Ahoy and Welcome to the after story of Anne Bonny

Welcome to the Sailing Against The Tide website and blog. I am the author, Carol Busby. I have long been fascinated with sailing ships and, by extension, pirates. There were two main women pirates that we know of in the Caribbean – Anne Bonny and Mary Read(e).

THE BACK STORY

Anne father, an Irish attorney named William McCormac, had an affair with his housekeeper, Mary Brennan. Anne was the result, born in County Cork about 1697. But McCormac preferred Mary to his wife and so left her and went to London where he often dressed Anne in boy’s clothes and called her Andy. When his wife discovered that he was bringing up the girl and preparing her to be a lawyer’s clerk, the wife stopped sending him support. So he moved to the Carolinas with Anne and her mother. There he dropped the “Mc” from his name. He practiced law and eventually earned enough money to buy a plantation.

Anne’s mother died when she was 12. A redhead with a firey temper, Anne supposedly attacked a servant with a knife. She was restless and wanted to get away from the plantation so she married ne’er do well James Bonny, a wanna-be pirate who hoped to end up with Cormac’s plantation and wealth. But Anne’s father disowned her so the pair headed for the Caribbean some time between 1714 and 1718. There they joined the Republic of Pirates in Nassau.

When Woodes Rogers arrived in 1718 with a pardon for pirates who had to agree to stop thieving, James became an informant for the new governor. Anne did not approve.

She found Calico Jack Rackham, a middling pirate, and became his lover. Jack offered to “buy” her from Bonny (a form of divorce at the time) but the husband refused. Eventually Anne divorced James and married Jack at sea. Their crew was joined by Mary Read(e), another woman who had dressed as a man.

In October 1720, the William was set upon by Captain Jonathan Barnet, under commission from the governor of Jamaica, Nicholas Lawes. The men put up little resistance, being too drunk or hung over to fight. Anne and Mary fended off Barnet as long as they could but the ship was taken. All of the pirates were sentenced to be hanged although Anne and Mary were temporarily reprieved because they were both pregnant. In April 1721, Mary died of a fever.

Bonny’s last words to Rackham were: “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog!”

She then disappears from history. But she seems not to have been hanged.

Rumors abounded: Anne was rescued by her father. Anne died in Jamaica. Anne married a man named Joseph Burleigh and lived on a plantation in the Carolinas, or Virginia, or Jamaica. No one knows.

Sailing Against the Tide is the story of what happened to Anne. I have used bits and pieces of the rumors to put together a tale that is true to Anne’s character and the struggle a woman like her would have conforming to the rigid rules that governed women’s behavior in the 18th century. Anne is not perfect and Anne does not fit in easily. But she is a woman of strength and resilience. And I am honored to have made her acquaintance.