Pirates: Behind the Legends (2024) s01e07 Episode Script

1
[Narrator] This is the story
of two of the boldest pirates
ever to sail the high seas,
Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
[Expert 1] The legend is
these are the two most famous
female pirates in history.
[Narrator]
A fearsome duo who sailed
with Calico Jack Rackham,
one of the most flamboyant
figures in the Caribbean.
[Expert 2] So, we know
that people were fascinated
with their story.
[Expert 3] They'd just gone
completely off the rails.
They were young,
and they wanted fun.
[Narrator] Despite being
formidable fighters
and wily strategists,
their careers at sea
are short-lived.
And their capture leads Bonny,
Read, and their captain
to face one of Jamaica's
most sensational pirate trials.
♪
Once used as a base
for English privateers
in their wars
against the Spanish,
Nassau had grown
to become a bustling port
and a sanctuary for pirates.
[Richard Blakemore] Nassau is
the main town in the Bahamas,
and it's quite a small
colonial settlement.
The Bahamas
are scattered islands,
they're hard to navigate,
so they're often
a haunt of pirates.
They're a place
that pirates escape to
and hide in between
their voyages.
And it's very difficult
for the colonial authorities
to control this region
because of the complex
geography of these islands.
[Hannah Cusworth] Governance
wasn't as well established
as it was on some of
the other Caribbean islands.
[Blakemore] Colonists are
complaining and even fleeing
from the island because of
the concentration of pirates.
[Mark Hanna] It was not a place
that people wanted to settle
and buy land
and live permanently.
[Margarette Lincoln] It was a
place where pirates stopped off,
caroused, as they said,
had parties, drank a lot,
and then went back
to their ship.
[Rebecca Simon]
Anywhere you went in Nassau,
you could find a tavern,
you could find prostitutes,
you could find
all kinds of lawlessness.
[gunfire]
[Narrator] 1717.
News of the chaotic
pirate haven reaches England.
King George I is furious,
signing a proclamation
for suppressing pirates.
He appoints Nassau's
first official governor
in over 14 years,
Woodes Rogers.
His role--to oversee the
Bahamas on behalf of the Crown
and crush the pirates.
[Simon] Woodes Rogers
made it his mission
to get rid of all the pirates
in Nassau in the Caribbean.
So he comes in,
establishes a proclamation
saying to all of the pirates,
you know, if you turn yourself
in by September of 1718,
I'll give you a pardon
and you will all be forgiven
for all your crimes.
[Blakemore] He turns some former
pirates into pirate hunters
when they decide to join him.
He issues pardons to others,
although some pirates refused
to join him and sail away.
[Narrator]
Those who fled to sea
were hunted down
by their former comrades,
men who had taken
the king's pardon,
pirates turned pirate hunters.
[Lincoln] It meant that
it was much more difficult
for the pirates
operating in that area.
Woodes Rogers was putting down
piracy on Providence,
and people were feeling perhaps
that the pendulum
was going the other way.
[Narrator] King George's
second strategy
for restoring order in Nassau
was to encourage
families to emigrate
to establish a colony
of law-abiding citizens
for the British Crown.
[Cusworth] There were
a number of Caribbean islands
that were really interested
in having women come over
to grow the White population,
and they needed women to kind of
establish families there.
And so women were kind of
encouraged or sent for
or they were women
who were prisoners,
and they were brought over kind
of as part of their sentence.
♪
♪
[Narrator] One of the women
who seizes this opportunity
is Anne Bonny.
[Blakemore] So, Anne Bonny
was born in Ireland
and then moved to
the Carolinas with her father,
who was a lawyer
and then a merchant.
[Simon] By the time Anne Bonny
has arrived in Nassau
with her husband, James Bonny,
their marriage is
really on the rocks.
This was especially so
when James Bonny began working
as a pirate hunter
for Woodes Rogers.
♪
In the meantime, Anne Bonny
was known to hang out
in a lot of taverns
and befriend a lot of pirates,
sometimes have affairs
with pirates.
♪
All of this is going to change
when she meets Jack Rackham.
[muffled voices]
[Narrator] The man Bonny
falls for, Jack Rackham,
has recently
retired from piracy,
choosing to accept a pardon
from Woodes Rogers.
