How Two Female Pirates Disguised as Men Fell In Love Is a Dramatic Story You Won’t Forget

Over the next few months, Read and Bonny began to grow closer. Though neither knew that the other was also a woman, they found that they had much more in common with each other than with the men on the ship. Finally, Bonny decided to tell Mark Read that she had feelings for him. Obviously, this wasn’t an easy decision to make. If Mark didn’t keep her secret, then everyone on the crew would find out Bonny was a woman. And being the only woman on a ship full of pirates isn’t a position anyone wants to be in.

You can imagine the strange mixture of relief, confusion, and maybe just a bit of disappointment that Bonny must have felt when she confessed her gender and her feelings to Read, only to find out that Mark was actually Mary. But with this new connection between them, Read and Bonny grew even closer. The pair began spending much of their time together, even fighting side by side in battle. But the obvious relationship developing between the two pirates began to attract Captain Rackham’s attention. After all, Rackham still had no idea that Read was a woman.

As Rackham watched the person he thought was Mark Read spending time with his lover, his suspicion grew. Eventually, he decided to confront Bonny about her new friend in a fit of jealousy and threatened to cut Read’s throat. To avoid Rackham’s anger, Bonny was forced to admit that Read was actually a woman. And it’s here that the story gets a little hazy. Most modern tellings of the relationship between Rackham, Read, and Bonny imagine that, at this point, the three began engaging in a three-sided sexual relationship.

And there are many historians who suggest that Bonny and Read were at least having a romantic affair with each other. But we don’t know for certain that this was going on. Of course, both Bonny and Read were married, which suggests that they were probably attracted to men. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t attracted to each other. And given that Bonny seems to have fallen for Read when she thought Read was a man, there may have been some sexual attraction that survived the reveal of her true gender. So, it’s certainly possible that the three were engaged in a relationship.

Most of the information we have about Read and Bonny comes from the work of Charles Johnson, who wrote a popular account of the history of piracy in the Caribbean. Johnson’s account covers the careers of the two pirates, but it doesn’t go into much detail about their sexual relationship. That’s assuming of course, that there was one. But it certainly appears that both Read and Bonny were having sex with someone. The two claimed to be pregnant within a few months. And that fact would prove to be very important by the end of 1720. As it turns out, their pregnancies were what saved them from being executed.

One night in October 1720, Rackham’s crew was gathered off a beach in Jamaica with the crew of another ship. As you might expect of pirates, the entire party was good and drunk within a few hours. But unknown to the pirates, an English Navy vessel was cruising nearby through the dark night. On board was famous pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet. Barnet’s ship snuck up on the pirate ship and fired a volley from its guns, crippling Rackham’s vessel. As Barnet prepared to board the ship, Rackham and his crew fled to the hold, leaving only Bonny, Read, and one other pirate on deck to fight the borders.

Read and Bonny were furious at the men’s lack of courage and shot their way into the hold, killing one of the crew. But either too afraid or too drunk, the pirates refused to help fight off Barnet’s boarding party, and soon they were all captured. Barnet then brought the pirates to an English settlement in Jamaica to stand trial. At the trial, Rackham was found guilty of piracy and sentenced to hang. As Rackham was being led out of the courtroom, Anne Bonney allegedly told him, “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hanged like a dog.”

Ten days after Rackham’s execution, during their own trials, Bonny and Read announced to the court that they were both pregnant. And since they were with child, they couldn’t be executed. After the clamor in the courtroom died down, the two women were sent to prison on the island until the court could determine if their claims of pregnancy were actually true. Whether or not they were is a question lost to history. Read died in prison within a few weeks from a fever, possibly during childbirth.

But there is no record of Read’s child being buried. So there are a few possibilities to consider. Read may have died before she could give birth. Or she may have died during childbirth along with the child, and the child was buried in an unmarked grave. Or she may have given birth to a healthy child that survived as an orphan and simply disappeared from the historical record. Finally, there’s always the possibility that Read was lying about being pregnant and died before she could be hanged. All we know for sure is that Read died in 1721 in Port Royal. She was likely around 35-36 years old.

Bonny’s case is more interesting, as we actually have no idea what happened to her. There are no official documents that report her being executed or giving birth. It’s possible that she was hanged, or died in prison. Or it could be that she was released from prison. At the time of her trial, Bonny was a mere 18-19 years old. So, if she did manage to escape execution, she may have lived a long life afterward. She may have even returned to piracy under a different name. It would be a fitting story for one of the most famous female pirates in history.