PIRATES IN PETTICOATS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 17756, 3 January 1920, Page 11

PIRATES IN PETTICOATS.

There have been only two women pirates Anne Bonney and Alary Read, who were captured in the Caribbean Sea a little over a century ago and charged with “having piiutica-1 tendencies ’ At her trial, Anne Bonney confessed her reason lor 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 ga’d> of man had always had a fascinati >n for her, and when she joined her husband in his piratical voyages she donned the full dress of the bold buccaneer. None but her husband was aware of her sex or identity. She took rank above her men comrades and obtained a high .reputation for courage. The manner in which she met Mary Read, the only other woman pirate known to history, is curious in the extreme ami makes fascinating reading. Alary Re?.d was on another pirate ship, and, as often happens, the two came to blows on the open sea. After a terrific combat, the ship on which Ann? Bonney was sailing admitted defeat, and among the boarders was Alary Reid. 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 Alary Read began to fall in love with Anne Bonney’s husband. Even this, however, did not impair the mutual feelings of friendliness, for Alary 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 to flee before one of His Britannic ATajesty’s schooners. The piratical careers of these wofnen plunders ended in an engagement with a British ship, which went disastrously against them. Alary Read died in prison ,and Anne Bonney, who had several people to plead for her, was restored to her family.