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Women That Left Their Mark Throughout History

Khalid Elhassan August 4, 2020 34 min

7. A Badass Buccaneer

Badass French buccaneer Anne Dieu-le-Veut (1661 – 1710) became famous – or infamous – in the Golden Age of Piracy, during which she gained a reputation for courage in combat and ruthlessness. Her name, which means “Anne God Wants It”, was reportedly earned because her determination and willpower were so strong, that whatever she wanted seemed to have been what God Himself wanted.

Anne arrived in the Caribbean as one of the so-called “Filles de Roi“, or “King’s Daughters” – impoverished women, many of them convicted criminals, deported to far-off colonies. There, they were expected to turn a new leaf and start a new life, settling down and marrying French colonists. Anne ended up in Tortuga, off Haiti’s northern coast. There, in 1684, she married a buccaneer, Pierre Lelong, and had a child with him. When Lelong was killed in a fight in 1790, she married another buccaneer, Joseph Cherel. However, her involvement with piracy went well beyond simply being married to a buccaneer.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.