WOMAN PIRATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 February 1935, Page 9

WOMAN PIRATE

MARY READ OF BRISTOL. Tho history of piracy records the names of a few women who have sailed under the Black Peter as the wives or mistresses of corsairs, but apparently only one who was a buccaneer in her own right. This was Mary Read, daughter of a privateer and Biisiol tavernkeeper, who at 17 went to seu in 1717 as cabin “boy”—Buttons—in the Cadogan, after robbing a di unken sailor of his £lO purchase money. According to Mr. Frank Shay, who tells her story in the fictionised-fact manner, she was a doughty lass who dressed in men’s clothes, fought men’s quarrels, and mouthed men’s oaths. On her first voyage she saw the skipper of the Cadogan captured and tortured by a pirate and then put to death. After that she became the freebootei ’s “boy” and experienced plenty of the “Musketeers, fire! Starboard cannons, aim, broadside! Boarders, grapple! Musket men to the decks!” kind of thing. She even married Boatswain Jones of the pirate ship, after warning him: “•Nay, I said 1 was a woman, but I’m no wench. Time enough when we get to port and there’s a dominie to say the words.” She might be a. pirate lass, but by Heaven! she’d insist on marriage lines. Although a mere girl she could insist on a number ot things, for was she not armed with two pistols in her sash, cutlass in her baldric, stiletto and sheath knife at one side of her belt and axe at the other? THE ROYAL PARDON. In those days the King’s men inaugurated a purity campaign‘in the Bahamas. Buccaneers of the Carribbees flocked into the New Providence to obtain the Royal Pardon; those that did not, and were caught, heard these dread words addressed to them: “You are to be banged by the neck until you are dead and then your body is to be cut down and buried between the high and low water murks in the stamps." Evidently they did not minu the hanging so much as the knowledge that their graves were to be neither in sea nor soil, but in a place inhabited only by Mary was intimidated by seeing so many good buccaneers going out of commission. She obtained the pardon herself, and took service in the King s ship Morning Star. But .her heart was still with the corsairs—and that of most of the crew. Her chance came when the ship came alongside a pirate, Calico Jack’s Rancour: “Take aim, gunners. Aloft with your ensign. Hard down on youi helm,” cried the captain. “Break out your ensign, gunners fiio!” again ordered the captain. But there was no burst of flame from the starboard guns of the Morning Star.- Buttons looked aloft and then led tlie crew in a gieat shout of laughter. The pirate, seeing how things were, joined in the laugh, and Captain John Massey, looking, aloft to focus his eyes upon what the rest of the crew were looking at, saw a flag he had seen before, the Black Peter of piracy.

TROUBLE WITH ANNE BONNEY.

Thus, at Mary’s instigation, the two crews joined forces and she sailed thenceforth under Calico Jack Rackham’s flag. Jack had a spouse aboard, Anne Bonney, a virago if over there was one. Anne became jealous ot Mary Marv decided she would have no peace until she had deposed Rackham who was completely under his woman’s thumb. Mary was second mate now, so in the course of a dispute with Rackham on a question ot discipline, she brought her fists into play and “blowed down” one of Ins men. Then she addressed the mumbling crew: "Aye. I be a woman an’ 1 bp dressed as a man. ’Tis by way o' doing matters, an’ if there be among you those who do not like it, let him come take his share and say it truly, sarve him as 1 sawed the cheild on the deck here. A woman I be, anu say it again, and a woman thats a better man nor any o’ you. To your quarters! ’T’once!” . Shortly after that Mary was mainly responsible for capturing a Spaniard, the Bella Christina: but that only intensified tho anger of Rackham. "Throw that man in irons, yelled

Jack. ± . But Mary’s cutlass was out and sh~ was retreating from the rail. “Place a leg on this deck and ybuT life won’t be worth a —•—, said Mary, evenly and calmly. “Stand from behind me’ you fellows, or by my bollys I’ll cleave you head to guts!” , One hand held her cutlass pud the other a pistol.

DUMPED ASHORE. Then she “blowed” Rackham dots n, put him in elected herself captain of the Spaniard, re-naming it the Blackbird. She went on “blowing.” Any man aboard who questioned her authority she challenged to a sword light, and beat. She feared no ’man—only Anne. And Anne she arranged to have dumped ashore at the first, available place. After tliat “she captained a loyal and cut-throat crew.”

The subsequent career of this redoubtable young woman reads like legend. With her prizes captured at sea she set up.,a settlement on (hand Caicas and reigned there as queen. She fell in with Husband Jones again, promoted him one of her officers, fell cut with him, “blowed him down” in •a sword duel as an alternative to being lashed: — “I’ll kill thee, damn wench, and make mysel’ master o’ this wessel. I’ll kill thee deader ’n a herring. Oop!" The woman's sword flashed up, down, and across and then was pushed forward, and Jones’ last exclamation came from his lips as her cutlass found a space between his ribs. So she roved the Antilles, raiding Spanish vessels of the Cold Fleet, Yankee rum ships and slavers. French and Dutch merchantmen. She even sacked the settlement of New Orleans —and then sold the loot and slaves back to the terror-stricken founders. Finally, she was taken prisoner off Cuba, fighting like a tigress on a deck whence all but she had fled. She had always boasted she would never hang, and cheated the hangman in the end by taking her own life.