But for years prior
to their meeting,
Calico Jack, as he was
best known, was notorious
for both his adventures at sea
and in the taverns of Nassau.
[Simon] Jack Rackham already
had kind of his own reputation.
He was known
as Calico Jack Rackham
because he liked
to dress very nicely.
[Blakemore] The nickname
Calico Jack comes from calico,
which is a material originally
made in Calicut in India.
Pirates who were plundering
some of these trade routes
are the first people
who are not elite
who get access
to these commodities.
So it seems to be
a part of the way
in which pirates
can flaunt their position
and enjoy some
of these commodities
that aren't necessarily
accessible to everybody
at this time.
[Narrator] One historical
account claims Rackham
has command of his own ship,
having staged a mutiny
against the previous captain.
[Simon] This is very common
on pirate ships.
The crew had equal say
in terms of what the laws
would be on their ship,
and if they felt that a captain
was not doing his job,
which usually meant that they
were not capturing enough ships,
they were not making
enough money,
that they could vote him out.
[Lincoln] Pirates were able to,
if you like, fire their captain.
I mean, this was the big thing
for being on a pirate ship,
if you didn't like your captain
and enough people
thought he was useless,
you got yourself another one.
[Narrator] As captain,
Rackham targets
merchant and passenger
transport vessels,
gaining control
of several large ships.
[Simon] They actually
were quite successful
under Rackham's captainship.
[Narrator] But it all
pales in comparison
to one particular prize
he spots just beyond
Port Royal, Jamaica,
probably the most impressive
boat Rackham has ever seen
grace the Caribbean.
[Simon] In 1719, Jack Rackham's
most successful capture
is a ship called the Kingston.
[Narrator] The Kingston is
huge, promising a rich cargo,
a major score
for Rackham and his men.
The pirates pull up
to their target,
and the pirate captain signals
for his crew to attack,
effortlessly defeating
the unsuspecting sailors
of the Kingston.
The pirates seize
the vessel for themselves,
Rackham's most valuable
prize to date.
♪
But the attack has been
witnessed from the harbor.
♪
Port Royal is no longer
a safe haven for pirates,
but a reformed settlement
where the criminals
who plague the sea
are publicly executed.
Furious merchants set
bounty hunters after Rackham.
Their mission--
to capture or kill him.
February 1719.
The bounty hunters
catch up with Rackham
on a small island
off the coast of Cuba.
Caught unprepared
and nursing vicious hangovers,
the pirates
abandon the Kingston
and flee into the woods.
♪
Reflecting on this close call,
Rackham decides
to give up piracy for good
and take the king's pardon.
He steals a Spanish sloop and
makes his way back to Nassau.
Upon landing, Rackham goes
straight to Woodes Rogers,
seeking peace.
[Simon] Jack Rackham
goes in and says,
"I've seen the error of my ways,
and I'm done with piracy."
And so he gets his pardon,
and this allows Jack Rackham
to lay low in Nassau.
[Narrator] Retiring to pursue
more restful pursuits
in Nassau,
Rackham spends his days
stumbling between
taverns and brothels
until one night,
whilst sat within
a favorite watering hole,
he sets his gaze on a woman
unlike any other
a woman who would alter
the course of his life.
[Narrator] Jack Rackham
and Anne Bonny
soon begin an affair.
[Simon] It's pretty much
love at first sight.
She wants to marry Jack Rackham.
Jack wants to marry her.
The problem? She's still
married to James Bonny,
and a divorce is very,
very difficult to obtain.
♪
James Bonny denies a divorce,
and so Jack Rackham
offers to buy Anne Bonny.
[Narrator] In the Caribbean
of the 18th century,
women could be sold
to their new husband
as a means of divorce,
a practice known
as wife selling.
[Simon] There was a very uneven
ratio between men and women,
so a lot of wives
were purchased.
And sometimes if you
were in a bad marriage
and you wanted to remarry,
that person could buy the woman.
Now, Woodes Rogers
had actually outlawed
the practice of wife selling,
so what he does
is James Bonny goes
to Woodes Rogers and says,
"Jack Rackham is trying
to buy my wife, Anne Bonny."
[Blakemore] But Woodes Rogers
is very angry
and tells them
that they mustn't do it.
