Mary Read

For other uses, see Mary Read (disambiguation).

Mary Read (died April 1721), was a pirate who served under John Rackham. She and Anne Bonny were among the few female pirates during the "Golden Age of Piracy".

Mary Read
1724 engraving of Read from A General History of the Pyrates
Born	Kingdom of England
Died	April 1721 Spanish Town, Colony of Jamaica
Resting place	St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica
Piratical career
Type	Pirate
Allegiance	John Rackham
Base of operations	Caribbean

Much of Read's background is unknown. The first biography of Read comes from Captain Charles Johnson's 1724 book, A General History of the Pyrates. According to Johnson, Read was born in England, dressed as a boy much of her childhood, eventually joined the military and later moved to the West Indies. Though Johnson's version of events has become generally accepted, there is little evidence to support them.

At an unknown date, Read traveled to the Bahamas where she became acquainted with the pirate John Rackham. Around August 1720, she joined Rackham's crew, alongside Anne Bonny. Together they stole the sloop William from Nassau harbor. Read's time as a pirate was short lived, as she, Bonny, and Rackham were arrested in October 1720. Rackham was executed in November, but Read and Bonny both claimed to be pregnant during their trials and received a stay of execution. Read died while imprisoned in April 1721, while Bonny's fate is unknown.

Early life

Read's date and place of birth are unknown.^[1] Nothing definitive is known about her early life. No primary source, including her own trial's transcript, makes mention of her age or nation of origin. Unlike Anne Bonny, numerous Mary Read's were born in the late 17th century across England, making it difficult to figure which one is the future pirate. Read is not noted to have been a colonist of Nassau before 1713. Before 22 August 1720, little can be definitively said about Read's early life.

Early life according to A General History of the Pyrates

Mary Read's name, alongside Anne Bonny's, is in notably larger font than other pirates like Blackbeard or Charles Vane.

All details concerning Read's early life stem from Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates (a greatly unreliable series of pirate biographies).^[2] Johnson claimed that Read was born at an unknown date in London in the Kingdom of England.^[3]

Read's unnamed mother married a sailor, with whom she had a son. The husband then went on a sea voyage, never to return. Despite lacking a husband, Read's mother became pregnant again. To avoid the stigma of bearing a Illegitimate child the mother moved from London to the countryside. The boy did not live long, he died in infancy before he was one year old. Shortly after the boys death, the mother gave birth to a girl, named Mary.^[4]

When Mary Read's mother ran out of money, she turned to her late husbands wealthy mother for support. To get support, Read's mother dressed her in boys clothing, to appear to be her deceased brother. The deception worked, the mother in law gave the family a crown a week until she eventually died.^[5]

After the death of Mary Read's grandmother-in-law, her mother made the now 13 year old child a foot-boy for an unnamed French lady. Soon after getting the job, Read's mother died. Disillusioned with the job, Read instead joined the crew of an English man-of-war. She later quit this and moved into Flanders where she carried arms in a regiment as a cadet and served bravely but could not receive a commission because promotion in those days was mostly by purchase.^[6]

Read moved on to a regiment of cavalry which was allied with Dutch forces against the French. The conflict Read is involved with is vague but implied to be the Nine Years War. Read, in male disguise, proved herself through battle, but fell in love with a Flemish soldier. When they married, she used their military commission and gifts from intrigued brethren in arms to acquire an inn named The Three Horseshoes near Breda Castle in the Netherlands.^[7] No known inn near Breda was recorded under that name.

Sometime after opening the inn, Read's husband died, and with the end of conflict following the Peace of Ryswick there was no room for advancement, so she left the military and boarded a ship bound for the West Indies.^[8] The ship that she boarded happened to be attacked by pirates. Read, while still disguised as a man, chose to join the pirates.^[9]

1724 engraving of Bonny from A General History of the Pyrates

John Rackham and Piracy

John Rackham

When Mary Read arrived on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas is unclear, but it was likely before 1720.

While living in the pirates nest of Nassau, Read at some point met John Rackham. The nature of his relationship with her is unclear and ambiguous, her own trial transcript says nothing on the matter. She was likely well acquainted with Rackham by the year 1720, after the War of the Quadruple Alliance and two years into the reign of Governor Woodes Rogers.

In August 1720, Read, Rackham, and another woman, Anne Bonny, together with about a dozen other pirate crewmembers, stole the sloop William, then at anchor in Nassau harbor, and put out to sea.^[10] The crew spent months in the West Indies attacking merchant ships.^[11]On 5 September 1720, Governor Rogers put out a proclamation, later published in The Boston Gazette, demanding the arrest of Rackham and his associates. Among those named are Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

Proclamation issued by governor Rogers 5 September 1720 that mentions Mary Read as a member of Rackham's crew.^[12]

A General History claims Bonny eventually fell in love with Mary Read, only to discover she was a woman. To abate the jealousy of Rackham, who suspected romantic involvement between the two, Bonny told him that Read was a woman and swore him to secrecy.^[13] This is unlikely, since Rogers' proclamation names both women openly. Later drawings of Read and Bonny would emphasise their femininity, although this too likely did not reflect reality.^[14]

