“I should have knocked out all her teeth,” Anne boasted to the ex-pirates as they drank in the Lair. “Then tied her to a tree and gave her neither bread nor water and let a myriad of fiery stinging ants swarm over her nekkid body.”
“Yay, ye should have.” Pirate Captain Calico Jack nodded in agreement. “Would ye have her all nekkid, including her privities?”
“All nekkid,” Anne replied.” ‘Tis better not to cover her privities, making the stings of the ants more fiercely painful.”
“Yay, ’tis better.”
Anne and Calico got very friendly with each other and she finally made certain he knew she was a woman by unbuttoning her man’s shirt one day. He offered to buy her from her spineless husband, Jim, who instantly snitched on both of them to South Carolina Governor Rogers. Anne was ordered to show up for a flogging and then return to her rightful husband, so she and Calico decided they would slip into the harbor, both of them dressed like men, and steal a sloop and begin their lives together as a pirate couple.
Over the next few months, Anne and Calico Jack raided many ships and shore installations. Her gender remained a secret to all but him, until they captured a Dutch merchant ship and recruited a number of its sailors from the crew, including a strikingly handsome, blue-eyed, blond young man. Anne took a liking to him and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her true identity. The man then unbuttoned his shirt and showed that he was Mary Read. It is not known if both women were disappointed to discover that neither of them was a man, but they became a pirate duo, skilled with rapiers and pistols, and fought bravely whenever their boarding crew stormed onto unsuspecting merchant ships.
Anne and Mary loved being pirates and became well-respected, bloodthirsty buccaneers who swung their blades and boarded ships with more daring than any man. They became pregnant at the same time, and in 1720 suffered a stunning defeat when a pirate turned pirate-hunter raided them while the crew was drunk and hiding below deck, leaving only Mary and Anne to fight furiously in thick cannon fire.
“If there’s a man among ye, ye will come out and fight like the men ye are thought to be!” Anne shouted as she furiously swung her cutlass and fired her pistols.
The men below did not answer back, and all were captured and hanged except for the two pregnant pirates, who went to jail. Mary died of a fever inside her tiny damp cell and Anne is believed to have been granted a pardon. She disappeared from the seas and historical records.
My theory of what became of Anne Bonny is based on reviewing written accounts of her life, and then reaching a conclusion that is within the realm of possibility. We can be certain that Anne would not have been welcome back in the West Indies, nor was she likely to return to her husband or to the life of an active pirate. I suspect she had her child and decided on a compromise of breaking the law while avoiding the traditional life of a woman, and doing so in a place that was a safe harbor and agreeable to her need for adventure. She would have known that Blackbeard and other pirates frequented Tangier Island and regularly traded with the Islanders, and that if she continued dressing like a man, she could be a waterman and at least get out in a bateau and teach her child the ways of weather, the bay, and fishing.
This child, I suspect, was a son, and I believe it is from this cutthroat lineage that one certain governmental official descended. And if the governor is reading this essay, I ask him to think back on all of the times a certain disloyal, despicable individual has given him a sweet that is soon followed by an explosive gastric attack.
It is just a shame that this scoundrel, who for now will remain nameless, offered no warnings when he applied for a high-level state position and was subjected to the usual background checks. But background checks are largely ineffective these days. They do not reveal motivation, which in this person’s case, like that of his ancestor Anne Bonny, is to have control, adventure, and access to military and police power, and to know the rules well enough to break them whenever he pleases.