And it is this that inspires
Jack and Bonny
to go and steal a ship
and take to the seas.
♪
♪
[Narrator] August 22, 1720.
Rackham and Bonny recruit a
small group of co-conspirators.
♪
As night falls,
they steal a ship
known as the William
from Nassau Harbor.
♪
It's a brazen move
which voids Rackham's pardon
immediately putting
his life in danger.
But it's a gamble
he's willing to take for love.
♪
Rackham and Bonny will need
all the speed
the William can muster.
They know it won't be long
before pirate hunters
are on their trail.
They set out towards Jamaica,
attacking merchant vessels
along the way.
♪
But Bonny's presence
amongst this rabble of pirates
is considered
to be highly unusual.
[Mélanie Lamotte] Piracy was
an extremely masculine world.
It was extremely rare
for female pirates.
We know of approximately,
I think, 40 female pirates
in the Golden Age of Piracy.
♪
The 17th and 18th centuries,
this time period,
people were
extremely superstitious,
and they believed
that it was bad luck
for women to be aboard a ship.
And also captains were afraid
that the presence
of women aboard
would create conflicts
between the sailors.
♪
[Narrator] As the captain's
lover, Bonny is accepted
as a valuable and capable
member of the crew.
♪
But before long,
she begins to find herself
drawn to another sailor
on board.
♪
[Simon] It's believed that
in A General History
of the Pyrates
that Captain Charles Johnson,
the author,
said the two of them
fell in love with each other.
♪
Actually what he writes is
that Anne Bonny had recognized
a male crew member,
fell in love with him.
[Narrator] But the object
of Bonny's desire
harbors a dangerous secret.
♪
The pirate ultimately revealing
her true female identity--
Mary Read.
[Simon] Now, how does
Mary Read meet them?
How does she join up with them?
Mary Read's story is that
she was an illegitimate child
and that she was raised
as a boy in London
in order to avoid scandal.
It was less scandalous to have
an illegitimate boy as a child
versus an illegitimate girl.
And according to the story,
when Mary Read was
about 13 years old,
her mother told her,
you're actually female,
and now we've got to put you
to work as a domestic servant,
like pretty much all women do.
And Mary Read goes back
into her male clothing,
and then she actually leaves,
and she heads down
to the European continent.
♪
[Narrator] Read, disguising
herself as a man,
joins a merchant ship
destined for the West Indies.
But how did she manage to hide
her identity for so long?
[Lamotte] Mary Read
was actually cross-dressing,
like she was dressing
as a man to not be recognized.
And she went by another name.
[Cusworth] It would have
been pretty dangerous
to be a woman on the ship.
It was a hard life.
[Lamotte] It would have been
a very difficult profession
for a woman.
And, yes, in terms
of sexual assaults,
there is evidence of women,
mostly from slave ships,
being assaulted
by members of the crew.
A lot of women, when they
arrived in the New World,
were actually pregnant.
The sailing world
was a very harsh world.
They wouldn't sleep a lot,
and they would have
to face a lot of risks
and also attacks by enemy ships
and other pirates.
It would have been
a scary world for a woman.
[Cusworth] A number
of these women
were kind of going incognito
dressed as men,
and that might have been
to protect themselves.
♪
[Hanna] They're always sort of
surprised about how easy it was
for them to get away
with being dressed as men
and how come people
didn't suspect them.
And I think there's
an important element of this,
which is how important clothing
was in the early modern period.
Clothing was
the primary demarcator
of one's social status
or gender,
that you were supposed to wear
the clothing of your job
or employment
or your gender norm.
And that clothing was
so powerful and important
for people to understand
who you were
and recognize you right away.
So, when they wore
men's clothing,
that clothing was so powerful
that you can imagine
people would never
imagine they could be
anything other than men.
And it's very hard for us
today to grasp that
because I don't think we have
the same obsession with clothing
being the sort of
indicator of reality
the way it was at the time.
[Iszi Lawrence] There were
more women dressed as men
than we have evidence for.
I mean, we have famous
incidents in the 18th century
of women like Hannah Snell,
who were a part of the navy
for four years before
they got discovered.
So, a lot of women, if they
wanted to flee their husbands,
if they wanted to make a life
or career for themselves,
you're gonna go to sea.
