frequently cheated on him.^[19] James Bonny serving Woodes Rogers is highly unlikely, as no James Bonny is noted in Captain Vincent Pearse's list of pirates who took the Kings Pardon.^[20] No documentation outside of A General History even confirms there was a James Bonny, making it possible he is one of Johnsons fictional creations, similar to Captain Misson.

 

While in Nassau, Bonny at some point met John "Calico Jack" Rackham. The nature of his relationship with her is unclear; A General History claims it was romantic, while her own trial transcript says nothing on the matter. She was likely well acquainted with Rackham by the year 1720, after the War of the Quadruple Alliance and two years into the reign of Governor Rogers.

 

In August 1720, Bonny, Rackham, and another woman, Mary Read, together with about a dozen other pirate crewmembers, stole the sloop William, then at anchor in Nassau harbor, and put out to sea.^[21] The crew spent months in the West Indies attacking merchant ships.^[22] Bonny took part in piracy alongside the men, handing out gunpowder to fellow pirates, a job usually referred to as a powder monkey.^[23] On 5 September 1720, Governor Rogers put out a proclamation later published in The Boston Gazette, demanding the arrest of Rackham and his associates. Among those named are Anne Bonny and Mary Read.^[19]

 

A General History claims Bonny eventually fell in love with another pirate on board, only to discover it was Mary Read. To abate the jealousy of Rackham, who suspected romantic involvement between the two, Bonny told him that Read was a woman and swore him to secrecy.^[25] This is unlikely, since Rogers' proclamation names both women openly. Later drawings of Bonny and Read would emphasise their femininity, although this too likely did not reflect reality.^[26]

A victim of the pirates, Dorothy Thomas of Jamaica, would describe in detail Bonny and Read's appearance during their trial: They "wore men's jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and ... each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her [Dorothy Thomas]." Thomas also recorded that she knew that they were women, "from the largeness of their breasts."^[27]

On 22 October 1720,^[28] Rackham and his crew were attacked by a sloop captained by Jonathan Barnet under a commission from Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica. Rackham and his crew briefly resisted, but surrendered soon after the fight began. They were taken to Jamaica where in groups, they were tried for the crime of piracy. Rackham was tried on 16 November and found guilty. His execution at Port Royal was carried out two days later on the 18th.^[29]

Anne Bonny was tried for piracy alongside Mary Read in Spanish Town on 28 November.^[30] Like Rackham, the trial was short and the verdict inevitable. After calling three witnesses and a brief period of discussion, Governor Lawes found Bonny and Read guilty of piracy and sentenced them both to be hanged.^[31]

With the judgement pronounced, Bonny and Read both "pleaded their bellies", asking for mercy,^[32] a jury of matrons likely granted them a stay of execution until they gave birth, but it is debatable if they were actually pregnant.^[33] Read died in prison of unknown causes around April 1721. A burial registry for Saint Catherine Parish lists her burial on 28 April 1721 as, "Mary Read, Pirate".^[34]

There is no record of Bonny's release, and this has fed speculation as to her fate.^[35] Johnson writes in A General History that: "She was continued in Prison, to the Time of her lying in, and afterward reprieved from Time to Time; but what is become of her since we cannot tell; only this we know, that she was not executed".^[36]

Claims of Bonny being freed by family intervention and moving to the American colonies, dying around the 1780s, are unlikely and appear to originate from John Carlova's Mistress of the Seas.^[37] Such claims were later amplified by Tamara Eastman and Constance Bond's 2000 book The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, which claimed Bonny lived until 1782. The claim rested on "family papers in the collection of descendants," which was later proven to be false.^[38]

 

A burial register in Spanish Town, where Bonny was tried, lists the burial of an "Ann Bonny" on 29 December 1733. This is notable but not conclusive evidence that Bonny never left Jamaica.^[34]

Despite a career of only two months, Anne Bonny is among the most famous pirates in recorded history, primarily due to her gender. Within a decade, Bonny-inspired characters were already appearing. The first notable inspiration is Jenny Diver in John Gay's Polly. Despite already appearing in Gay's previous play The Beggars Opera, and being based on the historical Jenny Diver, her characterization in Polly is blatantly Bonny.^[39]

