A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans Read Free Page A

apparently drove Calico Jack wild with jealousy, and he threatened to slit Read’s throat. It was then that Mary opened her shirt to reveal her breasts and said, “As you can see, sir, I am no threat to you.” After that Anne Bonny and Mary Read became inseparable friends—and one terrifying team.
    Victims of their raids reported the two women screaming like banshees as they boarded a captured ship, wielding their weapons as seasoned marauders. In one instance, a woman named Dorothy Thomas was attacked while alone in a canoe on the north side of Jamaica and forced aboard Rackham’s sloop for an ordeal that can only be imagined. A report on the deposition she gave later stated that Bonny and Read “wore Mens Jackets, and long Trouzers, and Handkerchiefs tied about their Heads; and that each of them had a Machet and Pistol in their Hands, and cursed and swore at the Men, to murther the Deponent; and that they should kill her, to prevent her coming against them; and the Deponent further said, That the Reason of knowing and believing them to be Women then was, by the largeness of their Breasts.”
    Throughout the summer and early fall of 1720, Rackham and his crew conducted raid after raid, with Bonny and Read often leading the charge. But on the night of October 22, their reign of terror on the seas came to an end. A British navy vessel captained by pirate hunter Jonathan Barnett overpowered their anchored sloop and disabled it. After firing only one shot, Rackham realized there was no hope and called for quarter, which Barnett granted. Bonny and Read wanted no part of it, however. They put up a fierce fight with their pistols and cutlasses while the rest of the crew cowered in the ship’s hold. At one point Anne reportedly screamed down at them, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the men ye are to be!” When that failed to motivate them, she fired into the hold and killed one of the crew. It was an act of defiant rage that would have done Blackbeard proud.
    In spite of their frenzied resistance, Bonny and Read were overpowered and taken prisoner with the rest of the crew. Calico Jack and the other men were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death that November. After his kiss-off from Anne and subsequent execution, Rackham’s corpse was subjected to a rather ghastly ordeal: It was placed upright in a metal cage known as a gibbet and left to rot on the Jamaica coast, as a warning to other pirates. A week later the women were tried. One witness who had been taken prisoner described them as “very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do most any Thing on Board.” Another testified that “when they saw any Vessel, gave chase, or Attacked, they wore Men’s Cloathes; and at other Times, they wore Women’s Cloaths; That they did not seem to be Kept, or detain’d by Force, but of their own Free-Will and Consent.”
    Neither woman offered a defense, and each was duly condemned to hang. Right after the sentence was read, however, both informed the court that they were pregnant. An examination proved this to be true, and the sentences were suspended. Mary Read died in prison soon after, perhaps during childbirth, but Anne Bonny’s fate remains a mystery. Some historians speculate that her wealthy father used his influence with the British authorities to get her released, but no direct evidence of this has ever been produced. Only one thing is certain: She fought like a man, and, unlike Calico Jack, she wasn’t hanged like a dog.

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Tom Quick: “The Indian Slayer”
    Back in the days when Native Americans were still seen as “savages,” the town of Milford, Pennsylvania, dedicated a monument in 1889 to Tom Quick, the lionized “Indian Slayer” who once roamed the wilds of the region picking off members of the Delaware Nation. “Maddened by the death of his Father at the