[Narrator] Mary Read masters
the fashions and behaviors
needed to convince
her fellow sailors
she was, like them, a man.
By the time she meets
Rackham and Bonny,
she's been at sea
for several years,
passing undetected
as a regular sailor.
There are different accounts
of Read's shift
to a life of piracy.
Some claim she had
already turned pirate,
while others say it happened
when Rackham plunders
the merchant ship she's aboard.
[Narrator] According to legend,
Mary Read reveals herself
to be a woman
but only to Anne Bonny.
The pair grow closer,
with Bonny vowing to keep
her identity secret.
[Blakemore] Calico Jack,
Bonny, and Read
sail to the coast of Jamaica.
And they spend
a couple of months there
plundering local shipping.
Some of these
are quite small vessels.
They even plunder a canoe.
But there's also some
quite large merchant vessels
carrying a variety
of valuable commodities.
♪
♪
[Simon] Jack Rackham,
in the meantime,
saw that Anne Bonny
had fallen in love
with another male crew member.
♪
[Narrator] The stories say,
in a fit of jealous rage,
Rackham threatens to cut
his love rival's throat.
♪
Read reveals her true identity.
♪
Bonny and Read
now sail together,
openly as women and as pirates.
[Simon] But there's actually
nothing in the story
written about the two of them
having a relationship.
This idea was actually
a 20th-century concept.
There were plays written about
them that began to speculate
that maybe they had
a romantic relationship.
This was written about
in feminist writings,
and now it's become considered
to practically be fact
about the two of them.
What their lives also did
is it really highlighted
what the realities could
have been for women at sea
and shows that women
could have been very competent
on a pirate ship
because they were.
♪
[Narrator] Bonny and Read prove
to be determined fighters.
No one, it seems, is prepared
for the extraordinary sight
of this fearsome pair
of women warriors.
[Simon] Anne Bonny
and Mary Read were also
in an interestingly
fortunate position.
They were not forced
to be pirates.
They were not under any threat
by any members of the crew.
They had not been
sexually assaulted.
They were not captured.
They were respected,
equal members of the crew
for the most part.
Now, how would they have managed
to survive this world at sea?
It was extremely difficult.
It's very masculine.
It's physically difficult.
They will be smaller.
They will be lighter
than the men,
and so this means that
they're going to be able
to climb up the mast,
probably do more repairs.
They're going to be faster
and more lithe in a fight.
They're going to have their
own skills that they can bring,
such as repairing and cooking
and that sort of thing.
They actually would have been
very, very useful members
of the crew.
♪
They wore male clothing
in battle
not to disguise themselves,
not because
they were cross-dressers,
but because it was practical.
It's easy to fight
in a loose shirt and trousers,
just like the men do.
And also, it was a way for them
to not be noticed
right away in battle.
They wore their hair very long.
And supposedly rumors say
that they would fight
with their shirts open, exposing
their breasts to people,
thus intimidating people
and sort of freezing men
in their tracks,
not expecting this at all.
[Hanna] The idea that
when a female pirate
sort of displays herself
by opening and
displaying her breasts,
it was shocking
because they said,
"You're wearing men's clothes.
How is it possible?"
[Blakemore] I think one
of the significant things
about Bonny and Read
is the fact
that they don't hide
their gender.
They are not afraid to be
seen as female pirates.
And in fact, in some ways,
that makes them more bold
and more brave because they are
flaunting these expectations
around female behavior
without pretending to be male.
♪
One of the vessels they capture
is a canoe crewed
only by Dorothy Thomas.
[Simon] They knew that
she had identified them
and that she could go and
report them to the authorities.
And being a woman, this would
be considered so outrageous
that authorities would
believe Dorothy Thomas
and they would probably
take it very seriously
that a woman had been
harassed by pirates.
[Blakemore] Bonny and Read
urge the pirates
to kill Dorothy Thomas.
They say, if we let her go,
she will be evidence against us.
But Calico Jack apparently
refuses to kill Dorothy Thomas,
so she is set free.
[Narrator] Bonny and Read
were right to be concerned.
Dorothy Thomas
reports the incident
directly to the governor,
Woodes Rogers.
[Simon] September 5, 1720,
Woodes Rogers issued
a proclamation for the arrest
of Jack Rackham on the William,
which contained
two female pirates,
and he named Anne Bonny
and Mary Read.