In the 19th century, literature such as Charles Ellms' Pirates Own Book would discuss Bonny at length, often with illustrations. An 1888 cigarette card would depict Bonny as a redhead, a trait that continues to this day despite no evidence supporting it. Swashbuckling cinema would often include a dashing redhaired woman or female pirate companion, occasionally directly naming Bonny.^[40]

By the 21st century, Bonny has appeared in hundreds of books, movies, stage shows, TV programs, and video games.^[41] Almost every female pirate character, is in some form, inspired by Anne Bonny.^[42]

 

Since the mid 18th century, certain writers have claimed that Anne Bonny was the lesbian lover of Mary Read. This was never stated in the trial transcript or newspapers, and only begins to appear after much of Bonny's legend was written, and by highly suspect sources.

The first written appearance of this claim is in an unauthorized 1725 reproduction of A General History titled, The History and Lives of All the Most Notorious Pirates and Their Crews. In the passage describing the trial of Bonny and Read, the book briefly says they were lovers. Since A General History is itself unreliable, this claim cannot be trusted.^[43] History and Lives would be the only book to claim Bonny and Read were lovers for almost a century. A chapbook knock off of History and Lives would again repeat the claim verbatim in 1813,^[c] but discussion of Bonny's sexuality would only really begin in the 20th century.

This claim would briefly appear again in 1914, via sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld's book, The Homosexuality of Men and Women. Much like History and Lives, it contains a mere one sentence claim that Mary Read was a lesbian.^[44]

The claim that Bonny and Read were lesbians largely entered popular understanding via radical feminist Susan Baker's 1972 article, "Anne Bonny & Mary Read: They Killed Pricks" published in a newspaper run by the lesbian separatist organization, The Furies Collective.^[45] This article would inspire writers such as Steve Gooch, which in turn would influence many media depictions.

In 2020, a statue of Bonny and Read was unveiled at Execution Dock in Wapping, London. The statues were created in part for the podcast series Hellcats, which centers on a lesbian relationship between Bonny and Read. The statues themselves are abstract depictions of Bonny and Read, claiming that one emotionally completed the other. It was originally planned for the statues to be permanently placed on Burgh Island in south Devon,^[46] but these plans were withdrawn after complaints of glamorizing piracy, and because Bonny and Read have no association with the island.^[47] The statues were eventually accepted by Lewes F.C.^[48]

Ultimately, it is impossible to determine if Anne Bonny was Mary Read's lover. Neither woman left any primary sources behind, and sources such as the trial transcript make no mention of their personal lives.^[4]

• Jean Peters portrays a character based on Anne Bonny called Captain Anne Providence in the 1951 film Anne of the Indies, itself based on a 1947 article by Herbert Ravenel Sass.^[49]
• Bonny was portrayed by Diana Quick in the 1978 RSC production of The Women-Pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read by Steve Gooch, at the Aldwych Theatre in London.^[50]
• Bonny prominently appears in the video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, voiced by Sarah Greene.^[51]
• Bonny was portrayed by Clara Paget in the Starz TV Series Black Sails.^[52]
• Bonny is a main character in the 2021 Netflix docuseries The Lost Pirate Kingdom, where she is portrayed by Mia Tomlinson.^[53]
• Minnie Driver portrayed Bonny in the episode Fun and Games in the second season of the HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death.^[54]

• Evans, Tegan (2024). "Enemies of All Mankind: Gender, Violence and the Queering of Anne Bonny and Mary Read". Australian Feminist Law Journal: 1–25. doi:10.1080/13200968.2024.2310315.
• Frohock, Richard (2018). "Beyond Bonny and Read: Blackbeard's Bride and Other Women in Caribbean Piracy Narratives". In Aljoe, N.N.; Carey, B.; Krise, T.W. (eds.). Literary Histories of the Early Anglophone Caribbean. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 125–145. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-71592-6_7. ISBN 978-3-319-71591-9.
• Schulte, Ryann (2016). ""But of Their Own Free-Will and Consent": Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and the Women Pirates in the Early Modern Times". Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History. 6 (1): 13–28. doi:10.20429/aujh.2016.060102.

• "Anne Bonny", Encyclopædia Britannica Online