WOMEN BUCCANEERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19842, 10 January 1920, Page 15

WOMEN BUCCANEERS.

When recalling the stories told in our youth of life oil the “ Spanish Main, \ve fail to remember the name of any woman pirate, yet there have been two, and they Anne Honney and mary Head, who were captured in the Caribbean Sea a little over a century ago and charged with “haying piratical tendencies.” Anne Bonney confessed at her trial her reason for becoming a pirate. The daughter of a Carolina planter, she was disowned! by her father for marrying a common sailor. After the elopement and marriage—she ran away dressed in male attire —she discovered that her husband was a pirate, and decided to join him in his adventures. From her childhood days the garb of man had always had a fascination for her, and when she joined her husband in his piratical voyages she donned the full dress of the bold buccaneer. Mary Bead, the only other woman pirate known to history, was fated to meet Bonney, and the manner of meeting is curious in the extreme. Mary Read was on anotiier pirate ship, and, as often happens, the two canio to blows on tho open sea. After a terrific combat, the ship on which Anne Bonney was sailing admitted defeat, and among the boarders was Mary Read. Although at ‘first each was ignorant of the sex of the other, the two female pirates became fast friends. They only found one another out when Mary Head began to fall in love with Anno Bonney’s husband; This, however, did nob impair tjio mutual feelings of friendliness, for Mary Read soon married another man who was also a pirate. Curiously enough, the two women became widows at the same time; this was during an engagement when the ship flying the skull and cross-bones had perforce to flee before one of his Britannic Majesty's schooners. Mary Rend died in prison, and Anne Bonney was later restored to her family.