Woodes Rogers has put a large
bounty on Jack Rackham's head.
And so naturally, this is going
to attract pirate hunters,
and a very well-known and
very successful pirate hunter
named Jonathan Barnet decides
to take up the challenge
and go hunting for them
alongside another man
named Jean Bonadvis.
[Narrator] Bonadvis and Barnet
are seasoned privateers.
Having spent years sailing
among the intricate coves
and inlets of the Caribbean,
there are few criminal
hideouts they can't find.
[Simon] So, the two of them
have a small fleet
of their two ships,
and they go sailing
around the parts
where Jack Rackham
was known to be spotted.
♪
[Narrator] Unaware
they're being hunted,
the pirates skirt
the coast of Jamaica,
targeting ships as they go.
This includes
a fine merchant vessel,
now giving them
a flotilla of three crafts
helmed by a crew
brimming with confidence.
Rackham pilots his fleet
to a cove in Negril Bay,
where the pirates break out
in a drunken celebration
of their recent success.
As the party rages
and the liquor flows,
nobody notices
a new arrival in the bay.
It's Bonadvis and Barnet,
the pirate hunters.
[Simon] Bonadvis and Barnet
wait until it's dark,
and then they hail
Rackham's ship.
Now, Rackham and his crew
at this point are very drunk.
They'd actually managed
to capture a small ship,
and they were celebrating
by drinking all the wine
that they stole.
The only two people
who had not been drinking
were Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
[muffled voices]
When Barnet hails them,
Jack Rackham
basically taunts him,
saying that we will
accept no quarter,
we will take no mercy,
we will give no mercy.
[Narrator] The pirates manage
to load their cannons,
firing on the hunters,
but they barely do any damage.
[Simon] And then Barnet fires
a cannon into Rackham's ship.
[Narrator] Rackham
and his men realize
they're doomed
to lose this battle.
The pirate hunters
prepare to board.
[Simon] Now, Rackham
and the men are so inebriated
that they would not
be able to fight back,
and so Rackham orders everyone
to go and hide below deck.
The only people
who don't do this
are Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
They actually shout orders
against Rackham's,
saying, "No, you must stay."
Mary Read supposedly said,
"If there is a man among ya
to fight, then you must fight."
And supposedly she even
fired her gun into the hold,
killing two of the crew members,
out of anger that
they would not fight.
♪
So Jonathan Barnet,
Jean Bonadvis,
and all of their crew
end up fighting against
just Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
♪
[Blakemore] Ultimately,
they are unsuccessful,
and they are all captured
and imprisoned
and brought
to Port Royal for trial.
♪
♪
[Simon] In November of 1720,
the entire crew was put on trial
in St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica.
[Blakemore] Pirate trials
have become a very common sight
in the Caribbean
and North America at this time.
English law had changed
to allow local governors
and naval officers
to hold a piracy court.
[Narrator] This is in order
to create real stability
and security for the British,
who are intent on making
the sea safe for trade.
Those pirates who had rejected
or breached their pardons
would face the full force
of the law.
[Blakemore] So, the defendants
would have been brought
before the tribunal.
This legislation
authorizes English officers
to prosecute piracies
anywhere in the world.
[Simon] You have
the persecution.
You have, of course,
all the pirates on the stand.
You have a jury.
All the crimes are laid out,
and they bring witnesses.
[Blakemore] The victims,
if they survived,
would often have presented
the evidence to the court,
especially giving the detail
of what had been stolen
from them, the value,
because they want to reclaim
some of these commodities.
[Narrator] Rackham, Bonny,
and Read are put on trial,
facing a litany of charges
for their crime spree,
offenses which could
lead to hanging.
[Blakemore] One of
the really interesting things
about the trial is that
Calico Jack and several sailors
are tried on one day,
Bonny and Read are tried
by themselves on a separate day.
Clearly, the judge and the court
feel that these women
are of a different status.
They need a different procedure
to deal with the trial.
♪
[Narrator] Bonny and Read
are kept behind bars
whilst Rackham and some
of his crew are put on trial.
[Simon] Dorothy Thomas,
she was the chief witness.
She was able to see
everything in detail.
She was able to talk
about their character.