A victim of the pirates, Dorothy Thomas of Jamaica, would describe in detail Read and Bonny's appearance during their trial. She said they "wore men's jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and ... each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her." Thomas also recorded that she knew that they were women, "from the largeness of their breasts."^[15]

Capture and imprisonment

Main article: Capture of John Rackham

On 22 October 1720,^[16] former privateer Captain Jonathan Barnet took Rackham's crew by surprise, while they drank punch with a group of turtlers they had brought aboard near Negril Point off the west coast of the Colony of Jamaica.^[17] What followed was a short engagement that ended when the Williams boom was knocked down. Rackham and the crew surrendered immediately after, requesting "quarter". Nobody was killed in the engangement.^[18]

Rackham and his crew were arrested and brought to trial in what is now Spanish Town, Jamaica, where they were sentenced to hang for acts of piracy, as were Read and Bonny. However, the women claimed they were both "quick with child" (known as "pleading the belly"), and received temporary stays of execution.^[19] Everyone else was executed.

Read died while in prison in April 1721. Her burial 28 of April is in the records of St. Catherine's church in Jamaica.^[20] There is no record of the burial of her baby, suggesting that she may have died while pregnant, or perhaps never had been pregnant.

Legacy

Despite a career of only two months, Mary Read is among the most famous pirates in recorded history, primarily due to her gender. Within a decade, Read-inspired characters were already appearing. The first notable inspiration is Polly in John Gay's 1729 ballad opera Polly. Despite already appearing in Gay's previous play The Beggars Opera, her characterization in Polly is blatantly Read.^[21]

In the 19th century, literature such as Charles Ellms' Pirates Own Book would discuss Read at length, often with illustrations. Throughout much of the 19th and early 20th century, Read dominated literature and the stage. For the Victorian era, Read was far more popular than Bonny.

By the 21st century, Read had fallen in popularity compared to Bonny, who has appeared in hundreds of books, movies, stage shows, TV programs, and video games.^[22] Almost every female pirate character, is in some form, inspired by Anne Bonny.^[23]

In popular culture

Mary Read, The Duel, from the Pirates of the Spanish Main series (N19) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes MET DP835033

• A fictionalized version of Mary Read appears in the 2013 video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and is voiced by Olivia Morgan.^[24]
• The 2006 TV film True Caribbean Pirates featured Mary Read portrayed by Kimberly Adair.^[25]
• The 1961 Italian film Le avventure di Mary Read told the story of Mary Read, portrayed by Lisa Gastoni.^[26]
• Read has a small cameo in the final episode of Black Sails, played by Cara Roberts.^[27]
• Rachel House portrayed Read in the second season of Our Flag Means Death.^[28]
• Mary Read is the main character of the 2024 fiction book Saltblood by Francesca de Tores.^[29]

Speculation of Read's Sexuality

Since the mid 18th century, certain writers have claimed that Read Read was the lesbian lover of Anne Bonny. This was never stated in the trial transcript or newspapers, and only begins to appear after much of Read's legend was written, and by highly suspect sources.

The first written appearance of this claim is in an unauthorized 1725 reproduction of A General History titled, The History and Lives of All the Most Notorious Pirates and Their Crews. In the passage describing the trial of Bonny and Read, the book briefly says they were lovers. Since A General History is itself unreliable, this claim cannot be trusted.^[30] History and Lives would be the only book to claim Bonny and Read were lovers for almost a century. A chapbook knock off of History and Lives would again repeat the claim verbatim in 1813,^[a] but discussion of Read's sexuality would only really begin in the 20th century.

This claim would briefly appear again in 1914, via sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld's book, The Homosexuality of Men and Women. Much like History and Lives, it contains a mere one sentence claim that Mary Read was a lesbian.^[31]

The claim that Bonny and Read were lesbians largely entered popular understanding via radical feminist Susan Baker's 1972 article, "Anne Bonny & Mary Read: They Killed Pricks" published in a newspaper run by the lesbian separatist organization, The Furies Collective.^[32] This article would inspire writers such as Steve Gooch, which in turn would influence many media depictions.

In 2020, a statue of Bonny and Read was unveiled at Execution Dock in Wapping, London. The statues were created in part for the podcast series Hellcats, which centers on a lesbian relationship between Bonny and Read. The statues themselves are abstract depictions of Bonny and Read, claiming that one emotionally completed the other. It was originally planned for the statues to be permanently placed on Burgh Island in south Devon,^[33] but these plans were withdrawn after complaints of glamorizing piracy, and because Bonny and Read have no association with the island.^[34] The statues were eventually accepted by Lewes F.C.^[35]

Ultimately, it is impossible to determine if Mary Read was Anne Bonny lover. Neither woman left any primary sources behind, and sources such as the trial transcript make no mention of their personal lives.^[36]

See also

• Women in piracy
• Mary Critchett

Notes

1. The book was titled The Extraordinary Adventures and Daring Exploits of Captain Henry Morgan, but appears to be a 34 page abridged plagiarized version of History and Lives.