For reasons that probably deserve several books we within our culture are gaga for pirates. While in fact its a nasty business, dirty, violent, often ending badly, there is something about the idea of, well, something, likely several somethings that pulls at our imaginations.
And so, for all those complex reasons, usually scrubbed up a bit, we tell ourselves tales of pirates, and pirate romance with books, and movies, and songs. Lots of songs.
And, so…
It is generally believed that it was on this day in 1700 that Anne McCormac was born in Kindle, County Cork, in Ireland. Her father a local lawyer. Her mother his servant. Following mysterious stars her father took his family to England and then to the Carolinas. He became a successful merchant.
While considered a “good catch” in many ways, the girl had other ideas. She married a sometime pirate James Bonny, moved to Nassau and then to New Providence Island, better known as the Republic of Pirates.
Soon she was fully immersed in the pirate trade. She left Bonny for the more successful pirate John “Calico Jack Rackham. Adventures ensued. There’s a baby somewhere in the picture. But she was more for the pirate’s life, while never a pirate captain she was fully engaged, dressed as one of the men, and even joined in hand to hand combat. Her name was added to the lists of “wanted pirates.”
And, finally, as so often was the case, she and Rackham, as well as another female pirate, Mary Read were, after a fierce battle, captured, dragged back to Jamaica, tried, and condemned to hang. Rackham was quickly dispatched, but the women “pled their bellies,” claiming to be pregnant.
While still imprisoned, Mary Read died. Anne, however, simply disappears from the record. The best speculation, at least according to the good folk at Wikipedia, was that she was ransomed by her father, and married off to a Virginia planter, having eight children, and living into her eighties.
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