♪
We have other witnesses
who had actually
spent time on board ships,
so they knew exactly what
Jack Rackham had been doing
and what goods they had stolen
and how they'd been treated.
The hostages had been treated
pretty decently on the ship.
They weren't beaten or injured,
and they were usually let go
after just a few days.
We don't really know why,
but they offered
the best information.
[Blakemore]
At the end of the trial,
the defendants were given an
opportunity to plead their case,
although they weren't
given legal representation
or advice to do so.
And there were only really
two defenses that were possible.
One was to claim that
you were yourself a victim
who had been forced
to board the pirate ship
and that you never
intended to commit piracy.
And in fact, there are
some men put on trial
with Calico Jack's crew
who claimed that they'd simply
been invited aboard
the ship for a drink
and they had not been involved
in any of the piracies.
The other defense
would be to claim
that you were
legally authorized.
And indeed, it seems that
Calico Jack at various times
tried to claim
that he was authorized
to attack Spanish shipping,
but, of course,
this was a time of peace,
so the commission
was meaningless
and could not defend him.
[Simon] Jack Rackham and the men
were allowed to plead,
and, of course,
they all pled not guilty.
[Narrator] But their defense
is feeble and unpersuasive.
The court finds Rackham
and four of his accomplices
guilty of piracy,
robbery, and felony.
They are sentenced to hang.
[Lincoln] Calico Jack is allowed
to say farewell to Anne Bonny
before he's executed, and
she's totally unsympathetic.
She just says,
if he'd fought like a man,
he wouldn't be hanged
like a dog.
And I think this is a phrase
that has kind of echoed
down the centuries
about Jack Rackham
unfortunately.
[Simon] At the end
of November 1720,
they were all hanged
at Gallows Point in Jamaica,
which today is known
as Rackham's Cay.
♪
[cheering]
[Narrator] As a grim warning
to other would-be pirates,
Rackham's corpse is left
to rot in plain view.
♪
[Simon] Anne Bonny and
Mary Read's trial is conducted
a few days
after Rackham's death,
in mid-November of 1720.
This one is a little bit more
unusual, in that they're women.
The high court of admiralty
doesn't really know
what to do with them.
Women don't go on trial
as often as men.
Women often, if they are
caught committing a crime,
they'll spend time in jail,
but then they'll be let go
after a certain amount of time.
It's already quite rare
that the two of them
were put on trial
in front of everybody.
♪
Once again,
it's the same witnesses
who speak out against them,
in particular, Dorothy Thomas.
When asked how Miss Thomas
was able to recognize
Anne Bonny and Mary Read,
she said it was, quote, due to
the largeness of their breasts.
So she was able
to see them up close
to see that they
were actually women.
[Blakemore] Yes, these women
were on the ship.
Yes, we knew
that they were women,
even when they were dressed
in men's clothes.
Yes, they were wielding
guns and swords
and swearing more than any of
the other pirates in the crew,
so it does give us
some taste of their character
and their boldness and
how much they broke the rules
of the society
that they lived in.
♪
When it comes to the end
of the trial,
Bonny and Read were permitted
to plead their case,
but the record, whoever
wrote down this trial,
which is published
soon afterwards,
simply said they said
nothing material.
So we don't know whether that
means that they said nothing
or they said nothing that
the court thought was important,
and their voices are erased
from the record.
[Simon] Anne Bonny and Mary Read
were found guilty of piracy.
But there was a big twist.
When they were asked
if they had anything to say,
they both, according
to the trial transcript,
pled their bellies.
[crowd exclaims]
[Blakemore] Which was
a plea of pregnancy,
because if you were pregnant,
the court would
stay your execution
at least
until the baby was born.
[Hanna] This was a strategy
that many women followed,
would be to plead their bellies,
either to lie or
to attempt to get pregnant.
It happened quite a bit.
[Blakemore] Both women
were then examined
and found to be pregnant.
Given that their voyage
lasted around two months,
they were probably pregnant
for the whole time
that they were at sea.
[Simon] And this really
changes everything
because in the 18th century,
a pregnant woman
would not be executed.
Instead, they are granted what
is called a stay of execution,
meaning you won't be executed
until after the birth
of the child.
[Blakemore]
And they were imprisoned.
♪
[Narrator]
Five long months pass.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read
await the birth of their babies
and the hangman's noose.
[Simon] Ultimately what happened
to them is quite tragic.
Mary Read dies in jail
in April of 1721.
It was recorded that
she died of jail fever,
which is what
we call typhus today.
♪
[Simon] Now, Anne Bonny,
we don't actually know
what happened to her.
[Narrator] Anne Bonny's fate
remains a mystery to this day.
[Simon] There's no record
of her being executed.
There's no record of
what happened to her child.
[Lincoln] Although rumor has it
that her father came
and collected her,
managed to get her
out of prison,
and took her back
to American colonies,
where she married again
and had innumerable children,
and died at a ripe old age,
which may or may not be true.
[Simon] The reason
why we can speculate this
is because in English law
in the 17th and 18th centuries,
while, yes, women could
be sentenced to death
and many were, about 95%
of them were actually let go.
Only 5% of women
sentenced to death
actually had their
punishments carried out,
so it is very likely
that Anne Bonny
probably was not
hanged as a pirate.
[Blakemore] Some people
in the Carolinas even claim
to be descended from Anne Bonny.
But again, there is
no historical evidence
that this ever
actually took place.
[Simon] In 2021, there was
some new evidence unearthed
that suggested Anne Bonny
may have lived out
the rest of her life in Jamaica
because of a death record
of Saint Catherine's
Parish, Jamaica,
that listed a woman named
Anne Bonny in January of 1731.
So it is possible Anne
may have been sent free
or at least lived out
the rest of her life there.
♪
♪
[Narrator] Remarkably,
Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny,
and Mary Read
only sailed together
for two months.
And yet, over
three centuries later,
their adventures live on
in history and legend.
[Cusworth] There were
probably a significant number
of other women that we just
don't know about, right,
that have been
forgotten to history.
[Lamotte] But the main reason
why female pirates
were written out of history
because all, they would
hide their identities,
and they would
change their names,
they would dress as men,
they would behave as men.
So unless people found out
that they were women,
then they would just
be erased from history.
[Simon] In fact, Anne Bonny
and Mary Read are anomalies
when it comes to female pirates.
The story of Anne Bonny and
Mary Read really demonstrates
that there was the possibility
that women in the 18th century
could forge their own paths.
[Blakemore] Within, I think
it's four years of their voyage,
The General History
of the Pyrates is published
as one of the most important
accounts that historians have.
And Bonny and Read are
the only two non-captains
who get their own chapter.
So I think that's
the essence of the legend,
is these two women breaking
the contemporary ideas
about femininity
and about the role
of women in society
to go on a pirate voyage.
And in all of the accounts,
it's very clear that they are
the boldest aboard this ship,
they are at the forefront
of the action.
They would probably
have made better pirates
if they weren't
with Calico Jack.
[Lincoln] I mean, I think
actually they'd just gone
completely off the rails.
They were young,
and they wanted fun.
If you were a woman,
even in the Bahamas,
it was quite restrictive.
And so I imagine that
it was just a lot more fun
to be on a pirate ship than
to be doing some embroidery,
you know, in your home.
[Simon] People really enjoy
listening to the story
about Anne Bonny and Mary Read
because it is
quite a romantic story.
Whether or not
it's fact or fiction,
what we know about them
before they were pirates
and what their relationship was,
it still creates
a very interesting narrative.
It's very romantic in a sense.
You do have a woman who joined
up on a pirate ship for love.
[Lawrence] Not only do we have
an amazing pirate story
with the real pirates
at the Golden Age of Piracy,
we also have the tragedy
that love isn't enough,
that punishment comes in,
that men don't stand up for you,
it's only the women that fight.
We have this huge feminist wave,
and we also have now
historically queer culture
coming to the fore.
The fact that these people, that
they've always been amongst us,
that all of this history
is real and celebrated
with actual people,
and it was written down.
It matters to us now
more than ever.
♪
[Narrator] By the 1720s,
pirate hunters are winning
their war for the seas.
The English Crown
firmly controls Nassau,
the Caribbean no longer
providing such easy pickings
for men like Jack Rackham.
Many of the most feared
pirate captains
have been hunted down
and executed,
but the Golden Age of Piracy
isn't over yet.
♪